Lori,

"IT" is a very broad term. 

If you consider a large organization, IT is comprised of many different
business units ranging from systems and operations through to development
and business analysts.

In this situation data retention would be defined by a business analyst in
consultation with the owners of the application (the end user). All data
retention would be managed by the application and be opaque to the systems
and operations people who would design strategies to both manage the finite
resources of the enterprise and ensure that the enterprise is resilient to
failure/disaster without any consideration for the data at a record level.

In a smaller organization, IT may only consist of a guy managing a few
Windows machines and a Server.

In this situation, it would be the responsibility of the business unit to
ensure that it purchased software which met its data retention requirements.


The similarity in both cases is that data retention is an application level
matter and not an operational one.

If you are talking about backup, DR, uptime etc you are talking about
operational staff with an operational mandate. 

In my view there should always be a separation of powers in IT between the
data owner, applications and operations; analogous to the legislature,
executive and judiciary in a democracy.

If you have a small site where the IT guy performs all 3 roles you live in
the IT equivalent of an autocracy.

Gerard

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