Records that survive a later question

The decision will be examined long after everybody has forgotten it.

A recognition file must allow somebody years later to understand what evidence was provided, what the assessor concluded about each requirement, and why. That is a higher documentation standard than taught assessment, where the task and the marked work speak for themselves.

The elements most often missing are the assessor's reasoning and the record of the competency conversation. Files commonly contain the applicant's evidence and a completed mapping form with ticks, which records the conclusion and not the basis for it.

Retention obligations for assessment evidence apply to recognition files as to any other, and the same rules about not creating records after the fact apply with particular force here, since a reconstructed recognition file is difficult to distinguish from a fabricated one.

The practical form is a short assessor statement per requirement: what evidence was relied on, what the conversation established, and the conclusion. It adds perhaps twenty minutes to a decision and it is the difference between a defensible file and an indefensible one.

The other record worth keeping is the evidence itself, or a sufficient description of it where the original belongs to the applicant or an employer. A file recording that a portfolio was sighted, without any detail of what it contained, does not allow anybody later to evaluate whether the judgement was reasonable, which is the whole purpose of retaining it.