by Erica Rice [Edited 7/16/20: This post was updated to include new information about applying retention policies in Teams.] The great Dr. Patricia C. Franks once wrote, “Records and information managers who understand the way work is conducted in their organizations have a better chance of identifying and providing intellectual and/or physical control over the…
Web archiving involves using software to take periodic snapshots to preserve as much data as you need about your organization’s website, including any associated metadata. These snapshots will allow you to track and to document even the slightest changes made to the website. The benefits are that this practice shows your records management program: is…
We have received a flurry of calls and emails after the 2019 legislative session from government entities concerned with the provisions of Senate Bill 944, which is an amendment to the Public Information Act (PIA). In this article, we’ll highlight the parts of the bill concerning records management, particularly when it comes to text messaging.…
by Erica Rice Every state agency and local government creates and maintains employee records. Often maintained in individual files for each employee, the personnel file is added to regularly throughout its active life, and it may often be consulted during its long inactive life. We create and use personnel records to hire, re-hire, train, evaluate,…
Due to the myriad of changes in technology, content and data management are becoming an increasing challenge in the private sector as well as government entities. These challenges are due to an increased volume of data flowing throughout an organization, leading to an increase in the velocity of change. This increase may expose various vulnerabilities…
A long time ago (relative to our blog’s history), we published the first of many frequently-asked-question articles about retention of email. The answer we give today when people ask how long to keep email is still the same (“it depends!”), but we have since published many more articles dissecting the topic. Today, we’ve compiled a…
Happy 1010! Today we celebrate Electronic Records Day, which raises awareness about the crucial need to manage and preserve government electronic records. CoSA State Electronic Records Initiative’s Advocacy and Outreach Subcommittee has developed several informational resources available on their website: https://www.statearchivists.org/programs/state-electronic-records-initiative/electronic-records-day/electronic-records-day-promotional-materials/. We like to raise awareness of the challenges of managing eRecords throughout the year,…
If you read Joshua Clark’s recent post on text messages, you know that, depending on content, they can be government records that are subject to retention rules. The question then becomes: how do we capture them so that we can retain them for the appropriate retention period? There are several methods that can be utilized,…