SPECIAL REPORT

Creating Retention Schedule Reports For Electronic Records

By Lowrie W. McIntosh

A significant technology break-through has occurred that provides current retention schedule reports on electronic records in a fraction of the cost of any previous methods.

The primary application of the System is to provide Document Management system’s users with a tool that will enable them to apply current legal and administrative retention values when necessary.  The System does this without costly reprogramming or invasive methods into the content or their databases.  It is fully functional using only the metadata (i.e., date, author, location, description) associated with the document.

The classification metadata contains the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or administrative retention data.  For example, media type, record type (official, vital, sensitive or informational), location, owner, dates and time.

Over the years, Infologics has accumulated the descriptions of records for business Cost Centers or organizational units.  This data provides a profile of records that can be expected from a particular Cost Center, and is particularly useful in interrogating electronic files.  The unidentifiable files (those that do not fit the profile) can be segregated and presented to the particular Cost Center for elaboration.  This is typically less than 10% of the files and almost all can be reclassified by the Cost Center in a matter of minutes.

Through either a questionnaire or an inventory of records in each Cost Center, a body of terms used to describe records is accumulated.  This terminology (by Cost Center or Organizational Unit) is then classified into the Uniform Subject 

Classification (USC©) system.  These now, in total, make up the synonym database.  These synonyms make it possible for an individual to assign a description to a file (document or record).  Through the use of USCS, it permits another person to find the record easily.  They can search from the general to the specific (i.e., Accounting to Accounts Payable, Check Register Copy) which are presented in a hierarchical pattern.  They can also search using synonyms (i.e., “Yellow Sheet”).

The terms used in USCS provides WebFOCUS the structure from which to begin their role of organizing the database contents into their proper components.  This data is then processed through the Electronic Records System (ERS) where a “report” is prepared and organized by classification order.  In this way, the Cost Center is made aware of records which are due for destruction/purging or archived onto other media.

With retention metadata organized by subject, any changes in the legal or administrative retention value or vital or sensitive issues can be determined and immediately applied by ERS.

See schematic chart to view relationships and flow structure.