What Is Metadata, and Why Does It Matter for Your Records?

Metadata is data about data. For a record, it is everything that describes the record without being its content: who created it, when, what type of document it is, which matter it belongs to, who may see it, and how long it must be kept. A letter's text is content; the date it was sent, the sender, the recipient and the file it sits in are metadata. It sounds like a technicality, but most of the practical problems people have with records are metadata problems.

Three kinds worth knowing

• Descriptive metadata helps you find and understand a record: title, subject, the people and matter it relates to, document type, keywords.
• Administrative metadata helps you manage it: owner, access permissions, retention class, disposal date, format, version.
• Technical and provenance metadata tells you where it came from and whether it has changed: creation and modification dates, the device or software that made it, who uploaded it, a checksum.

Why it matters

Finding things. Searching the content of files is unreliable: scanned documents may not be searchable, and the word you need may not appear in the document. Metadata such as matter, document type and date lets you find "all signed contracts for this client from last year" in seconds.

Trusting things. When a record is relied on as evidence, the questions are about metadata: when was this created, by whom, has it been altered? A document with no reliable dates or history is much weaker than one that has them.

Disposing of things. A retention schedule works by record class and trigger date. If records do not carry their class and the relevant date, nobody can tell what is due for disposal, so everything gets kept forever.

Protecting things. Access controls are metadata too. Knowing that a record contains health information or identity documents is what lets you restrict it.

Metadata can also leak

Files carry metadata you may not intend to share. Word processing documents can contain author names, previous authors, comments and tracked changes. Photos can contain the precise location where they were taken. Before sending documents outside your organisation, check what is embedded in them, and remove what should not go. This is a security issue as much as a records one.

Capture it at the start

Metadata is cheapest to record when the record is created or received, and nearly impossible to reconstruct years later. Practical habits:

• File every document to a matter as it arrives, so the link to the matter is never missing.
• Use a consistent set of document types, not free text.
• Keep original files, with their embedded dates, rather than re-saved or re-photographed copies.
• Put the key facts in the file name as a backstop; see file naming conventions people actually follow.

Systems that store documents against a structured record, with typed fields for dates and types and an automatic history of who uploaded or changed what, capture most of this without anyone typing it in. Folders and email inboxes capture very little.

Protect it when converting

Converting files, migrating systems or scanning paper can strip metadata silently. When you convert records for long-term storage, check that the essential metadata survives, as discussed in file formats that will still open in 20 years.