Developing a records retention and disposal schedule guidelines and Uganda Civil Aviation Authority

Abstract

This research study was carried out at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the causes of the high rate increase in volume of records in the institutions Records and Information centre. The objectives of the study were: To identify the records managed by UCAA. To examine the records retention and disposal practices at UCAA. To identify the challenges faced during the retention and disposal period at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority. To developing a Records Retention and Disposal Schedule Guideline at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority, The absence of a well-established RRDS guideline at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority has led to the increased accumulation of records of all kinds ranging from electronic to paper records generated and kept at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority. In the quest of creating space, members of staff have been forced to destroy some records and the risks of destroying valuable records have also increased as cases of information loss have been reported when some records are needed for taxes, budgets and payroll and cannot be seen. And yet these records are very important assets of any organization because of the strength they hold in ensuring accountability, transparency, and facilitating decision making especially for top management, donors and daily operations. There was also a challenge of receiving inadequate funds to the registry and less skilled staff. The study recommended that Uganda Civil Aviation Authority records be digitized so as to improve their quality and reliability using the available IT resources and as such only physical copies of high value records could be retained, train staff and employ qualified personnel, purchase more storage equipment, establish a bigger storage / construction of new storage areas as the existing ones were insufficient to store the growing volumes of records and increase on funding to the registry / increase the registry budget hence there would be effective and efficient service delivery and decision making. The study therefore proposed a Records Retention and Disposal Schedule Guideline development at Uganda Civil Aviation Authority that will improve the overall utilization of information resources, control the growth of records volume, demonstrate compliance with regulatory record keeping requirements, enforce the consistent implementation of record keeping policies, improve ability to locate and retrieve records when required.