My two cents
While the standard is to classify documents on a function/activity
basis this doesn't mean you have to keep everything. If you look at the
National Archives of Australia website www.naa.gov.au  or the State
Records of NSW page www.records.nsw.gov.au they have all the approved
disposal schedules available for people and these include sections on
ephemera, documents that after having been created can be detroyed after
use. I am going to suggest that if a document is not required to be kept
by either law, business requirements or obvious historical/archival
significance there is no reason to keep it for longer than it is in use.
I agree that only documents identified as needing to be retained should
be sent to storage, storage should not be a case of well we don't know
what to do with it so we will keep it, the whole point of a disposal
schedule is to ensure that documents needed are identified and kept but
also that everything that is not needed is destroyed - reducing storage
costs and the time taken to wade through records that should have been
destroyed anyway.

Helena Lovegrove


>>> [log in to unmask] 01/28/05 03:24am >>>
I know that it is an article of faith that retention is driven by an
analysis of function, use, and content.  What if just to be contrary I
suggest that retention should be managed by exception.  First identify
the
record series you are legally required to preserve add a few  more that
you
want to keep as a part of your strategy  for your business model, tax
requirements, litigation, regulatory environment.  Then assign a
relatively
short retention for the rest -- say 3 years.  And automate your system
so
everything and I mean everything is gone in that period.  For hard
copy
don't let anyone send anything to hard copy storage except for the
categories you have identified.

I am not sure that I agree with this 100% but I think there are time
for
rethinking some of our basic assumptions.

Dave Gaynon,CRM

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