Todd Johnson, CRM, recently queried the RM Listserv, " In developing our retention schedule, I'm coming across multiple instances where the business need to retain certain records exceeds the compliance retention requirements by many, many years (i.e. 3 years v
In our consulting practice, we do not require ECRM system users to understand complex records retention schedules (RRS) in order to achieve records management compliance. Instead we embed the retention rules in the ECRM tools. ECRM users identify the content type, and a retention rule is mapped transparently and automatically to the content type
Organizations have invested millions in technology to manage structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information; in retention schedules to establish retention periods for records; and in information lifecycles to manage retention for everything else. Implementing retention management in technology tools is still a significant challenge, and most organizations default to keeping everything that’s not deleted by the organization’s employees on an ad hoc basis
3 Comments - Sites can easily be set up such that the default retention period is, say, 1 year. Document owners would then have to take a positive action (declaring a record) to extend the retention period. However, SP2010 out of the box does not have this enabled.... you have to manually configure it
As the Records Manager, I still have to manage the retention and disposition of EVERYTHING, regardless of whether or not it came out of the “Declare it a Record” step
13 Comments - The bigger concern should be how do I apply a retention policy to a record that may contain documents that are digital, physical and may be spread across the organization
Back then, anything distributed – meeting minutes, procedure manuals, purchase order copies – was supposedly an official record for whomever created it, but this wasn’t always documented, particularly if there was no records management program, or if the program was largely ignored. So if a retention schedule said that the Safety Manual should be kept permanently (meaning permanently by the Safety Department that issued it), some recipients actually kept it forever, packing it away in cardboard boxes and sending it to storage. Without identifying who was responsible for retaining the item’s official copy, the retention schedule inadvertently led to off-site storage cartons full of duplicates
Most records managers will tell you that the retention of information content must be determined by the company’s retention schedule – and this a correct
Third, address over-retention. Fortunately Alan left me with something to contribute about General Adequacy against the Fragmentation Problem, and that’s a discussion of the problem of over-retention
2 Comments - no search term matches found in comments.
Is it under legal hold? Is it past its retention? Is it one of those pieces of information that needs to be “locked down” and stored as an unalterable version?
16 Comments - But it sounds like you have an issue where you are being told to keep things LONGER than the retention schedule actually dictates
Learn About Your Document Retention Requirements Different documents have different periods of time that they must be stored and maintained depending on the type of information they contain. Establishing retention requirements for the various file types you have will help with determining what to scan and get you a head start on digital retention logging. 3.)
If someone sends me an email, they have no control over how long I decide to keep it - which is why retention should at least take into account things like statutes of limitations (and why it's important to think before you hit SEND). Similarly, if a link breaks in the future, it is not the organization's responsibility to relentlessly track down the new link (though it probably does have some responsibility to maintain its own internal links and may need to retain iterations of that content according to its retention policy)
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