The public records law obliges all state and local agencies to follow the retention of records requirements. It is up to the agency to formulate its own internal policies and procedures to ensure the requirements of the agency’s schedule for records are met. The Bureau of Records Management consults with the personnel of every agency that records to determine the ideal time to keep records in accordance with the company’s legal and administrative requirements.
Many states as well as a number of cities, towns and villages, have adopted www.derwentmills.com/2023/06/07/retention-of-public-records a plan for the preservation of documents. These schedules contain the legal and fiscal requirements for each type of document kept by an agency. These schedules are typically grouped into categories, or groups known as records series. Each of these records series may have distinct storage, transfer, or disposal requirements.
In general, a record series’s retention requirements are determined by the nature of the record and its functions. For example, a record series that includes information on financial transactions, legal actions or litigation may require a longer retention period than a series that includes information on employee performance.
Sometimes the record is required to be retained for a specific time period due to a statute or regulation requiring that the record be kept. A common problem is that these laws and regulations do not specify how long the records must be kept – days, months, years, or even forever.