Paula,

I do understand why your industry would have extremely lengthy retention
for a lot of your records.  From the viewpoint of most of the engineers
and managers, ³Indefinite² or ³Permanent² translates to ³ Š As long as I
am employed here.²  They don¹t really care what happens after they¹ve left
the organization.  So, to them there¹s really no difference between
³Indefinite², ³Permanent², or ³Life of Asset + X years².  It all means the
same thing.

Seems to me that what they are really asking is why they should care what
future generations of employees inherit.

Has your organization divested itself of any assets in the past?  If so,
what has happened to the associated records?  Are they still referenced?

If the organization has never dealt with the situation, try to develop a
realistic scenario and follow the consequences of making specific
decisions.  If the records are mostly electronic today, you can talk about
the increasing burden of migrating the records as formats and applications
change.

It¹s an interesting set of questions.  In the government sector, they
often have permanent retention for infrastructure and land records.
Utilities aren¹t that different.

I¹ll be interested to find out what results you get.


>All of this is one woman¹s opinion.

Pilar C. McAdam, CRM, ERMm
[log in to unmask]
Los Angeles, CA

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]