Laurie, I have experience with a major divestiture and I like your Option C.
Having a single point of contact is a very good idea and it is good to leave
the ownership with the functional groups that created the records and know
the most about them. You should also set up a process for the 'owners' to
approve destruction, whenever the records become eligible. You may also
have 'active' records that will need to be managed by the owners until such
time as they become inactive. Your single point of contact can keep track
of these owners and coordinate shared processes going forward.
You'll also need a Service Level agreement (SLA) giving access to both of
the entities, as required. If costs are being allocated, you should also
include this in your SLA. Even if costs are not allocated, you should
document who will pay whenever records are retrieved and refiled in the
future. And, will they be refiled with the original entity or the one that
retrieved the record? You should consider sharing your retention scheduling
but document what will happen at the end of this time. Will your records
follow the rules of the original company or the rules of the divested
company or the longer of the two?
If your records are stored with third-party vendors, the vendors will need
new authorization lists and these lists will need to be updated whenever
there is a change.
Have you thought about how you will allocate costs?
Other possibilities: If records were created by separate businesses, it may
be possible to assign some of the records to the business that created it.
If this is possible, I would recommend you do this, as much as possible.
This would minimize the number of records that have to be managed by your
option C above.
You'll be dealing with these issues for many years. Try to streamline your
process as much as possible so that you can support it easily.
Debra Beasley
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Carpenter, Laurie
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Discontinued or Divested Operations Records Management
Just took a look at the archives, with little success. We are in the process
of looking at options for managing records for discontinued or divested
operations. The assumptions are that a) prior to the divestiture, decisions
were made as to which records should stay with the divesting company, which
would go to the new company and which records needed to be retained by both
parties; b) these are the records that are required to be retained by the
seller after the divestiture for a period of time (due either to the
purchase/sale agreement or normal retention policies); c) access and
retention agreements are in place; d) the overall parent company still
exists; e) potentially, the line of business no longer exists within the
corporate structure.
We have thought of several options for these types of records and would be
interested in what options other companies have chosen. The question is for
internal use only, not for publication, broadcasting, etc. A summary of the
information posted back to the listserv would have company specifics removed
A) Create a discontinued/divested operations records management role. This
person would be responsible for "owning" these records, providing access per
any access agreements, would have a basic knowledge of the types of records
from the business and would hopefully have gotten documentation prior to the
divestiture about how various records were used. This person would need to
be aware of any litigation surrounding these records and would serve as the
one stop shop for accessing these records. Advantages would be that everyone
would know who to call. Disadvantages would be that this person may not have
the in-depth knowledge of what the records were, how they were used, etc.
B) Divide discontinued/divested ops records among the departments that would
have the best chance at understanding what the records were. For example,
accounting-related records would be owned by someone in accounting, HR
records would be owned by someone in HR, etc. Advantages would be that they
might be able to interpret the records better than a general point person.
Disadvantages would be that they may not have the in-depth knowledge of
legal holds, others wanting to access the records would need to know who to
contact, etc., or they may not be aware of the nuances of access/retention
agreements.
C) Create a hybrid approach with one point of contact, but ownership
distributed.
D) any other possibility? (this is a question not an answer)
Anyway, if you're willing to share what your organization has done, I'd
greatly appreciate hearing about it. If you'd prefer to speak by phone, let
me know and we can schedule a call. Thank you.
Laurie Carpenter, CRM
Records Manager
Koch Industries, Inc.
[log in to unmask]
List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
|
