My students know that this is a hot topic for me.  For the longest time, I tried to define Permanent - perhaps, the end of civilization or the destruction of the planet.  Many years ago I came across a research finding in the Wall Street Journal that indicated that the life of the planet earth was 400 million years.  I was ecstatic because I could now change Permanent to 400 million years. :)



I may be showing my lengthy experience in records management (not my age), but my experience with senior management in working on retention policies was to have to deal with their initial response of: Make it Permanent - get out of my office.  From this I came up with the meaning of Permanent - we don't know what we are doing and we don't care.

Have any of you experienced this initial reaction of not taking records management seriously from management?



At Rockwell International, we were able to remove Permanent from the retention schedule.  The longest retention period you can have is Life of Legal Entity.  I am delighted to see that the ICRM changed its retention schedule to use Life of Legal Entity, from Permanent.  I had tried to get this done when I was on the Board of Regents.



As has been pointed out, there are costs involved in keeping records for long periods of time, including Life of Legal Entity.  If you understand the preservation issues with electronic records, you appreciate that these costs will only increase.  In regards to the use of Permanent, I have never seen organizations setting aside funds, or increasing the mill rate for tax payers, for a perpetual retention program after the organization no longer exists.



I would like to see Permanent, as a retention period, removed from our vocabulary.


Carl E. Weise  CRM, ermm, ecmm, emmm, bpms, ioas
Industry Advisor

AIIM - Find, Control, and Optimize Your Information
406 Fort Couch Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15241
Direct T. 412.831.2981 | 412.418.4365
[log in to unmask]

http://www.aiim.org<http://www.aiim.org/> - Find, Control, and Optimize Your Information
http://www.aiim.org/training - Enroll in training for ECM, ERM, BPM, IOA/Search, Enterprise 2.0 and Email Management
http://www.informationzen.org<http://www.informationzen.org/> - Join the Information Zen online community
http://www.aiim.org/findability - Download the AIIM Market IQ report on Findability
http://www.aiim.org/EmailROICalculator - Get the Email Management ROI Calculator


List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]