In reference to the value of establishing Application Documentation as
records - Larry Medina wrote:
"More consideration needs to be given to this, especially in today's
world of these applications being developed by "hired guns" or contract
programmers. In these cases, much of this information is a deliverable
and part of a contract requirement, and depending on the value of the
contract, the retention period could be anywhere from 3 to 6, all the
way up to 25 years."

This problem often occurs in Federal government where contractors are
employed to develop applications.  If the contract doesn't clearly state
that the resulting system documentation from the contractor's work is
part of the deliverable than the government has limited rights to that
documentation or any subsequent information.  

Ms. Laura F. Bell
DOT Directives & Records Management
Office of the Secretary of Transportation
[log in to unmask]
202-366-9761
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Larry Medina
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 5:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Records Retention of IT / IS Records

On 1/13/06, Roach, Bill J. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >>Application Documentation - Records documenting the development of
> functionality and architecture of internal computer systems and
> applications.<<
>
> Here is a discussion topic:
>
> In today's environment, there may be merit for retaining Application
> Documentation, including maintenance and conversion records for the
> retention period of the information created by the application.  The
> reasoning behind the suggestion is the potential need to prove the
> "trustworthiness" of the information.
>
> Any thoughts?



My first thought is this is a GOOD THOUGHT.

More consideration needs to be given to this, especially in today's
world of
these applications being developed by "hired guns" or contract
programmers.
In these cases, much of this information is a deliverable and part of a
contract requirement, and depending on the value of the contract, the
retention period could be anywhere from 3 to 6, all the way up to 25
years.
Even if they're developed by employees, if the employee leaves, the
documentation is all there is to explain to others what was done.
Another though on this is if the company is sold, merged or taken over,
the
new owner will want to have access to this information in the event they
want to migrate the information to a system of their own.  And I think
it's
important to separate "computer systems" and "applications"... typically
one
is hardware and the other is software.

Larry
--
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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