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Well, it has been a long couple of months, there was a little thing called Christmas, but consultation has finally closed on the General Retention and Disposal Schedule for Administrative Records (GRDS) v8. A massive thank you to everyone that provided feedback.
We had feedback from over 35 agencies ranging from statutory authorities, local governments, government owned companies (GOCs) and departments.
What you told us
We received wide-ranging feedback from what is an estray (I had to look it up) to some more suggestions for new record classes, such as business intelligence and consultancy.
Below are the top 5 themes we identified from the feedback you gave us.
What do these themes mean?
You gave use feedback about:
- Minimum vs consistent retention periods – whether to keep the retention period as it stipulated in legislation or have a consistent retention period across the board to make implementation and sentencing easier, e.g. 7 years
- Common classes – this is new, of course, it prompted a lot of discussion about how you would implement it in your agency’s business systems
- Schedule overlap – some of you questioned us about the expanded scope of the GRDS and what does this mean for your core schedule, e.g. the same record classes are now in both
- Numbering – this is also new, of course, it prompted a number of questions (pun intended) including how to implement the schedule and keeping track of which function a record class lives in
- A separate schedule for transitory records (QDAN720) ….
A survey is coming
Many of you have told us the Transitory Records and Short Term Retention and Disposal Schedule (QDAN720) should come back in the GRDS. We will be sending out a survey shortly specifically on this issue so everyone gets the opportunity to let us know their preference. Keep an eye out in your inbox for it.
When is the next version of the GRDS likely to be released?
We are currently going through your feedback, incorporating what we can and changing retention periods if needed. Just be aware that we can’t include all your suggestions – as there were varying viewpoints across all areas of government!
We will continue to keep you up to date with our progress as we get closer to the release date.
We don’t have a specific date for the release of the GRDS as yet, but rest assured that it will be released in 2016 and we’re working as hard as we can to have it updated. Keep a look out as we will be making a song and dance about it!
Remember, you can contact us at any time via email, telephone, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Flickr.
Sharon Mennis & Elizabeth Harvey
Appraisal Archivists
