It goes back to the passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 198?. in that legislation the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) was tasked with reviewing all agency regulations that had recordkeeping requirements. From the PRA 44 USC 3507 "The Director may not approve a collection of information for a period in excess of 3 years. (h) (1) If an agency decides to seek extension of the Director's approval granted for a currently approved collection of information, the agency shall-- (A) conduct the review established under section 3506<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3506> (c)<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/usc_sec_44_00003506----000-#c>, including the seeking of comment from the public on the continued need for, and burden imposed by the collection of information; and" http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3507 http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/inforeg/PRAPrimer_04072010.pdf PRA Submission Form http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/83i-fill.pdf IIRC Donald Skupsky then came up with the default 3 yr retention. If there was no retention period stated in a regulation then one could assume that the retention period was 3 years since OBM would grant approvely for a retention longer than 3 years. anyway that is the way I remember it On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Ben Greene <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Anyone know the concrete purposes for why many reporting/operational > retention periods end up at 3 years? > -- Peter Kurilecz CRM CA IGP [log in to unmask] Dallas, Texas Save our in-boxes! http://emailcharter.org http://twitter.com/RAINbyte http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RAINbyte/ http://paper.li/RAINbyte/rainbyte http://pinterest.com/pakurilecz/archives/ http://pinterest.com/pakurilecz/records-management/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/peterakurilecz Information not relevant for my reply has been deleted to reduce the electronic footprint and to save the sanity of digest subscribers List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message. mailto:[log in to unmask]