Generally, this is very difficult to do. Most commercial records centers are reluctant to do this because they really have no idea of the actual value of the records in storage. I think all of us have had the experience where a box of records is sitting in storage, close to or past a destruction date (which means the value is approaching zero) and we get a screaming call from someone who needs those records to offset a potential expense or audit finding or something (which means the records now have a significant value).

In general, what you want is valuable papers insurance. Your Risk / Insurance people will be able to work with you on that. Since you appear to work for a Canadian government agency, odds are that you may also have concerns about privacy breaches. So you need to discuss that sort of insurance coverage as well. Lastly, for records stored offsite, you want coverage mainly to attempt to recover damaged records (i.e. smoke or water damage) if the records center has a disaster. For that, you find out what the going rate to restore a box of records might be, then multiply by the largest number of boxes in a single facility. That gives you a potential maximum expense should the records only be damaged.

Some companies have gone to the extreme of figuring out what it would cost to recreate the records, but that cost can be difficult to calculate and really only applies to very valuable records like blueprints or engineering records.


 
Patrick Cunningham, CRM, CIP, FAI
[log in to unmask]

"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." 
-- Colin Powell

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]