On 10/24/07, Allen, Sandra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Is anyone out there using the Bucket Theory for Retention schedules
> and/or is anyone currently practicing this theory? If so do you have
> any examples of how you are using the buckets and how many you are
> using? This seems to be the new buzz word around the Records circuit.
>
This "concept" isn't actually new, it's sort of on it's second go-around.
The idea is to combine like-retention period records into fewer series and
then end up with a more limited number of both retention periods AND record
series. Works fine with limiting the number of retention periods, but NOT
the number of series, when it comes to locating/identifying records.
No matter how many arguments people want to make about ontologies,
taxonomies, finding aids, searching, full text indexing, "everything is
miscellaneous" or whatever else... when you NEED TO FIND SOMETHING, the
fewer buckets it's in, the deeper you have to reach and the more water you
have to disturb to find something.
One manner of "big bucketing" that does work is to reduce the total number
of retention periods by lumping together records that pose little if any
risk by retaining them longer, such as if you have records that have been
assigned 6, 7 and 10 year retention periods all into a common period of
somewhere between 6 and 10 years. If there is a legal requirement of 10
years for some series, and it does no harm to retain the others a few years
longer, then you can eliminate the other periods from your schedule and
simplify the retention process and retain them all 10 years.
One area I'm seeing this happen is NARA's efforts to make changes to the
General Retention Schedules, in part by pushing the effort back on Federal
Agencies to have their own agency specific retention schedules, which is the
opposite of the direction things had been going before, where agencies
relied more o the GRS for retention citations. In one agency, revisions are
being evaluated to their environmental records schedule which may have some
potentially staggering financial implications for their Contractors.
There are a number of record series currently under a Federally mandated
destruction moratorium that are being stored at the cost of the Federal
agency once their assigned retention is met... but the agency is proposing
to extend these 5, 10, 1nd 15 year records out to 75 years now. In these
cases, instead of the Agencies being required to pay for storage of the
records (which have extensive volumes) for the additional 60-70 years (or
until the moratorium is lifted), the cost for storage is shifted back to the
CONTRACTORS now! To take a 10 year record and extend it out to 75 years is
a pretty big bucket if you ask me!
Worst problem though, is they are collapsing a large number of well defined
record series into a smaller number of more "generally described" series,
which will make locating specific records within the series harder to find
in the future without implementing the use of more expensive finding aids
and greater indexing, so I don't see where the savings is in the long run...
except for the agencies as direct costs.
Carefully done in a smaller organization with a limited number of records, I
can see where it might be beneficial to implement a limited bucket policy
for retentions, say 2 years for administrative records, 6 years for
financial/contract/procurements records, 10 years for employment, 15 years
for research, and permanent for a limited umber of vital or otherwise
critical corporate records... but not in a public or other Federal scenario.
Larry
--
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972
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