Records Management Specialist Job Description

A Records Management Specialist keeps a government office's records under control from the day a document is created to the day it is destroyed or sent to an archive. In a county clerk's office, a state agency, a court or a city police department, that means knowing which records exist, where they are kept, how long the law says to hold them, and who is allowed to see them. The title sits between the clerks who file and retrieve material and the records officer who sets policy for the whole program.

The State of Delaware's class specification for the title gives a clear picture of the state and local version of the job. It describes coordinating "the maintenance, storage, retrieval, retention, and disposal" of an organization's records in physical, electronic and digital form; preparing and implementing retention schedules; recommending retention periods and disposal methods; training staff on record-keeping practices; and, in some positions, fulfilling public records requests from the public and other state agencies.

Federal agencies use a longer title for the program-level version. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's flysheet for the Records and Information Management Series, 0308, issued in March 2015, sets "Records and Information Management Specialist" as the basic title. Its list of typical duties includes moving agency paper records to electronic records, working with the Chief Information Officer on electronic recordkeeping requirements, coordinating disposition, and managing essential records in support of Continuity of Operations. OPM says the series does not cover positions with limited records responsibilities; it is meant for staff primarily responsible for the overall management of an organization's records program.

A typical week mixes desk work, systems work and people work:

• Retention schedules. Matching each records series to its approved retention period, then checking that departments follow it, including on-time destruction backed by a signed disposition log.
• Inventories and file plans. Walking file rooms and shared drives to find unscheduled series, duplicates and backlogs, then building folder structures that staff will actually use.
• Systems. Working with IT on the electronic document management system, email archiving and shared repositories, so retention rules reach digital files as reliably as they reach boxes on a shelf.
• Requests and holds. Pulling records for public records requests and freezing destruction the moment counsel issues a litigation hold.
• Training. Teaching employees what counts as a record, where to save it, and what they may delete.

O*NET reflects how split the title is. It lists "Records Clerk" and "Records Custodian" among the reported job titles for File Clerks, and "Records and Information Management Specialist (RIM Specialist)" among the reported titles for Document Management Specialists. Which side of that line a particular opening falls on depends on the agency's class spec and grade, so read the duties and minimum qualifications before reading anything into the title. A specialist in a small town may be the entire records program; one in a state agency may own a single division's file plan inside a larger system run by a records officer.

Entry requirements depend on which version of the job an agency is filling. A state or county specialist class and a federal 0308 program position share a title family but ask for different backgrounds.

Education

• As a rough guide, a high school diploma plus solid record-keeping experience can open state and county specialist classes, where the class spec allows experience to stand in for schooling.
• Federal and program-level roles often favor a bachelor's degree in information management, library science, public administration, history or business.
• A master's in library and information science with archives or records coursework is one route toward records officer and archivist work later on.

Experience Delaware's specification asks applicants to show competence through education, training or experience in three areas: one year of record keeping, one year of document processing that checks records against laws and standards, and one year using an automated information system. As a rough guide, one to three years of clerical, court, legal-support or medical records work is a reasonable bridge into a specialist title. Time spent processing public records requests, running a scanning project or cleaning up a shared drive counts for more in an interview than general office experience.

Certifications

• Certified Records Analyst (CRA), Institute of Certified Records Managers. ICRM lists a bachelor's degree and one year of professional records and information management experience as the preferred qualifications for applying, and lets one more year of professional experience substitute for each year of college not completed.
• Certified Records Manager (CRM), Institute of Certified Records Managers. The same application process and requirements apply; it suits specialists heading toward a records officer or manager role.
• Information Governance Professional (IGP), ARMA International. Useful for specialists who drift toward privacy, e-discovery and data governance work.

Federal hiring OPM classifies 0308 positions as two-grade interval positions and points classifiers to its Administrative Analysis Grade Evaluation Guide, the same grading framework used for analyst-type work. Applicants coming from state or local records jobs should describe program-level results in their federal resume: schedules written, disposition backlogs cleared, systems configured, staff trained.

Skills that carry the job

• Reading a retention schedule and a state records statute without needing an attorney for every question
• Inventory discipline in a spreadsheet or records database
• Administering retention settings in a document management or email archiving system
• Using redaction software accurately and keeping a clean audit trail
• Explaining records rules to busy staff in plain language, and saying no to early destruction politely and firmly

The workload pressure on public records programs is easy to document at the federal level. The Freedom of Information Act Federal Advisory Committee's final report for its 2024-2026 term, prepared for the Acting Archivist of the United States in July 2026, described a "perfect storm": a record-high 1.7 million FOIA requests received government-wide in FY 2025, against greatly diminished staffing. The committee also cited a reported upsurge in requests generated by AI and encouraged agencies to consider whether their existing software meets user needs. These are recommendations to the Archivist, not binding rules, but they describe the environment records staff work in.

Nevada offers one state example. Its Public Records Task Force, created by Assembly Bill 128 of the 2025 legislative session, circulated a preliminary draft of its final report in October 2026, marked subject to revision. The draft lists high-frequency or automated requests, "including requests generated by scripts or AI," among the request types agencies receive, and says the problem "is not breadth" but that Nevada law "provides no structure for managing breadth." For a specialist, that kind of debate turns into concrete work: tracking request volume, documenting staff time per request, and keeping records findable enough that a broad request does not mean a manual search of every drive.

AI tools inside government create new records as well as new requests. The Municipal Research and Services Center, which advises Washington local governments, notes in a page updated Sept. 17, 2026 that GenAI prompts and outputs saved in a system, such as AI chat histories or AI meeting summaries, are likely to be classified as public records under state law. It adds that there is not yet a retention schedule that specifically applies to GenAI records, so agencies must weigh "the content and the function of the record," following Washington State Archives guidance from 2024. That leaves Washington records staff to map new record types like these onto existing schedules case by case.

On headcount, BLS does not report records management specialists separately. Its nearest occupation, File Clerks, had 73,440 workers nationally in May 2025, and local government (excluding schools and hospitals) employed 14,360 of them. O*NET projects File Clerks to decline by 1% or more from 2025 to 2035, with about 5,600 openings a year on average. Those figures describe the clerical occupation as a whole, not the specialist title, and the retention, requests and systems work described above is the part of the field that a filing-only job does not cover.

Pay in this setting follows the agency's class plan. As one example, the State of Delaware's class specification lists a minimum of $35,267, a midpoint of $44,084 and a maximum of $52,901 a year for the title; that is a single state's schedule, not a national range.

The usual path upward runs from specialist to records officer or records manager, with side doors into FOIA or public records officer jobs, privacy and compliance roles, and archives work. Specialists who want federal program work can target 0308 openings once they can show program-level results. The common thread in every one of those moves is the same: proof that you have written schedules, cleared disposition backlogs, and kept a records system honest under real request pressure.

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am applying for the Records Management Specialist position in the Harlan Ridge County Clerk's Office. For the past four years I have worked as a records technician in the Millbrook City Attorney's Office, where I handle retention, disposition and public records requests for a department that generates contracts, claims files and council correspondence every day.

When I started, the department's shared drive held thousands of untitled folders and no one could say which files were past their retention period. I built an inventory in a spreadsheet, matched every series to the city's approved retention schedule, and flagged the gaps for the city records officer. Over the next year I worked with each attorney's assistant to move active files into a structured folder plan, and I prepared the disposition logs that let us destroy expired claims files with sign-off from counsel. Our next internal audit closed with no records findings.

I also coordinate the office's public records requests. I log each request on the day it arrives, search email, the case system and paper files, and prepare redaction drafts for attorney review. I have learned to call requesters early to narrow broad requests, which saves staff time and usually gets them what they actually need faster.

On the systems side, I served as the department contact during the city's move to a new document management platform. I tested retention labels, wrote a two-page guide for staff on where records belong, and ran short training sessions for new hires.

I am preparing for the Certified Records Analyst application and would welcome the chance to bring this practical, schedule-first approach to Harlan Ridge County. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, Dana Whitfield