<We don't have a 'trigger date' that would trigger a destruction date,
like keeping a record 10 years from an employee's termination, or 10
years after the expiration of a contract.  Assigning a retention formula
to the record class code in our software, therefore, can't happen,
because I can't tell the computer '21 years from the minor's date of
birth'...it doesn't know what that date is.>

This is one of my problems with "big bucket" retentions.  Setting a
range of 1 year, 2 year, 5 years, etc. is not an issue with record
retentions - all records will fall into one of these buckets.  But the
time period is usually based on an event or trigger such as date of
birth, date case completed, date employee terminated, and so on - not on
date record created or date record last modified or accessed.  The issue
with big bucket retention is the event or trigger date.  Retention
software must have a field where the user can enter the event/trigger
date - such as date of birth in the example above. There could still be
"big buckets" for retention, but the retention function must be
activated by the event/trigger date field for retention software to work
properly.  Not all ERMS or EDRMS software has this event/trigger date
available to activate the actual retention function.

Ginny Jones
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI)
Records Manager
Information Technology Division
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities
Newport News, VA
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