The University Records Policy assigns the owner of the record the authority and responsibility to determine the appropriate disposition of university records in consultation with the necessary faculty, staff, and administrators. The record owner has the authority and responsibility to articulate these disposition decisions in records retention schedules.
Departments should periodically review their records to identify records that they no longer want, need or have met their retention period.
Once records have been identified the department should confirm:
- the creation date of the records,
- the record type,
- if they are original records or convenience copies,
- if there any legal holds or potential litigation holds on the records from the Office of General Counsel,
- an ongoing audit or investigation involving the records.
Once the information above is determined, departments should consult the University Records Retention Schedule to determine if the records are eligible to be destroyed or have to be retained longer to meet their retention period.
Convenience copies are not original records and can be destroyed appropriately when they are no longer needed.
All departments and offices should destroy in a confidential manner their university records that require destruction. Departments and offices can only use the general trash or recycling to destroy records and documents that have a wide and open distribution at the time of their creation, such as publications. All other records should be destroyed in a confidential manner. To confidentially destroy records, departments and offices should:
- Shred confidential paper documents that are no longer needed and secure such documents until shredding occurs. If a shredding service is employed, ensure that the service provider has clearly defined procedures in the contractual agreement that protects discarded information and that the provider is legally accountable for those procedures, with penalties in place for breach of contract.
- Take extra measures to wipe clean the hard drive of any machine that may contain sensitive or confidential information before discarding, sending to surplus, or transferring the machine to another individual or department.
The University's approved vender for shredding services is:
SHRED-IT
Bryant Decker
National Accounts Administration
Phone: 877-450-6287
Bryant.Decker@stericycle.com
Shred-It is the only approved supplier for shredding services (document destruction)
