Mary,

This was hugely helpful. Thank you so much! I have inserted one paragraph 
into your post below: it was a passage in one of your replies to me and I 
think completes the narrative of your answer for the group.

Thank you again,
Gary Link

__________________________

Yes, Julie you are right.  In the middle of this discussion I had some
offline discussions.  Here is a summary of that information:


Gary, it essentially became a "records inventory" project.  The IT staff
listed all the unique data sets with some descriptive information about
each.  Then RIM scheduled team meetings with our business owners,
Legal, Tax and IT staff to discuss the content and purpose of each set of
data. We classified the data sets by the business owners/functions to
minimize the number of meetings for each group and to focus on specific
subject matter.  After a few meetings we began to see the similarities
between the "record categories" and the "transitory information" and we
were able to make decisions on groups of data sets.
<<
It essentially became a "records inventory" project.  The IT staff
listed all the unique data sets with some descriptive information about
each.  Then RIM scheduled team meetings with our business owners,
Legal, Tax and IT staff to discuss the content and purpose of each set of
data. We classified the data sets by the business owners/functions to
minimize the number of meetings for each group and to focus on specific
subject matter.  After a few meetings we began to see the similarities
between the "record categories" and the "transitory information" and we
were able to make decisions on groups of data sets.
>>
What we found through this process was a huge amount of data being 
retained
that was not the output and we needed to make good, documented decisions.
So we reviewed these data sets just like reviewing paper documents to
determine their content, purposes and value.  We were not applying a
retention to the database, but to the various sets of data that had been
collected for a wide variety of purposes - mostly transitory in nature.
This process opened my eyes to a new way of looking at these large
"systems".  In fact it was much like reviewing boxed paper records that 
had
been collected for various purposes but not organized or linked to a 
record
category or retention schedule.

This was truly a collaborative business effort:  IT described the data as
used in the system; the business units understood the need/value of the
data/information; Legal understood the potential for evidentiary value; 
and
Tax understood what data was required to complete their audits.  The RIM
team was then able to assign the retention based on the company approved
Records Retention Schedule.  Records with continuing value were retained;
and information with no continuing value was scheduled for deletion.

Mary

Mary W. Haider, MBA, CRM
Records & Information Manager and Consultant
[log in to unmask]
865-983-1371



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