Texas law authorizes state agencies and local governments in compliance to disposition a record under two conditions: (1) the record belongs to a record series on an approved records retention schedule and (2) its retention period has expired (Government Code §441.187; Local Government Records Act §202.001). As part of disposition, all Texas governments must use…
Updated March 3, 2022 Senate Bill 158 (S.B. 158) took effect on September 1st of this year. This law amends Chapter 1701, subchapter N of the Occupations Code and authorizes Texas law enforcement agencies to apply for grants to help cover the costs of implementing a body camera program. Additionally, the law addresses some retention…
Information Governance (or IG) is hailed as the “next big thing” in records management, and was a prominent theme at both ARMA Houston and the National MER (Managing Electronic Records) conference, which I was fortunate to attend. So before I recap sessions that focus heavily on IG, let’s talk first about what IG actually is.…
Let’s say you have records that you keep in both paper and electronic formats. Their disposition date arrives, so you go through the necessary steps to check whether you can dispose of the records. You verify that they’re not archival. You’ve checked with your legal and financial departments, so you know there isn’t any impending…
By Angela Ossar, Government Information Analyst A local government was doing a records inventory recently and emailed me about notary public books. The question was: “We have a notary on staff. We pay for the notary fee (new and renewal) because it is essential to the employee’s duties. Will the notary’s records be considered part…
By Angela Ossar, Government Information Analyst I received a call recently from a school district with a question that seemed refreshingly simple on its face: their payroll department wanted to begin keeping W-2’s longer than the 4-year retention period prescribed by TSLAC (and the Code of Federal Regulations). Which forms should they submit to amend…
This weekend I was at a basketball game with a friend and, as you might expect, our conversation turned to records management. My friend works for the accounting department of another state agency, and he said he knows you can’t destroy records before their retention period, but he was wondering if there is anything wrong…
Essential records, also known as vital records or mission-critical records, are the records necessary for responding to an emergency or disaster; necessary to resume or continue operations; that protect the health, safety, property, and rights of residents/citizens; that would require an enormous amount of resources to reconstruct; and that document the history of communities and…