As a rule, I run an archive from SSM for each submittal, whether it's agency approvals, client review, bid set, or during construction. Each sheet that goes out has an "ISSUED" and "ISSUE DATE" filed that's linked to a sheetset custom property.
That helps with the paper trail, and understanding which version someone has in their hands.
As far as keeping tabular records in the model, I don't think that would work in the long run - it's one more step and an extra item in the workflow that would be ignored in a crunch. It would make more sense IMHO to keep that kind of record in a separate document or spreadsheet rather than cluttering a dwg model file with text entitites that have nothing to do with the design information, but are more of a log of changes. It's still an extra step that would be liley to get dropped.
IIRC Softdesk had an option to store the username and handle of the last entity in their ZZ_ADCADD block and would update it on close, so there was a minimal record of the drawing files history. I would think that scheme could be updated farly easily to use a dictionary instead of a block attribute.
Realistically, high-level detailed record keeping/version tracking would be addressed by an EDMS - pricey, but if it's a big enough issue it might be worth investigating.
