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Te aroturuki
Monitoring

Regular monitoring ensures information and records are managed efficiently and effectively using best practices. It also ensures information and records management (IM) continues to meet your organisation’s business needs and government requirements.

Recordkeeping publication: 16/F7 v4, updated August 2026.

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Public sector organisations must monitor their IM

If your organisation is a public sector organisation , the mandatory Information and Records Management Standard requires you to monitor all aspects of your IM. This ensures ‘that it is accurately performed and meets business needs’ (Requirement 1.8).

Monitoring responsibilities

Monitoring the management of information and records is a shared responsibility between us and each public sector organisation.

Our responsibilities

We are responsible for:

  • monitoring compliance with the Public Records Act 2005 (the Act), associated standards and instructions

  • reporting to our Minister and Parliament about the state of IM in the New Zealand public sector

  • communicating requirements and timetables for monitoring activities

  • providing advice and guidance on how organisations can monitor their own performance

  • providing advice and guidance on how organisations can comply with requirements

  • following up non-compliance or ineffective management.

Your responsibilities

Your organisation is responsible for:

  • regularly measuring and monitoring the performance of its IM

  • taking corrective action to address any problems

  • working with us in monitoring and reporting on compliance.

Monitoring for performance

Regularly monitoring the performance of your organisation's IM ensures its continuing value to the organisation. It also helps provide opportunities for continuous improvement.

Benefits

Monitoring performance can help you:

  • ensure that IM practices are effective in supporting business processes

  • understand your IM staffing capacity and capability

  • improve service delivery and processes for efficiencies

  • identify and manage risks

  • reduce costs

  • assess how well resources have been used.

Monitoring for compliance

You need to monitor and document your organisation's compliance with:

  • the Act, and

  • associated standards and instructions.

Benefits

This ensures that you:

  • understand your organisation's statutory obligations, and

  • can address any non-compliance issues.

These are important aspects of the governance of any organisation.

We may need to follow up with you about:

  • instances of non-compliance, or

  • failure to effectively manage information and records.

If so, we may ask you to report on your organisation’s monitoring activities. We may also need to know about any corrective actions that you took as a result.

How to monitor compliance

You can monitor your organisation’s compliance by:

  • assessing against the Act

  • assessing against the requirements of standards and instructions issued by us

  • benchmarking against previous surveys or audit results to:

    • assess improvements, or

    • identify issues of non-compliance

  • using our tool to undertake an IM Maturity Assessment

  • using internal auditors or an external party to provide an independent assessment of your IM policies, practices and systems.

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