Record retention is vital for numerous reasons. It is one of the primary pillars of accountability, ensuring that governments are able to explain to their citizens how their money is spent and the way decisions are made. It also helps satisfy a basic human need for a sense of the past, allowing people to look back over time and see how the world has changed. It is a crucial element of good governance and is the foundation for a free society. It is also a base to protect privacy as it prevents companies and organizations from storing sensitive data indefinitely. This would be against the nature of a business’s governance and expose it to legal actions.
The federal and state governments oversee the retention of public records. It is up to agencies to research and understand their requirements for maintaining records, and then create records schedules that satisfy these requirements. Many agencies have designated records liaison officers and officers who are accountable for the development of policies procedures, procedures, and processes which will ensure that the guidelines in records schedules are implemented consistently and www.derwentmills.com/2023/06/07/retention-of-public-records routinely by their agency.
These schedules of records are typically classified by type of record, or record series. Each record series has a distinct retention period which is determined by the historical financial, administrative and historical value of the information within the record series. A handwritten record that was later entered into an electronic data system is usually not preserved as long as its original paper record.