BBC Records Management Standards

Top result in Google if you type in BBC records management, so they're not exactly hard to find, but I thought I'd put in a link anyway.

I co-wrote these with a colleague back in 2003 and we did so with the stated aims that the standards should be necessary, understandable and accurate.

Necessary - we decided that the standards should not be over-burdensome. Correspondingly we eliminated anything that we saw as being less than strictly necessary to meet the requirements for records management at the time. There are probably still some elements that are more aspirational than practical, but there was an awful lot that we omitted.

Understandable - looking through a number of standards (both records management standards from other authorities and some of the BBC's own documents), we found it was more the rule than the exception that these are written in overly-technical language with dense blocks of text in a way that seems designed to make them as difficult to read as possible. Considering the subject matter is less than compelling to most potential readers, we thought we'd try for the opposite effect instead. Revolutionary thinking, eh?

I will say though that it takes a lot longer to write a simple, clear sentence than it does to write an overly-wordy, badly phrased one. Editing time was quite long - but hopefully worth it as the standards have needed very little alteration since they were written.

Accurate - probably goes without saying, but we did check our sources fairly carefully. Any mistakes are undoubtedly in my interpretation.