Assessing filing and retrieval of active undergraduate records at academic registrars department, Makerere University

Abstract

The effectiveness of public service organizations is audited basing on the ability to file and quickly retrieve the necessary records.

Study purpose: This study aimed to assess the filing and retrieval of active records at Academic registrar’s department, Makerere university so as suggest possible alternatives for improvement in management of active records

Study Objectives: the study intended to; establish the current status of active records filing and retrieval at undergraduate Academic registrar ‘department: find out how active records filing and retrieval are managed at undergraduate Academic registrar’s department: to find out filing and retrieval systems used at undergraduate Academic registrar’s office and: To propose to the best practices in active records filing and retrieval and to identify challenges associated with the undergraduate active records at Academic registrar’s department Methods: A cross-sectional study design was applied, using qualitative approach. The study population included employees in academic registrar’s department who have worked. In-depth interviews and observation approaches were used to collect data; a manual data analysis was used to obtain qualitative information which was presented chronologically basing on the study objectives Results: The study Indicated that; Academic registrar’s department handles several types of active records, which include payment statements, Student biodata, Examination results, appeal letters from the students, transcripts, and certificates. Both paper-based, digitalized filing and retrieval methods are being used, and the common approaches used during filing and retrieval of active records are; arranging documents following the chronology: filing by name of the student, by the subject matter, name of the course, program of the student, the academic year in which the student was admitted. However, they are used but there are still common filing and retrieval challenges include; inadequate equipment, limited skills, poor interconnectivity of the systems, slow interned network and inadequate storage space. Conclusion: Whereas Academic registrar’s department embraces the use of both digitalized and paper based record keeping systems, paper-based method takes a large share although not preferred by the records staff. A lot of inconsistencies were identified with the use of digital approaches, and there is possibility of misappropriating important records of the organization except only when above challenges are addressed.