Hey, Michelle. I'm in government so our rules are different, but we're going business unit by business unit to decide what to purge based on retention statutes. If you have a records manager in your organization, they really need to be involved. We go through the steps of:
1. Is OnBase the system of record for a particular artifact or document? If it isn't, then the rules differ. For example, we may have child welfare documents which seem to have permanent retention, but if that retention is done on what the State's system has ours can be purged earlier.
2. What laws are there about the document? In addition to client records, we have documents that pertain to the development or testing of systems, which have their own retention.
3. One of the reasons to purge is to avoid disclosure after retention is complete, so an attorney or representative from that office should be involved.
4. Someone needs to approve a purge, at least initially, to ensure that you're not getting rid of anything subject to any sort of legal action. This can be almost anything, but if you purge things before they're requested but after the legal retention, you save yourself some exposure. If no one will agree to do this, then save yourself the headache of preparing the documents for purging because they won't be going anywhere.
System documents haven't gone through this for us yet, but I suspect we'll be holding onto some things forever, including the reports that confirm destruction of records so we can prove we did that, when we did it, and that it wasn't after someone asked for them. But most things that end up as SYS doc types will probably be purged within the year they are produced, assuming the records manager agrees.
