Sentencing of Records, Information and Data
Purpose
This Records Advice provides ACT Records Managers and other employees with an overview of records sentencing processes.  This advice should be used in managing ACT Government records, and can also be applied to other government information and data holdings.
Definition
Sentencing is the process of applying appraisal decisions to individual records by classifying them according to a Records Disposal Schedule and applying the disposal action specified.
Sentencing on creation
Many ACT Government records are sentenced when they are created.  Sentencing usually occurs when a member of staff chooses terms from the whole of government thesaurus to describe the file they are creating, and also chooses one of the available disposal classes associated with those terms.  This happens when staff request a file using the Records Services file request form, or when staff create a new container in HPRM (HP Records Manager, also known as TRIM) or Objective.
For example, staff may request a new file to keep papers about a recruitment process.  Using the file request form the staff member would choose the terms Personnel – Recruitment to describe the file.  There are two disposal classes associated with these terms.  They are:
1.	Records documenting the filling of vacancies in an organisation.  Includes officers and executive and temporary employees.
and
2.	Records documenting the management of unsolicited applications.
The person requesting a file about recruitment processes would choose the first of these disposal classes, as this best describes the task they will document on the file.  By choosing the correct disposal class when the file is created the time period for which the file must be kept is decided, and records staff can manage the file accordingly.
This process is known as sentencing on creation, and helps to ensure that records are managed efficiently and not retained for longer than they are needed.

Sentencing after creation
Not all records are sentenced on creation, and where this is the case ACT Government organisations should have in place processes for applying disposal classes to records so that they can manage them appropriately.
Work to sentence records after creation needs to take account of the complexity of the records involved, estimates of their value, and the risk of inappropriately destroying records.  Records of standardised business processes that have short retention periods, such as financial records, may be able to be sentenced in bulk after routine checks.  Other more complex groups of records that have varying retention periods, such as the working files of a complex policy unit, may require individual examination.
Sentencing projects of any kind should always be overseen by a records management professional, and approved by a senior manager.  Complex sentencing processes, particularly for older records, may need to be carried out by specially trained staff who have an understanding of the organisation’s business and who are familiar with the relevant records disposal schedules.  See Authorising Destruction of ACT Government Records for more information.
Rules for sentencing
There are a few general rules that should be followed whenever sentencing is undertaken:
•	Records should be sentenced by their content, not just their titles.  It is common for people to give a file a title but to later put documents about a different topic on that file.  The content of records should be checked to make sure that the most appropriate disposal class is identified.  This is also true for records that are sentenced on creation – files should undergo some form of review, appropriate to the risk presented by the business activity, to ensure that the disposal class chosen when the file was created is still appropriate for the content of the file.
For further information please see Authorising Destruction of ACT Government Records.
•	Records cannot be destroyed if they are required for litigation or if there is a disposal freeze applied to them.  See the Retain Principle for further information on Records and legal proceedings and Disposal freezes.
•	Records should always be sentenced using the longest applicable retention period.  If some documents in a record must be kept for 10 years and others for 7, keep the whole file for 10 years.  If some documents must be retained as Territory archives, the whole record must be retained.
•	Records should never be culled.  It is not acceptable to remove documents from a file once it is no longer in use, unless a disposal schedule specifically tells you to do this.  If you need to preserve one document on the file for 10 years, the whole file should be retained for ten years.  Culling documents from files is usually inefficient, and may compromise the integrity of the file.  If staff needs to remove a document from a file that is still in active use this should be done by the organisations records manager, who should make an appropriate note on the file.  In electronic document and records management systems such as HPRM and Objective this may happen automatically, but may still need to be controlled by records management staff.  
•	All parts of a file should be retained for the same period.  Particularly for hard copy files, organisations may create new parts for the same project or task because the original file has become too large.  However, all of the parts may be needed to understand all of the process being documented.  This means that if one part of a file needs to be retained as a Territory archive, all of the parts should be retained with it.  Sometimes organisations create new file parts to document long-term, ongoing activities.  In this case it is usually better practice to create new files rather than new parts for files.  For example, organisations may prefer to start a new file each year for their regular interactions with stakeholders.  This allows records about routine interactions to be destroyed while recent or more significant cases are kept.
For more information
Please see the Assess Principle for information on appraisal of records
Please see the Retain Principle for information on disposal and destruction of records
Contact the Territory Records Office for further guidance.