A note to let you know that it has been brought to our attention that the nature of surveillance recordings is changing, from magnetic to digital format.

Jerome Kendall (Chesterfield County's Records Administrator), Tom Wellman (LVA's newest Analyst - see below) and I met with officials of the Chesterfield Sheriff's Department to discuss Jail surveillance recordings this week. Video recordings, maintained in mpeg or rav formats and run 24/7 have an incredibly expensive storage cost - dealing in terabytes. Telephone audio recordings will soon be maintained in wav format, so it is apparent that the current retention period for routine recordings has to be examined.

Although our primary concern in this meeting was the Surveillance Recordings associated with General Schedule 8 (Sheriffs Departments), Series 100673, further examination found that there is also a series for building security surveillance recordings in GS 16 (General Services, Section 'J') - No. 005251 as well as GS 17 (Law Enforcement) Series 100796.

All three locality schedules/series mentioned above have a retention period of 60 days for routine surveillance recordings. The State agencies' General Schedule 108 (Fire, Safety & Security) has a similar series with No. 012311, but the retention period is 30 days.

The LVA is looking at bringing all schedules into alignment. Given that any incidents captured on surveillance recordings are removed and go to a different series for further investigation and/or legal action where the retention is 3 years, the current line of thought is to adjust the retention for the effected series in GS 8, 16 and 17 to 30 days.

In this regard, I have a request to make. We would like some feedback, and that can be in the form of volunteering to work with Jerome, Tom and I or in polling those departments effected by the suggested change (Sheriff, Police, and officials involved in "Building or Facility Fire, Safety and Security"). The volunteering consists entirely of reviewing and commenting draft schedule revisions (the three series mentioned only). It is our intention to have these revisions put to the Records Oversight Committee at its July 14th meeting, meaning that the draft revisions have to be completed by Jul 7th. Small project, short turnaround.

Jerome has already completed an RM-19 for Chesterfield's Jail Surveillance Recordings, and this can serve as the basis for developing the schedules' revisions.

From: Robert Nawrocki
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 9:17 AM
To: All LVA Staff
Subject: Please Welcome Thomas Wellman

Tom Wellman has joined the Records Management and Imaging Services Division as a Records Analyst. Tom grew up in Southwest Virginia, attended college in Kentucky and received his MLS from UNC in May. He is a big fan of college sports and his favorite teams are the Georgia Bulldogs and the North Carolina Tar Heels.Tom says that he loves the South, he is a true native son. He studies Southern History and Culture. He looks forward to taking advantage of the cultural and historical offerings of Richmond.

Robert F. Nawrocki CRM

State Records Administrator

Library of Virginia

800 East Broad Street

Richmond, VA 23219

804.692.3505

Innovate and Infuriate - Mark Cuban

The best map may not guide you

You can't see what's round the bend - Jimmy Buffett - Pacing the Cage