Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Foundation for Sound Records Management

During our project we have researched several documents about the different methods used for instituting a retention method.The Foundation for Sound Records Management was an article that we chose because it talked about the development of a sound retention schedule and following it all the way through, to the implementation of the retention schedule. This article describes the steps that need to be taken in order to execute a useful retention schedule. In step one, the authors describe that businesses need to use functional buckets of an appropriate size for the organization.
 In the next few steps the article discusses various ways of researching the retention requirements. In our project most of our retention times are based on legal requirements set by the Colorado Board of Education.

The last steps described are about implementing a retention schedule in a way that will be accepted by employees. Fortunately, most of these issues do not apply to us because of the size of the Peyton School District. If we were working with a larger organization, it would be imperative that we implement the retention schedule in phases and possibly use a pilot program to work out the kinks, in order to ensure the acceptance of the new plan. The article describes a situation where great retention schedules have been created and are now gathering dust because they were not implemented properly.

Going further into our project we would like to relate this to the records management project for the Peyton School District.

If you would like to read the entire article please follow this link:
http://www.aiim.org/Resources/Archive/Magazine/2008-May-Jun/34790

7 comments:

  1. The article does give some great steps for researching and implementing your retention schedules. But like you said, since CDE already has published the laws for keeping records, the article isn't that useful in your case. I think this article could work well in a start-up business, maybe a Real Estate office where a lot of buyer and seller information is on record with the Realtor.

    -Emily

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  2. I do agree because this would be a good way for researching and implementing retention methods but not for your guys case. This would help for a much larger business/corporation. This article was also helpful because it teaches you good tips that would serve you well when developing a sound retention schedule.
    ~KESON

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  3. In regards to the retention schedule, it seems like your team has it fairly easy since your schedule has already been set by the department of education. Even though this project doesn't require that you create a schedule yourself, it is interesting to look at the different aspects needed to create and implement a solid records management schedule.

    -Devon

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  4. From everything I have seen and heard so far, retention of records can be quite complicated issue. What to keep and what not to keep? For a school district like Peyton, this article might not apply in its entirety but it was a good reading material.
    While reading the article, it almost reminded me of learning about Sarbanes Oxley Act. Maybe because of the fact that both can be quite lengthy and complicated, both involve a lot of people but both can protect the company.

    Sanja

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  5. Like you said, it's definitely a good thing that your group dealt with a school district versus a large company, so you didn't have to implement all the steps described in the article. It's interesting to hear about all the steps involved in creating a retention schedule that I never would have thought.

    -Katie

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  6. Until seeing your group's work throughout the semester, I never knew how important document retention is, or how many companies struggle with it. Keeping documents only for the time allotted in a schedule will help businesses to stay organized, and will help ensure that necessary documents are on hand if/when needed. I also found it interesting that there different requirements (business and legal), but it does make sense, so that companies protect themselves by showing “good faith effort when disposing of records.”

    Nicole

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  7. I like how the background of your blog is a picture from a plane window. I love sitting window when I fly.

    Retention schedules are becoming more important each day. The attention put on classified and disposable documents has surprised me throughout this semester. The detail that Documents R Us had to use in their project already seemed like a lot. To think about how large and detailed some of the largest corporation's retentions schedule get also surprises me.

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