Posts pertaining to Texas state agencies.
By law, any information that an elected official, a government employee, or a state employee handles that correlates with the definitions explained in State Agency Bulletin 4 and in Local Government Bulletin D is a record. In other words, the format that an organization uses to distribute or to collect information does not change the…
Key Terms: Skip to: Case Sampling Main Takeaway Policy Tip Take a moment to think about the business activities of your state or local government. What examples come to mind for times when there might be more than one custodian for the same record? In such a case, what policies and procedures does your government…
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,…
All these questions loom large in the pursuit of creating, growing, and maintaining a records management program. The common denominator is people. Short of those individuals who either report to you or who you work with directly, you are surrounded by potential “problem children”— those unwilling to release their records for archiving or disposal— and…
Author: Michael Shea The history of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission began in the 1830s when Texas was still a Republic. In 1909, the Texas Library and Historical Commission was created to direct the State Library, aid and encourage public libraries, and collect materials related to Texas history. In 1947, the Texas Legislature…
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…
Picture this: you’ve gathered up all the records subject to an expunction order and you’re ready to return, destroy or redact them as directed by the court. Then you look at the expunction order. It identifies the person in the order and it’s a government record. What do you do with it? Based on how…
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,…