Thought experiments in retention management

One director of state records has already said publicly that he doesn't think our retention practices are fit for purpose.

The cost of storage has gone way way way down. A box which costs you $5 a month to store costs a tiny fraction of 1c to store electronically.

And while the volume has gone way up - it hasn't gone up anywhere near enough that it offsets the costs of disposing of things. My rough maths shows that the cost of disposition for one document is roughly the same as the cost of storing it for 750,000 years at current storage costs.

The bottom line problem remains that we just can't get people to use our systems, or structure their information reliably for the needs of disposition, or give us the money to do it for them.

So here are two thought experiments in practice change -

1. What if we just made the retention period for everything 1000 years?

2. What if we made the default retention period for everything 1 year?

How would practice change?

How would we think about structuring information?

How would we think about metadata?

How would it change the relationship with our organisation?

Here are a few thoughts of mine to get you started -

With 1000 year retention -

a. We would understand very clearly what information had real, enduring historical value - and it would have been picked out and pluralised well before we hit 1000 years - so we could just have completely automated, unapproved disposition at the 1000 year mark.

b. Information structure would not in any way need to reflect the needs of disposition. It would need to reflect the needs of coping with serious volume, and ensuring that it was findable, usable and analysable by machines.

c. Organisations that dispose of records to avoid liability would need to focus harder on doing a good job, not on covering up unethical and illegal practices by hoping they don't get caught before things are destroyed.

With 1 year retention -

a. We could flip disposition on its head - business unit managers don't approve disposition, they approve retention - and foot the bill for it out of their business unit.

b. Don't sign the approval to retain notice within 30 days? The records get destroyed and your business unit has to foot the cost of working without them.

How else do you think practice would change under these conditions?