The keeping of records is important for many reasons. It is one of the major elements of accountability, making sure that governments explain to their citizens how their funds are spent and how decisions are made. It also helps satisfy the human need to comprehend the past, allowing people to examine their past and consider how things have changed. It is a crucial element of good governance, and is the foundation for a free society. It also serves as a foundation for privacy protection as it stops organizations and businesses from storing sensitive data indefinitely. This would violate the nature of a business’s governance and expose it to legal action.
Public records are regulated at the federal and state level and agencies are responsible for analyzing and understanding their recordkeeping requirements and for establishing records schedules to comply with these requirements. Many agencies have designated records officers and records my sources liaisons who are accountable for the development of internal policies, procedures and processes to ensure that the requirements outlined in records schedules are consistently and consistently applied by their agency.
The schedules for records are usually organized by type of record, or record series. Each record series has its own timeframe for retention which is determined by the historical fiscal, administrative, and legal significance of the information in the record series. For example, a hand-written record that is later keyed into an electronic data system will generally not be retained for as long as the original paper record.
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