Policy Experts / Assessment

Evidence that a policy operated

Records are the control. The document only describes it.

For any policy that matters, it is worth asking at the drafting stage what record its operation will leave. If the honest answer is none, the policy cannot be demonstrated and should either be redesigned to produce a record or recognised as guidance rather than as a control.

The record does not need to be elaborate. A dated entry, a name, and an outcome is enough for most purposes and is far more valuable than a lengthy form nobody completes. Forms that ask for more than is needed reliably go uncompleted, and an incomplete record is weaker evidence than a minimal one.

Where a system already captures the event, use that rather than creating a parallel record. Duplicate recording is the single most reliable way to ensure that one of the two is wrong, and reconciling them later is expensive.

It is also worth checking that the record is retrievable by the question that will be asked. A record filed by date is useless when the question is about a particular person or a particular product, and that mismatch is discovered under pressure.

There is a further reason to prefer a system record over a bespoke form, which is that system records carry a timestamp and an identity that cannot be adjusted afterwards. A form completed on paper and filed later is evidence of a claim; an entry made by a named user at a recorded time is evidence of an event. Where a control matters, the second is worth some inconvenience.