I understand the motivation for the Attorney General’s office requesting the amended wording in the bill is to “address the possibility of identity theft from records with personal information that remain in offices longer than required by retention schedules.”  However, I don’t see how mandating destruction of records based on the General Schedules will prevent misuse of personal information during the retention lifetime of the records.  It seems to me that identity theft prevention is better served by requiring proper destruction (such as shredding) of materials containing personal information and by pursuing compliance with the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act which covers (by definition) both electronic and manual records keeping systems.

 

Conley:

I understand the Senate has passed SB461 as amended and has communicated it to the House.  It appears the companion bill HB959 is still in the General Laws subcommittee.  This bill raises a serious issue regarding determining and applying administrative value (business process requirements) to the retentions set by the General Schedules and how to handle destruction holds due to audits, possible legal issues, etc.  If passed, one of two things will have to happen – 1) LVA will have to reinstate the process of reviewing and approving exceptions to the General Schedules through established agency-specific and locality-specific records retention schedules, or 2) LVA will have to expand the General Schedules to include all administrative values as identified by localities and agencies.  Both options require more resources than are currently available at LVA.  The impact statements filed with both bills say there is no fiscal impact.  This is only true if the original bill passes and not the amended bill.

B. Each agency shall ensure that records authorized to be destroyed or discarded in accordance with subsection A, are destroyed or discarded  [ in a timely manner within six months of the expiration of the record’s retention period ]  in accordance with the provisions of this chapter. [ All records previously authorized to be destroyed must be destroyed by July 1, 2007. ]