Federal Records Management: How To Develop A Proper Timetable And Defensible Policy For Data Retention

As laws relating to e-documents or electronic documents have developed and become more rigid, federal records management is being viewed in a new light. Formerly, the emphasis of government records management agencies was less on electronic documents and more on just e-mail files. Now, as times are changing, their net has been expanded to all types of electronic documents. Word and text documents, Excel files and even sound or picture files are all admissible in court and there must be a proper record of all these documents. Agencies managing federal records management can slap companies and contractors with sizeable fines in the event of non-compliance with the laws.

These laws were created in a bid to regulate government firms, contractors and sub contractors so that they create an appropriate system to record all electronic data that is used or created by their employees. A system to record and back-up emails, sound clippings and images saved or sent by employees on their computers must be in place. It is not enough to take e-data backups only when a court case arises; the back-up must be done routinely and follow a stringent timetable.

Document preservation records will not be accepted by government records management judges and firms if they have been implemented following a court ruling requiring the documents to be produced. The schedule for document retention must have been in place previously; if not, the company will be held liable for breaching the laws. In some cases, firms who have not clearly understood the laws have had to pay up big fines. One notable example is Morgan Stanley, which had to cough up almost $2 billion due to retention errors concerning electronic documents.

To ensure that you don?t have to pay up a massive fine like this, create and maintain a robust schedule for document retention. A proper schedule in place ensures good planning. The company?s retention schedule must address important aspects like how often and when documents are retained, as well as where and the time until which they are preserved. Once these issues are addressed, then you have nothing to be bothered about.

A credible data retention schedule and a competent team monitoring the process can together help you follow the government?s ediscovery laws.