On Mar 1, 2005, at 6:53 AM, Gillian Taylor wrote:
> Whilst creating recent retention schedules, business colleagues have
> asked
> if I could add some extra columns to generic schedules marked long term
> storage format, location, master record responsibility/handling. Their
> point was that this would help them use the schedule as a departmental
> tool for identifying records handling arrangements.
Some of this is typically included in a Disaster recovery or Business
Continuity Plan, but seldom in a Retention Schedule. The retention
schedule should serve one purpose, to provide guidance for the period
required for legal, statutory or regulatory retention of the records.
It's not uncommon to include a column for "Disposition Method", where
information can be included as to how to dispose of the materials, and
you might also include advice in here such as "when materials have met
required retention, evaluate for potential archival value prior to
destruction".
> Whilst I am very keen to encourage the business areas to use the
> schedules
> ina practical way, I have reservations that this would present more
> risk
> issues than value e.g. version control/audit issues.
I would think most of what they're looking for should be in a
departmental procedure, maybe a best practice guideline, but not
included in the retention schedule. It's likely to differ between
portions of the organization, and it's likely to change periodically.
The retention schedule will change also, but it's generally only
changed as items are added, removed or the requirements affecting them
change.
>
> Larry Medina
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