Comment from my colleague Theo Bucher (records management policy manager at Novartis)
Recently in some Records Management circles a theory of so-called "Big Bucket Retention Management" was raised on the contention that it is too cumbersome or costly to manage a lot of different Records Series accurately. Maybe.
It seems that a risk of 'big buckets' is ... throwing the baby out with the bathwater (see Risks List Item below).
So how should big buckets be defined? Well, probably there should be some meta-criteria included in a bucket definition, e.g. "Impact on ... ".
Examples might be: "Impact on Health," or "Loss of Life," or "Historical relevance,"
Theo Bucher
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Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 09:25:29 EDT
From: KCKnowlton@aol.com
Subject: Clues to 3 Plane Wrecks Could Be Lost in Files Purge
The Air Force destroyed all records from unsuccessful searches for aircraft
missing before 1989, which is likely to make it much harder for Nevada
investigators to determine the victims of three wrecks found in the recent
search for the aviator Steve Fossett ... One resource that had been
expected to help in the inquiry was suspended mission files, kept at Tyndall
Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla. Those files are the paper trails of all
failed searches for missing aircraft by the Civil Air Patrol, a volunteer
Air Force auxiliary group, or any other Air Force resources. But in 1994,
the Air Force instituted a regulation requiring the destruction of records
of noncombat missions after seven years. [Source: Steve Friess, *The New
York Times*, 4 Oct 2007; PGN-ed]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/us/04fossett.html?th&emc=th
From:
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 11 October 2007 Volume 24 : Issue 85
ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
jhagmann - 11. Okt, 22:27
