<A question: Why change the law?>
Another foray into the issue of too much data vs. why get rid of it.   My first reaction to Frank's remarks is the cost of technology is dropping but the cost of increased response time is not.  At some point, there is just too much data on the system to get quick responses to queries.  And quick responses are necessary when working with customers.  The usual answer to that is "archive it off to another SAN or backup."  Not helpful if the data is required to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests (we have 5 days to respond in VA) or e-discovery.  Having to go to 2 or 3 (or more) different locations for data is like having to go to 2 or 3 (or more) locations for paper records.  Both are very time consuming and eventually costly.  And of course, there is the fact that when new operating systems are implemented, rarely is the archived data migrated to the new application.  The cost to recover data housed or backed up on old operating systems is phenomenal as we discovered last year. 

And then there is the argument that some data should not be kept beyond its legal retention because of potential legal issues.  I am not a proponent of defining RM as the data/records destruction group, but many organizations see it that way. I see our function more as the group to set procedures in place to retain what must be retained for whatever time period required and get rid of the clutter that is in the way of access and response time (data/records with expired retentions). There is also the issue of some federal and state laws that require the timely destruction/deletion of certain data (especially PII data) or records.  For example, in Virginia local and state government MUST delete data or destroy records containing any PII within 6 months of the expiration of its official retention period.  

Simply applying a mass retention to the archived or less active data storage based on the day it was moved over  or last accessed is not a solution for a whole bunch of reasons - most of them to do with legal retention requirements.  If you have to apply some type of retention to archived records, why not put it in place for all data and keep it in place?


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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