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NVRA CM Certified Master study materials
NVRA CM Certified Master study resources

NVRA CM Certified Master: Records Management Program Governance and Compliance

NVRA CM Certified Master · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Records Management Program Governance and Compliance

Governance and Compliance

This domain tests how a records and information management (RIM) program is authorized, structured, and monitored. Governance is the system of decision rights and accountability; compliance is evidence that obligations are met through repeatable controls.

Core rules and concepts

  • An executive sponsor with budget authority; a records manager who owns the program; departmental coordinators who apply schedules; legal, privacy, security, IT, and audit as partners.
  • Policy hierarchy: policy states mandatory principles, standards give specific requirements, procedures give steps, guidelines give advice. Keep policy short and enforceable.
  • Anchor to ISO 15489-1 principles and ARMA's Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles: accountability, transparency, integrity, protection, compliance, availability, retention, and disposition.
  • Maintain an obligations register mapping statutes, regulations, contracts, and litigation requirements to record series and controls.
  • Monitor with audits, sampling, and metrics such as schedule coverage, disposition backlog, training completion, and legal hold compliance; track corrective actions.
  • Contracts and cloud arrangements need clauses for custody, retention, return, and destruction of records.

Worked example

A shared drive has 40 departmental folders, no schedule, and staff delete by habit. The fix is not a cleanup alone. Charter the program, name an executive sponsor, publish a policy requiring a schedule before system deployment, assign coordinators, map folders to record series, apply retention labels, sample-audit a department, and report disposition completion quarterly. The reasoning: governance changes decision rights, while compliance evidence comes from repeatable controls.

Traps

Treating policy as procedure; having no sponsor, so no enforcement; equating compliance with legal review only; ignoring contractor-held records; measuring activity such as meetings held instead of outcomes such as records scheduled and disposed.