Good Day Everyone!

Thank you to Kathy Becker for making me aware of this great resource!

I was asked to lead my agency's records management program project and am interested in collecting data on best practices.

Our retention policy and retention schedule should be approved by our Board of Directors in May.

We have a long way to go but are in the process of creating procedures, training plans and material, and implementation plans.  I'm particularly interested in collecting data on best practices or approaches companies have adopted for disposing of records that are eligible for destruction.   It seems to me I have three categories of records to attack - which I list below along with a series of questions. I don't know if these are all the right questions but this is where I'm at right now.  I'm hoping that the community can shed some light on their approaches so that I can collect the data and present to my Records Management Oversight Committee to help us reach agreement on our best approach.   I can distribute my findings to the group if anyone finds value in it.

Category 1 - Legacy paper files in offsite storage and warehouse (outside active department) that are eligible for destruction

1)      Approval Required?

*         Is Department approval required for destruction? If so, please specify who (ex. manager who has signing authority for the cost center or the Records Coordinator for the dept).

*         Or do you notify the business unit that a list of records will be destroyed, and they must respond within a certain timeframe to stop the destruction?


2)      Tracking & Communication Medium

*         Do you use Forms and workflow, reports, or email to business units for communicating that legacy paper files are eligible for destruction?



3)      Oversight

*         Do you have a oversight committee or disposition committee (or some other committee) that approves destruction or is notified after the fact of the destruction?

*         If so, what business area's or divisions make up this group and at what management level are they?


4)      Quality Check

*         Do you sample boxes to make sure that contents on inside match description on outside?

*         How do you handle unmarked boxes or boxes where someone has left the organization?


5)      Frequency

*         How often do you review records for destruction (quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or some other period)


Category 2 - Paper files in active department that will be eligible for destruction.

*         Do people follow a different process than with category 1?


Category 3 - Electronic files and shared folders.

I'm interested in how people are managing this area and overall best practices since we really don't have a plan for tackling this.

*         Are you using Exchange 2010, some other software or do employees manage (know what to keep as records and delete at retention period)?

*         Do you have an oversight committee or disposition committee (or some other committee) that approves or is notified of destruction?


Electronic records

1)      Also, what system do you use for managing electronic records? We are using Open Text eDOCS but are looking at Sharepoint 2010 for an enterprise solution.

2)      Any strategies you used for Rollout and training across a large organization?    I plan to do a "train the trainer' approach with division record coordinators but maybe someone else has found a successful approach they can share.


Thank you to everyone for your time and any input or lessons learned that you can share!  I really appreciate the opportunity to connect with so many records management professionals when I am just getting started here!

Ann Mangiaracina
Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority
(408) 321-7039


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