Bill

I am glad that you posted your question and those of us who answered
obviously thought it was important enough to spend the time responding.
When I read your question, I understood that you were inviting opinions
and dialogue.

Many managers coming through the health care industry or government
subscribe to the view that, in their industry, vital records are records
of birth, death, marriage, divorce, stillbirth, etc.  Such records are
considered permanent in those industries.  In some cases, when people
cross over to another industry and are "dropped" into the job of Records
Management in an industry outside of their previous realm of experience,
they don't realize that the word "vital" takes on another meaning.  

As a process consultant, I'll bet that you run into a lot of people who
are not CRM's, don't belong to ARMA, and don't belong to the listserv.
They are not exposed to other ideas.  I ran into that a lot when I did
consulting years ago and, to this day, I know some ex-health records
managers who stubbornly insist that vital records are permanent.  I also
know that many organizations don't have a records manager and whatever
department is running the records function may not have the knowledge or
resources to acquire training and literature.

I frequently invite people into venues and pose questions in order to
expose them to opinions other than my own.  It gives me a chance to
support a point without being argumentative, rude or arrogant.  Or, I
might pose a question to see how others answered it in order to get some
ideas on how to frame a convincing arguement.

If you want to have a lively discussion on the subject, I'd be happy to
invite you to a forum on the information technology audit and control
association web site.  It is where we information technology governance
people hang out and we frequently discuss records management issues.  We
don't care WHY people pose a question...we just answer them to the best
of our knowledge and experience.  Everyone is very professional and
would more than welcome your questions and your point of view.   

Call me if you are interested.  You know how to reach me.

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