Why Does the Federal Records Act Urge Companies to Develop a Document Retention Schedule
|
A comprehensive schedule for the retention of documents is one of the most effective methods of establishing a dependable ediscovery policy according to the Federal Records Act. Often employees are uncertain about the ediscovery laws to be followed, staff files to be retained and the legal record keeping needs. However, nowadays most federal agencies have record retention requirements and even state agencies have requirements and laws that must be adhered to. Federal contractors, subcontractors and employers, all need to confirm to these laws.
In order to ensure that you do not violate these laws, a good documents retention program is a must. eDiscovery laws specify that all email messages in between employees, or those sent out by employees, must be kept for records. Court proceedings may need other files like Word, Excel, sound and images as well along with emails. This makes is important to regularly record and store all files in a safe database. Apart from recording the data, there has to be a particular schedule detailing how long certain records will be retained and when they will be deleted.
A company should be able to able to show its compliance with the laws even before the arrival of the request by submitting all the electronic records required by the court. It is not sufficient to begin recording and keeping a database of these files after the court order comes in, because if that is the case then a hefty fine could be levied on your firm. This explains why the Federal Records Act asks firms to create an effective schedule for document retention.
Schedule development requires some effort. As far as paper documents are concerned, recordkeeping is easy. But when it comes to electronic documents, the data must be dealt with carefully so that it is not damaged or deleted, and that no disruption occurs in terms of the firm's day to day functions. A firm may have to appoint a team specifically for the job of electronic data retention in accordance with the documents retention schedule.
Development of an effective electronic document retention schedule provides two primary benefits - ensures compliance with the law and prevents the necessity to pay a hefty fine. There are many firms, for instance Morgan Stanley, that have had to pay a fine because of noncompliance. Apart from the monitory loss, this also affects a company's goodwill. |
|
Author Resource:-
All the federal records act revised foods you enjoy when i have legal documents; check out what kind of governments staff must know in our very own rrnternet site.
|
By :
Alter Hunt
Submitted
2011-10-23 22:48:11 |
Article From Article Mayhem
 Ezine ready view |
|
|
|
Related Articles
|
|
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlemayhem.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlemayhem.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")