Records Retention
By Albert B. Kelly
If you want a topic that is sure to make you seriously
consider hurling yourself into oncoming traffic just to end the misery, then
government records retention might just do the trick. Yet for all of that, I
was surprised to find myself getting worked up over an opinion piece by
Colombia history professor Matthew Connelly that ran in the New York Times in
early February which highlighted the fact that the National Archives is letting
a boat load of government records be destroyed and deleted.
Of specific interest to Mr. Connelly was the fact that ICE
(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) would be destroying or deleting 3-year
old documents that detailed the sexual abuse and death of undocumented
immigrants in their custody including civil rights violations and what amounted
to bad or nonexistent medical care. Of course one reaction from certain
quarters might be that it’s no big deal since these individuals were
undocumented, illegal, or some other category of “who cares”, yet we may be
missing the point.
If it could happen with ICE records that are three years
old, it could happen with records from other departments dealing with issues
that some might deem more important than say how people were actually treated
while seeking asylum. Mr. Connelly makes this point by highlighting the fact
that the Department of the Interior and the National Archives are going to delete
or destroy files on everything from offshore drilling to the safety of drinking
water. Given how recently these records were generated, the issue isn’t
confined to future historians lacking original source material; I suspect that the
wholesale destruction of records could have legal and policy implications as
well.
Of course all of this prompted me to think about records
retention on the local level and there are quite a few standards that local
governments must adhere to when it comes to preserving records in everything
from zoning and construction to police and fire. Consider that while federal
records detailing the sexual abuse and death of undocumented immigrants will be
destroyed after only 3 years, local fire departments must retain alarm
investigation reports for 7 years, school district facility inspection reports
for 23 years, and index card files of Fire Marshall Reports permanently.
In case the point gets missed, consider that while the
federal government is about to destroy records on endangered species,
environmental laws, intellectual property, and aviation safety; local zoning
and planning boards around the state must permanently save aerial photos,
certificates of nonconforming structures, lot consolidation files, and planning
studies. Police Department’s must retain signed original grant applications and
supporting documents for 7 years after the termination of the grant, yet a
federal agency is about to destroy records relating to the abuse of other human
beings after only 3 years. Go figure.
Something is seriously out of whack when the records retention
requirements for some small municipality or borough are more stringent than a
federal agency that has the power of life and death for thousands of people. We
are a nation of laws and by extension, I suppose that makes us a nation of
records at least to the extent that we have the ability to go back and see what
the framers meant - assuming we still have those records.
It is worth asking how such decisions are made and whether
the process needs to be revised. Should contemporaries generating government
records decide the fate of their “paper trail” or should that decision be left
to those who have been made more detached and perhaps objective by the passage
of time? If contemporaries are to be in the business of deciding what amongst
their own paper trail should be retained or destroyed, are we not then obligated
to view their decisions with some skepticism assuming that their real intent is
to make sure no one finds a “smoking gun” of some sort?
There is understandable concern about what to do with the
tsunami of paper generated by the federal bureaucracy, but I don’t think the
answer is the wholesale destruction of records so much as it is to provide agencies
with the people and resources necessary to digitize as much as possible so it
is available and accessible to those who care now as well as those who will
care one day in the future.