CONTEXTUAL REPRESENTATION IN INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT RECORDS MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

This study systematically examines how the context of records creation is represented in the literature on records management in Indonesian government agencies, with particular attention to organizational activities. This inquiry is important because the activity context underlying records creation helps explain the meaning of records, inter-record relationships, and their appropriate use. A weak representation of this context may contribute to disorder in records management and weaken the evidential function of records as traces of organizational activity. Using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) based on PRISMA 2020, this study searched Google Scholar and GARUDA for journal articles published between 2014 and 2025. Following identification, screening, and eligibility assessment, 94 articles were selected. The data were analyzed through thematic synthesis, involving initial coding, descriptive theme development, and analytical theme formulation. The findings indicate that the context of records creation has not been widely discussed as an independent theoretical concept. Instead, it tends to appear implicitly through records management practices, instruments, and systems. Three discussion patterns were identified: implicit-procedural, instrumental-operational, and explicit-conceptual. The context of organizational activities is represented through organizational functions and work processes, records creators and managing units, administrative workflows, classification and filing, description and metadata, retention, and accountability. This study suggests that strengthening context representation is necessary so that government records are understood not merely as administrative documents, but also as evidence of organizational activities, sources of contextual information, and institutional memory. However, as this study is literature-based, it does not directly assess contextual representation practices in specific government agencies.