Mark:
Every organization I've worked for (and developed policy for) has kept ownership of the records in the originating departments.  If the inactive storage was offsite at a privately owned Commercial Records Center, the ownership would definitely have to remain with the originating departments.  If the storage center is in-house, it is considered a service (just more cost efficient in many cases than using a commercial service).    The originating departments are more knowledgeable about the records they have boxed and sent (or should be) and about the functions of their departments and would therefore be the logical source for FOIA requests, legal orders or subpoenas, court appearances and so on.

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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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark H. Hoover
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 5:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Records Ownership

The City of Sugar Land, Tx  is working on a comprehensive records management policy. We have an off-site records center where we store most of our physical records. One issue that we are wrestling with is the ownership of records once they are moved to the Records Center.  We originally were thinking about transferring the ownership from the originating Departments to the Records Management Officer ( which for our City is the City Secretary) once they were moved from Departmental file rooms.  We are having second thoughts.  Our main concern is the quality of the box content listings if the departments know that they will not have to retrieve documents for Open Records request or Legal Discovery, for example.

I would like to hear from you all (I've spent a lot of time in the South) how this situation is handled in your organizations.  Does the responsible department keep ownership throughout the entire lifecycle of the record?

Mark H. Hoover, CRM, CIP, CDIA+
Records Manager
City of Sugar Land, Tx.

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