What are the retention schedules?
The schedules are guides to the types of documents your office might generate and the legal requirements for keeping or disposing of them. As an institution of the University System of Georgia, UGA employees are obliged to use the schedules approved by the Board of Regents. They can be found here.
Why must we use the schedules?
The Board of Regents has adopted the schedules to ensure that all University System organizations can meet the requirements of the Georgia Records Law and the Georgia Open Records Law. In addition, the rules of the schedules consider recommendations from good business practices of various professional organizations.
What can the schedules do for me?
In addition to providing legal protection for your operations, the schedules provide a scheme for the organization of your files so they can be retired in a systematic and orderly fashion, freeing up space.
Using their organizational scheme allows you to take full advantage of the Records Center services, storing lesser used materials and retrieving items quickly when needed.
Use of the retention schedules can help you to decide which records are most important if you should ever be faced with recovery from a disaster, making quick choices about the items that need immediate salvage.
How do I read these schedules?
Retention Schedules are divided into sections that reflect various record keeping topics.
USG also offers a search engine to help you select the standards that best match your records. The search function will give you many different schedules for your one topic. This is because many records have different functions in different instances. For example, a check request that deals with reimbursement may have a shorter life span than one that deals with paying a company for their chemical supply so that a professor can finish her research.
We suggest that once you find the retention schedules you need, make a note for future reference.
Please feel free to give us a call with any questions. 706-369-5926.