Records Retention and Disposition Schedule - 12-15-2015

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ✓ According to G.S. §121-5 and G.S. §132-3, you may only destroy public records with the consent of the Department of Cultural Resources (DCR). The State Archives of North Carolina is the division of DCR charged with administering a records management program. This schedule is the primary way the State Archives of North Carolina gives its consent. Without approving this schedule, your county is obligated to obtain the State Archives of North Carolina's permission to destroy any record, no matter how insignificant. ✓ Each records series listed on this schedule has specific disposition instructions which will indicate how long that series must be kept in your offices. In some cases, the disposition instructions are simply "Retain in office permanently," which means that those records must be kept in your offices forever. In other cases, the retention period may be "destroy in office when administrative value ends." Administrative value is defined as, "the usefulness of records to support ancillary operations and the routine management of an organization." Your agency must establish and enforce internal policies by setting minimum retention periods for the records that the State Archives of North Carolina has scheduled with the disposition instructions, "destroy when administrative value ends." ✓ Email is a record as defined by G.S. §121-5 and G.S. §132. It is the content of the email that is critical when determining the retention period of a particular email, including attachments, not the media in which the records were created. Email should be retained in the same manner as its paper counterpart. It is important for all agency employees and officials to determine the appropriate records series for specific emails and retain them according to the disposition instructions. ✓ The State Archives of North Carolina recommends that all county employees and officials take our online tutorials in order to familiarize themselves with records management principles and practices. The State Archives of North Carolina's online tutorials include topics such as records management, utilizing the retention schedule, email management, and scanning guidelines. ✓ The State Archives of North Carolina provides microfilming of the minutes of major decision-making boards and commissions in a county. Once those records are filmed, we will store the silver negative (original) in our security vault. There is a nominal fee for filming and duplicating film. Contact the Records Management Analyst in charge of microfilm coordination for the most current information. ii