Emergency situations, including man-made disasters, social paralysis, and natural disasters, remain uncontrollable threats despite technological and institutional advancements. There is no disagreement that public institutions play a critical role in ...
Emergency situations, including man-made disasters, social paralysis, and natural disasters, remain uncontrollable threats despite technological and institutional advancements. There is no disagreement that public institutions play a critical role in managing these unpredictable disasters. However, there is always a possibility that the functions of public institutions may be paralyzed due to such unforeseen circumstances. As a strategy to prepare for these internal crises, Continuity of Operations planning(COOP) has been introduced.
COOP aims to ensure the uninterrupted provision of essential public functions during emergencies, a goal that aligns closely with the purpose of vital records management. Vital records management focuses on maintaining the records necessary for delivering core functions during an emergency and supporting the recovery of functions afterward. In other words, vital records management and COOP are deeply interconnected and require complementary operation. However, although the establishment of COOP has become a legal mandate for public institutions, the management of vital records—which shares the same objectives—has not been sufficiently activated.
This study was conducted with the aim of improving the identification of domestic vital records by comparatively analyzing domestic and international laws, regulations, and standards from a continuity of operations perspective. Through an analysis of domestic vital records management, several issues were identified: the absence of a legal mandate for vital records management, a lack of linkage between vital records management and COOP , and the absence of methods for identifying effective vital records.
This study analyzes the vital records management systems of the United States, Australia, and Canada. Based on these findings, the following improvement measures are discussed: mandating vital records management by enhancing the components of COOP, strengthening the linkage with continuity plans by improving public standards related to vital records, and applying vital records identification methods centered on continuity of operations.