Hi,

Sounds like you may be asking about (1) software created to design or
produce a product, which appears different than (2) software used to
generate and maintain information that may be of record in the company.

We deal in the latter and besides what has been posted already, the only
regulation that we have comes from NARUC.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners last
published their retention guide in 1985 (yes, Eighty-Five!), and as far
as they told us it has not been updated. Other on the list may correct
me.

It states:
"Program documentation-
Retain for period prescribed for related output data. Statements and
illustrations as to the scope of operations should be sufficiently
detailed to indicate (a) the application being performed, (b) the
procedures employed in each application (which, for example might be
supported by flow charts, block diagrams or other descriptions of
operating procedures), and (c) the controls used to insure accurate and
reliable processing. Major program changes, together with their
effective dates, should be noted in order to preserve an accurate
chronological record"

Happy Spring!

Chuck Piotrowski
Records Manager
CVPS
www.cvps.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Lorie Mcaleb
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 4:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Internal Developed Software Retention

I have been researching information on internally developed software and
the need for a retention to be applied to these programs. I searched the
archives and did not find anything relating to this subject, but thought
others on the ListServ may have addressed this in their retention
policies. We have numerous groups that design software for a specific
purposes. The data has its functional retention applied to it, but how
long should we retain the software programs used to generate the data or
subsets of the data? Each of these programs have numerous versions, a
version is created each time the program is updated. Do we need to keep
all of the versions? If the data is converted to a new program there is
no need for the software versions for data access, but we have had
instances where we had to prove we created a program before another
company so I'm at a loss as to what the retention should be.

If anyone has dealt with this issue I would appreciate feedback.
Thanks

Lori McCaleb
Records Mgmt IS Project Lead
Micron Technology, Inc.
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (208) 363-1726
International: 13-40-31726

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