www.derwentmills.com/2023/06/07/retention-of-public-records

Record retention is important for various reasons. It is one of the primary pillars of accountability, ensuring that governments can explain to their citizens how their money is spent and the way decisions are made. It also helps to satisfy the fundamental human desire for a sense that history is a part of our lives and allows people to look back over time and observe how the world has changed. It is a crucial element of a good government and the foundation of a free society. It also forms the basis of privacy protection, preventing businesses and organizations from storing confidential information for an indefinite period of time. This could violate the spirit of a company’s business governance and expose it to legal action.

Public records retention is controlled at the federal and state levels, and agencies are responsible for understanding and researching their requirements for record keeping and establishing records schedules to meet those requirements. Many agencies have designated records liaisons and officers who are responsible for developing policies procedures, procedures, and systems to ensure that the rules in records schedules are applied consistently and routinely by their organization.

The record schedules are usually divided into different types of records or record series. Each record series has its own timeframe for retention that is determined based on the historical fiscal, administrative, and legal significance of the information within the record series. A handwritten document that has been later transferred to an electronic data system is usually not kept for as long as the original paper record.