Te tukanga arohaehae
Appraisal process
Read our guidance on doing an appraisal. You’ll find out how to assess your organisation's business activities to determine the appropriate management of your information and records.
Appraisal is about enabling decisions. It’s an analysis process that combines:
an evaluation of your organisation’s functions and activities
an assessment of risks associated with the creation and management of your information and records.
The appraisal process enables you to determine the appropriate management of your information and records over time. It also helps you decide how long they’ll need to be kept, and what their final fate or disposal will be.
Appraisal is a proactive part of information and records management. When appraisal is done early, you can improve the management of your information and records by:
ensuring their timely and lawful disposal
maximising their use and reuse
reducing the risk of managing or destroying them inappropriately.
Find out more about appraisal benefits
When to appraise your records and information
We advocate a proactive approach to appraisal. We recommend doing appraisal at the point of creation — or shortly after — when information and records are still current.
Appraisal can occur:
before information and records' creation and during the design of business processes
at creation — to ensure information and records are correctly managed over time
retrospectively — after information and records have fulfilled their immediate purpose
when your organisation has an administrative change or transfer of function.
How to appraise your information and records
Contact us before you start
Contact us at rkadvice@dia.govt.nz before you start an appraisal. We’ll give you the guidance and templates you need.
Analyse your organisation’s core functions
Appraisal decisions are based on the analysis of an organisation’s functions — and the information and records management processes supporting these.
Several resources can help determine your organisation’s core functions and business activities, including:
legislation, regulations, standards and codes of practice
corporate documents — such as annual reports and statements of intent
interviews with internal staff who have knowledge of business activities
existing appraisal reports
existing business classification schemes or taxonomy.
Group functions into specific classes
These classes should be clear and specific enough to be related to the function that they’re determined by. They should be easily recognisable by creators and users of the information and records.
When you are identifying the main functions or activities of your organisation, you may find that similar ones can be grouped together, while others might need to be broken down even further into smaller, more manageable groups or subclasses.
Once you’ve grouped the classes of information and records related to your functions, you can determine:
their value to meet legislative requirements, business and community needs
how long you need to continue to manage or retain them, and
what trigger points such as a date or event could be used to start the minimum retention period for each class.
Archives New Zealand examples
An example of one of our core functions or business activities here at Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga is provision of access to open public records to government and the public.
An example of 2 classes or groups of information and records related to this function are:
strategic level access policies
reader application forms and databases.
Appraisal process steps
The following tools will help with your decision making during the appraisal process.
Step 1. Appraisal criteria
It’s essential to establish a set of appropriate criteria which outline the value of the information and records you’re appraising and underpin their final disposal recommendations.
This will provide justification and assurance to the Chief Archivist on the quality of your decision-making and recommendations.
Archival selection principles
As well as a set of guiding criteria to support consistent and transparent appraisal decision-making, we’ve also developed 3 selection principles for the New Zealand public sector. These can help inform your decisions for identifying or selecting information and records of permanent or archival value.
Principle 1 — Information and records that provide evidence of New Zealand public sector authority, functions and activities.
Principle 2 — Information and records that provide evidence of the Crown’s fulfilment or failure of te Tiriti o Waitangi the Treaty of Waitangi principles.
Principle 3 — Information and records that contribute to individual and community knowledge, identity, and memory.
Read our full public sector archival selection statement
Business value is not the same as archival value
It’s important to remember that information and records with administrative or business value — that may be important for your organisation for many years — may not also have archival value. You’ll need to decide how to retain these to meet your organisation’s business needs or legal requirements before implementing any disposal actions, such as destruction or transfer to us.
There will be several different views on the archival and business value of information and records from the:
creators
contributors
subjects
users, and
future users.
You should consider all these views when applying these criteria.
Step 2. Stakeholder consultation
Different people will value information and records in different ways. They’ll also have different needs for accessing these over time. You need to consider this when appraising your organisation’s information and records.
This consultation ensures interested parties or stakeholders are:
given the opportunity to contribute to the appraisal process
informed of the reasoning behind retention and disposal recommendations.
It also ensures your organisation is fully aware of the potential impacts of these decisions.
Stakeholder consultation gives the Chief Archivist confidence that you’re making informed decisions about the disposal of government information and records, and that information and records of the highest enduring value are transferred to us.
Benefits of consultation
A robust appraisal requires a consultation process that includes internal and external stakeholders. This has multiple advantages as it can:
inform your decision making from a range of perspectives
minimise the risk of miscommunication and uninformed decision making
set appropriate retention periods and disposal actions
identify where duplication of information may exist, and
promote a transparent and accountable appraisal process.
You’ll need to identify both internal and external stakeholders of your organisation and consider their rights and interests when making appraisal recommendations.
Internal consultation
To avoid multiple rounds of feedback, you should only undertake internal consultation once your classes or groupings of information and records have been decided. The purpose of the consultation is to find out if your internal stakeholders have any concerns about the recommendations to transfer or destroy information and records. Often the creators or users of the information and records will have strong views on their long-term value. Therefore, it is vital that you consider information and records both within the context of your organisation and across the whole of government, not just the context of one work area.
External consultation
It’s important to be aware that there is more than one type of external stakeholder. There may be external stakeholders within the relevant sector of your organisation — as well as relevant to the subject matter of the information and records themselves.
You can target select groups for consultation about specific classes or groups of information and records. It might be useful to consult externally several times during the appraisal process — particularly about classes that have high public interest.
We encourage public offices to consider not only external consultation with government organisations, but also with non-government organisations such as:
ethnic groups
professional and sector reference groups
research bodies
academic institutions
lobby groups.
We recommend having a discussion with any of your organisation’s staff who interact with external groups in some way during their business. These staff can help identify relevant external stakeholders.
Step 3. Communications
You’ll need to assess your organisation’s communication channels to decide which is most appropriate to communicate clearly and effectively with each stakeholder group. When assessing these, you should consider:
the stakeholder’s frame of reference and the context in which they work
whether they’ll want to be consulted on the whole appraisal report and disposal schedule
whether they’ll be interested only in specific extracts of the appraisal report.
Examples of face-to-face communication channels can include:
meetings
hui
fono
workshops.
Follow-up communications will help confirm that stakeholders have received the information they need to understand the appraisal process — and their part in it.
Contextual information or guidance on the appraisal process will help support your communications and get you the most valuable input. These communications should be targeted to stakeholders who are best suited to test the decisions being recommended.
Examples of contextual information are listed below.
Parameters
Parameters of influence outline what decisions are already made due to, for example:
legal constraints
intellectual and cultural property considerations
citizens’ rights and entitlements.
Let stakeholders know what can be changed by their feedback.
Process details
Details about the consultation process should be provided to stakeholders. This includes:
appropriate background information
a description of the consultation process
consultation questions — for example, value of information, retention period, access restrictions.
It’s also particularly crucial to provide details on:
time frames within which to respond
how to provide feedback
what follow-up can be expected.
Step 4. Stakeholder report
Consolidate feedback
Stakeholder feedback should provide you with enough information to determine an overview of their opinions. It may be clear that the initial recommendations, for example, on retention periods or disposal actions, are not agreed upon. It’s important to consider all opinions and — where appropriate — adjust your initial recommendations. This process needs to be transparent and well-documented in the final report.
You should use the following prompts in your report back to stakeholders.
We asked…
You said…
We did…
This is why we did…
Step 5. Appraisal report
Once you have completed your stakeholder report, you can identify the information and records that are:
of high-risk and high-value to your organisation
of archival value to New Zealand public
of short-term or finite value
eligible to be disposed of now.
The appraisal process should be documented in a report which provides the context and justification of your decision-making. It should also inform the current and future management of information and records within your organisation. You’ll use this appraisal report as part of the disposal process to create a disposal schedule.
Read more about the disposal process
Your appraisal report should detail:
what information and records your organisation needs to create
what information and records are high-risk, high-value, or both
how long you need to retain the information and records
how you intend to dispose of the information and records.
This information allows you to begin the disposal process. It can also be used to create an information asset register for your organisation.
Learn more about information assets
Contact us for further guidance
Contact us for any templates and further guidance on this process — we’re happy to help.