Good morning all,
I am posting a question on behalf of a colleague to get the benefit of the many years of experience of the listserv. Back in the dark ages (1975) when I started in Records Management, retention schedules tended to be pretty 'set in stone' - document series tended to remain the same, 'owners' of the records remained static, retention requirements tended to not change.
Today, however, that is not so much true. Entities evolve into different business models - shifting responsibility for functions, new records series are created as legal requirements change, and retention requirements seem to change much more often. This was somewhat reflected in the earlier listserv question about maintaining Record Policy with or separately from the Retention Schedule (I favor separation for ease of modifying as needed.)
So the dilemma: my colleague has a manager who believes the original model for retention to be true, and insists that a schedule should not be created, approved, or published unless he can "guarantee" that every record in every area is included on the record schedule at creation. My colleague's stance is that it is virtually impossible to "guarantee" that is the case. The records manager interviews the record owners, conducts the inventories, researches and creates the retention schedule reflecting the situation at that point in time, as it is known. As long as the retention schedule is approved at all the mandated levels, in the normal course of business, and followed as mandated, the records manager has done his job. Upon periodic review, if new record series have been created or existing records requirements have changed, the records manager incorporates those and submits for approval of the modifications. And, if in the course of subsequent review, a record is discovered that was inadvertently missed in the original schedule creation, it is added at that point. It doesn't change the validity of the original retention schedule that has been approved and followed in the normal course of business.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts on this matter. Feel free to contact me directly or on the listserv.
Michelle
Michelle Lamm, CRM
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