Records Management 101 for DND
The system of records safekeeping in the Department of National Defense (DND) should be the focus of the hearing on Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV’s missing amnesty application form.
1) Have all documents supporting the amnesty grant been collected into one amnesty applicant’s chart?
2) Is the chart audited and certified complete?
3) Are all contents digitized and archived according to a standard timetable?
4) If a sensitive document is missing, is this reported immediately and a thorough search conducted?
5) If all search efforts are exhausted, is an affidavit of loss and incident report describing the efforts submitted to highest authorities ?
6) Is there a logbook on which are noted request/
issuance/return of a chart?
7) Are charts kept in locked cabinets that not even top authorities can open without a formal request?
Whatever inadequacies there are in the DND records system, what has an amnesty applicant got to do with it? Nothing. In a corporate or any sane organizational setting, if a client’s files are missing, it isn’t the client’s task to look for them.
Solicitor General Jose Calida, being the last person who out of the blue signified an interest in resurrecting a document supposedly dead for a decade, should be invited to court again for motivational probing. Trillanes should be the complainant, not the respondent, in this absurd foolery of a case.
FERNANDO P. GARCIA,
