All of an organization’s records need to be managed according to a retention schedule per Utah Code 63A-12-103(2008). To assist in this, the Division of Archives and Records Service (Archives) maintains a general retention schedule, approved by the State Records Committee, to determine retention of common records created by most agencies.
You may have noticed a link for departments on the General Retention Schedules page of our website. Some governmental entities have satellite offices creating similar work product. Rather than having every satellite office create a unique record series number with the Archives and few records officers monitoring all of those series for consistency, an agency-specific general retention schedule can be created. All of the satellite offices may then follow the same retention schedule.
These schedules operate the same as any general retention schedule, meaning they stipulate retention and disposition requirements, but to use the Division of Archives and Records Service facilities, a unique record series number still needs to be created. These series would use the agency-specific general retention schedule in lieu of State Records Committee approval.
Some benefits of creating and using an agency-specific general retention schedule are:
- Maintaining consistency throughout the department
- Improved compliance
- Mitigated risk
- Ease of maintaining the retention schedules
- Only one schedule (rather than a unique record series for each satellite office) needs to be approved by the State Records Committee
- One place for all the offices to look on the Archives website to find retention requirements
So far, the only governmental entities to create agency-specific general retention schedules are:
- Utah Department of Corrections
- Board of Regents
- Department of Human Resource Management
- Department of Human Services
- Department of Public Safety
- Department of Technology Services
- Utah Department of Transportation
- Department of Workforce Services
It may be useful for your department to work with us to create agency-specific general retention schedules. Contact your records analyst to know more at recordsmanagement@utah.gov or 801-531-3863.