Golden retrieval
- Article 15 of 26
- M-iD, March 2005
Developing a dependable document retention, retrieval and destruction strategy demands a measured, step-by-step approach
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Having the right schedules at the beginning also means policies do not have to be improvised or retrofitted if unplanned events such as mergers and acquisitions cause units to close.
Not all retention policies will be simple. While most regulations only stipulate a minimum retention period, there are some, such as the Data Protection Act, that specify maximum amounts of time.
There are other regulations, particularly related to pensions, that are not periods such as “five years”, but may be more algorithmic: “period of relationship between customer and organisation”, “lifetime of customer” and potentially even “lifetime of customer and his or her next of kin”. So organisations need to be aware that their records policy may not be totally automatable.
Organisations also need to consider maximum storage terms, because apart from the overheads of long-term storage of paper documents, keeping documents longer than necessary can lead to problems during legal disputes and make it harder to find relevant documents during retrievals.
“You should not underestimate the costs associated with keeping documents for unreasonable periods of time,” says Ashley Bailey, managing director of Pitney Bowes Management Services.
“As long as you're complying, you should encourage an active document destruction policy. We've helped clients take out huge amounts of cost through document management policies: untrained staff will often create an archive file with literally everything in it, whether appropriate or not. Typically, 50% of an archive should not ever have gone in there, let alone be stored.”
Firms concerned about deleting potentially useful records can instead have a document review policy that flags up records due for deletion so they can be checked before destruction.
“Some people call it a destruction date. Some call it a review date. Our systems produce monthly report documents for customers. If they want to go ahead and delete documents, we get them to sign off and then provide them with a certificate to say their document has been destroyed,” says Maurice.
Destruction policies need to be clear on when the retention date begins: it might be from the date the organisation creates or receives the document, or it might be at some later date. The records policy can then codify that date for each record type.
Although the temptation is to put as much as possible into the document at this stage, this can prevent the policy being adopted, since it will make it unwieldy and unusable for most employees. The policy should at least stipulate, beyond regulatory and business requirements, where the records are kept, and in what media, particularly if the company is looking to employ an information lifecycle management strategy. Each record class can then have details of when it will be archived to nearline or offline storage.
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