You’ve been assigned to create a compliant plan for managing a mountain of records. The task may seem nearly impossible, but the good news is that you don’t have to do it alone.

Truth be told, everyone faces a seemingly impossible task on the job at some point. Right now, you’re it. You’ve been selected, elected, or volunteered to create a records retention schedule for your organization. If you suddenly feel like you’ve been asked to make sense of an enormous mountain of records, you’re grasping the scope of the task ahead— but with a system in place, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds.

The Challenge at Hand

How do you know you’re doing it right? How do you categorize all the records in the pile? How many categories should you have? Is your plan the result of flying by the seat of your pants? Or, will it pass muster under the scrutiny of the legal department? Oh, and what counts (and does not count) as a record, anyway?
While for many people it is far from the top of the priority list, compliance with records retention regulations is critical to the survival of any organization, be it a government agency or commercial business. Documents that contain any sort of personally identifiable and/or confidential information must be retained for several years. Contracts, freight bills, and personnel files are just a few examples that illustrate the wide variety of documents that companies must keep on file for a certain period of time. For the government, you also have to identify and protect permanent records, those with historical value to our country.

So, How Long Do We Have to Keep a Record?

It depends on:

• What type of information is contained within the record
• If there are there Federal and/or state regulatory requirements that govern retention of that type of information
• What are the contractual obligations related to a specific record
• Are there any national security concerns, proprietary issues or intellectual property requirements
• What statutes of limitations apply to the information contained within the record

Retain documents too long, and you run the risk of having all that excess information exposed in an unpredicted security breach. Don’t retain it for long enough, and you run the risk of violating federal or state law, or even losing a court battle because you don’t have the right documentation to support your case.
In essence, any organization should inventory its information assets, categorize them into groups of related records, assess how long each category must be retained based on the criteria above, and then create a series or “bucket” for each set of categories. Each bucket has a retention period assigned to it; at the end of each document’s retention period, the document must be permanently destroyed except for federal permanent records, which must be transferred to the National Archives at the end of their retention period.

The Retention Schedule’s Just the Start

In addition to a retention schedule, an implementation process must be in place as well as a communication/training plan for users, and procedures to put a halt to records destruction when the organization is facing litigation. Plus, it’s imperative to work with the company’s information technology department to develop the governance necessary to facilitate managing and dispositioning  electronic records within the legal framework.

Government vs. Commercial Record Retention Systems

The federal system of records retention is governed by different statutes, regulations and guidelines than commercial records.  Some legacy schedules, as you would imagine, may be incredibly thorough and intricately detailed. Where a private company may use a few hundred buckets to sort their records, some federal schedules may use many, many thousands of record series/file numbers. Each series  is extremely specific as to which records belong in it. While newer federal schedules, including the revamped General Records Schedule are streamlining newer schedules, most companies still find the federal records retention system to be complicated and cumbersome.
The process of getting a new record number approved by the federal government adds a level of frustration to the federal system, while companies, who may have to deal with international standards in addition to US statutory requirements, have their own frustrations. For these reasons and more, most companies opt to develop and implement their own record retention programs and many federal agencies are in the process of revamping their existing schedules. That’s where a records retention expert comes in very handy.

Learn More at the 2015 ARMA Annual Conference & Expo

Dan Beard, CRM and Vice President of RIM Consulting for The Cadence Group, will partner with Mary Beth Weaver, CRM, PMP, from AECOM/ to present a rapid-fire presentation on federal vs. commercial retention schedules at the upcoming ARMA 60th Annual Conference & Expo, October 5th-7th. This event will provide an excellent opportunity for novices to learn more about the practical side of record retention, as well as the legal and financial ramifications of failing to implement record retention. Click to find out more about the ARMA event.

Image by: Genialbaron at Depositphotos.com