Who makes archiving decisions in your organization?

T

Tipana`

#1
How does the archiving system tie in with your present document management system?

Who decides what needs to be archived when, and is this captured in your procedures?

Presently, our archiving procedure simply states how to submit and retrieve material to and from the archives and a retention time for archived material.
 
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Marc

Hunkered Down for the Duration with a Mask on...
Staff member
Admin
#2
Presently, our archiving procedure simply states how to submit and retrieve material to and from the archives and a retention time for archived material.
As is, this would tell me your current system is set up for each department and each person to be responsible for setting a retention and/or archive period for documents and records they are 'responsible' for. Every document must have an 'owner'. The easiest thing to do would be to set up a document matrix. Here's a (simple document matrix for a small company) and fill in the blanks.

Also - How does this fit in with your document control system? The document control system should be kicking a document or record into the archive system (aka 'procedure').
 
T

Tipana`

#3
Also - How does this fit in with your document control system? The document control system should be kicking a document or record into the archive system (aka 'procedure').
The problem lies with documents/records that are not in the archives, as they are still incomplete, in use, etc. Certain documents are over 5 years old and still incomplete! We need to keep certain records for 30 years, and although we are a small company, our document list is complicated.

My problem lies when the item is not in the archives..should there be a control more particularly for "non-archived" records or would this be defined as a departmental responsabilty as well?
Must i define when the document should reach the archives in a general quality procedure?
 
#4
See this answer to your other questions:

Firstly, we need to get our terminology correct. There are documents and there are records. All records are documented (in some medium) but all documents are NOT records!

It is true, some documents need to be archived - for knowledge retention purposes. These are NOT records, they are obsolete documents.

Records often get moved from 'working files' to an archive too. In the USA (I believe) it's important to keep certain records (bank statements, receipts etc) for 10 years. However, rather than keep all of these things in a filing cabinet, I moved mine to a box in the basement........I keep just 2008's in the filing cabinet.
 

RoxaneB

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#5
I'm thinking along the same lines as Andy...are we discussing archiving records or obsoleting documents? These are two different processes, in my opinion.

If we are talking about archived records, the site where I worked developed a system where the records owners were responsible for determining when an active record would be transferred into the archives. From there, there was an established process for accessing archived information, protecting it, disposing of it, and so on.

Should your organization have incomplete records in the archived files, that is more than likely not due to the archiving process but due to the system followed (or not followed) when the record was originated. You could establish a cut-off point where "from yy/mm/dd onwards, all records will be reviewed for completeness before being transferred into the archives."

If we are discussing document obsoletion, there have been discussions on this topic and I would recommend that you use the Search function in the top right of the page.
 
T

Tipana`

#6
Just to clarify, I was referring to archiving and not obsoleting. We are a medical device/drug manufacturer and based on FDA/EMEA guidelines and our ISO standards, we need to keep documents and records for a fixed period of time, sometimes as long as 30 years. When I speak of records, I refer to completed forms and not financial statements, i.e. servicing reports, customer complaint files, installation checklists, IQ/OQ tests cases, etc. Hope I did not confuse anyone!

RCBeyette, we do not have any incomplete records in our present archiving system.

If we are talking about archived records, the site where I worked developed a system where the records owners were responsible for determining when an active record would be transferred into the archives. From there, there was an established process for accessing archived information, protecting it, disposing of it, and so on.

You could establish a cut-off point where "from yy/mm/dd onwards, all records will be reviewed for completeness before being transferred into the archives."
I think this is the simplest way of going about it; departments will manage their own records and they decide when an item is to be archived. I do not think that stating a time limit (e.g.: records older than one year are to be processed for archiving), as this will never happen.

Do you think that this decision process should be captured in a procedure? Our current procedure simply states how to submit items to the archive and determines the retention time of certain documents.
 
Q

qualityboi

#7
Our organization makes records a corporate policy. Each of the major departments has someone designated as a records coordinator for their area (an additional duty to their full time job). They are trained to procedures, policies and retention schedules and are held responsible for executing those for their department.

A majority of our records 95% are electronic, and thus are electronically auto-archived without anyone even lifting a finger. Even if you had to pay $25K on a software system and offsite archive, it is cheaper and more efficient than hiring someone to do it.
 

RoxaneB

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#8
Do you think that this decision process should be captured in a procedure? Our current procedure simply states how to submit items to the archive and determines the retention time of certain documents
We do maintain a central matrix that lists all records, departments, responsibles (by title) and how often documents are archived. This also aligns with our 5S culture of keeping only what we need where we need. For the archived records, we also stipulate a time limit on their retention. Some documents are required to be retained for a certain time period - like some of the records in your field. Once that time limit has lapsed, we typically destroy the files. If we are no longer legally obligated to keep the record, our company policy is to remove it from the system.

As this is part of our record control and that is a required procedure by ISO 9001 requirements (one the standards that we adhere to), we do have this process documented - both how active records are controlled and how archived documents are controlled.

In regards to your concern about the matrix and the access control to it, it is a document and is subject to our review process. The records list is reviewed for adequacy annually, and this includes contacting the departments on the list and verifying their information. Revisions to the matrix are made where appropriate.
 
B

Bob Bonville

#9
tipana, As Marc stated regarding the archiving decision, the decision is that of the record owner.

Records have a life cycle. I believe that life cycle is represented by;

1. the creation of the record
2. the completion of the record
3. active status of the record (the immediate need for referral to the record)
4. semi-active status of the record (the need for temporary retention of the record in the functional area for potential referral)
5. archival status (no longer needed for functional referral purposes and determination that record is to be archived or sent to dead record storage)
6. indexing and inventory once archived (identifying the content, ownership, status and whereabouts of the record)
7. retrival of the record (being able to lay your hands on the specific record in a reasonable period of time)

NOTE: extreme care must be taken when retrieving an original record from the archives. It must be afforded the same protection and control as it did the day it was set aside for archiving.

Bob
 
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