The ad hoc and unregulated deletion of information and the unwarranted over-retention of information can both affect business performance. Therefore, decisions about how long to keep information are important.
State Records NSW issues authorised rules that outline how long all forms of government information legally need to be kept.
Back to topInformation retention and disposal rules must be deployed ‘by design’
As most government business today is performed within digital systems, applications and services, it is vital that information retention and disposal rules are considered at:
- system design
- system procurement
- system implementation
- transitions to cloud services
- contract negotiations for cloud services
- portability planning for cloud services
- business process outsourcing
- application development
If, at each of these stages, proactive planning for the authorised retention and disposal of government business information can be incorporated ‘by design’, significant costs and business risks to government can be mitigated.
Back to topBusiness risks that occur if digital information retention and disposal are not addressed
Increased and unsustainable storage costs
ICT research company IDC has predicted that annual world-wide growth in data volumes is currently 60% per year.
All organisations face significant increases to storage costs as a consequence of rapidly increasing data volumes.
Basing his estimates on the IDC’s data growth rates, the decreasing bit density on the platters of disk drives and the 0-2% current annual growth rates of ICT budgets, Stanford University computer scientist Dr. David Rosenthal has observed that:
“10 years from now, storing all the accumulated data would cost over 20 times as much as it does this year. If storage is 5% of your IT budget this year, in 10 years it will be more than 100% of your budget.”
Increased and unsustainable management costs
The costs of digital storage containers are decreasing but the costs of the storage software necessary to access, govern and manage business information are rising rapidly.
Keeping more information will also necessitate more information management and governance work, which will again increase costs.
Loss of high value information in amongst the ‘noise’
Numerous sources have reported that issues around document profusion are already impacting their business environments. They are often uncertain about which is the final or official version of a document, with the result that everything is kept and nothing gets destroyed. So good governance and sound change management are core to establishing good and trustworthy disposal practices through the transition to new digital systems, platforms and services now and into the future.
Increased risk of inadvertent data loss through large-scale data purging
Poorly designed systems or processes will result in large volumes of organisational data that are not aligned or mapped to their relevant business requirements or retention rules.
As storage, licensing, migration, contract or service costs become too large, large-scale data purging will be utilised as a cost minimization option in some environments.
This option however risks the inadvertent loss of high value business information in the purging process, potentially resulting in negative legal, client, service, audit, accountability and/or business consequences.
Increased costs through a ‘keep everything’ approach
By recognising the risks of inadvertent disposal but not adopting an appropriate approach to its management, some organisations are resolving to keep all their digital information in perpetuity. The risks that can result from this approach are:
- unsustainable storage costs
- ongoing licensing costs for systems holding legacy data
- slower or ineffective information retrieval
- no prioritisation and management of high value information
- extensive digital continuity management issues that will become unsustainable in the medium to long term
Poorly managed and costly services
If information retention and destruction requirements are not identified and understood before services are provisioned, potential consequences are:
- unnecessary ongoing costs to retain information that is authorised for destruction
- arrangements for required data portability are not identified, contracted and implemented
- arrangements for the return of required data to corporate environments are not identified, contracted and implemented
- inappropriate data is subject to standard purge cycles deployed by service provider.
Where to find the rules governing the retention and disposal of government business information
These rules are contained in documents issued under the State Records Act 1998, called retention and disposal authorities. These documents reflect the business needs for various types of information, as well as the wider accountability requirements for information.
If you need help to locate the retention and disposal authorities that apply to your area of business, please contact State Records NSW, or the records and information management staff in your organisation.
Back to topRecommended strategies to effectively deploy the rules governing the retention and disposal of government business information
- Foreground information retention and disposal requirements in all system and service decisions.
- Use retention and disposal authorities as active planning and management tools, to use in system and service decisions.
- Deploy strong organisational information governance frameworks that assess business needs and risks globally across the organisation and deploy targeted and strategic information management solutions in response.
- Build collaboration between business, ICT and records and information management staff.
- Prioritise actions, focus on high risk/high value systems and medium to long term information retention requirements (where information is required for 5+ years).
- Specifically identify and assess the systems containing information that needs to be retained 10+ years and determine continuity strategies to ensure this information can be accessed, trusted and used for as long as it is legally required to be kept.
Published April 2014
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