May's Memo: Don’t Stop Retrievin’ (Records, That Is)

Exit Strategy? Don't Forget the Files

The end of the academic year is a classic time for people to retire at the UW. If this includes you or someone else in your office, we have a helpful recorded offboarding training that can help with that. Check it out here. We also have a longer recording available of a training that we did for the UW Retirement Association: “Keep, Share or Shred? Preparing Your Office for Retirement”

A good basic game plan is to delete transitory records (see the list of those here), and then make sure that other people will have continued access (such as in a departmental shared drive or on a Sharepoint site) to substantive records that have a retention period extending past your last day. If you have substantive emails that will need to be retained, you can share Outlook folders (here’s directions) or make a PST file. If you can’t tell the difference between transitory and substantive records, or you’re unsure about the best ways to share specific formats of records, contact us with questions.

Big Summer Cleanup? We Believe in You

Fiscal year is coming to a close, the academic year is nearly behind us, and those records look like they go on and on and on and on. Now is the time to consider your summer cleanup, and hold on to that tidy records feeling. Historically, summertime has been the perfect moment to get to those records cleanup tasks you’ve been putting off all year.

Have paper? Consider C2 as a scanning project partner. Work with our office on scanning policy if you don’t have one created.

Electronic records overwhelming? Consider DocFinity as your digital record solution.

And once you’re all ready, we have a live Zoom event to help you sharpen your skills about how to figure out the legal retention for all sorts of records. We'll show examples of records we've seen around the university and walk you through the types of questions we ask and the types of data points we consider in order to match materials to records series and determine if they need to be retained.

Use the link on our trainings page to add it to your Outlook calendar.

When: 5/13, 2pm

Where: on Zoom

More Than Small Talk: Updates to the Team Chat Hub

The use of instant messaging communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Discord and others have been prevalent particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of their continued popularity among individuals and units across the University, we have updated our Best Practices for Team Communication Platforms to address popular questions relating to these programs. Overall, the best practices and policies surrounding these communications are still the same: Be intentional about what you put into these platforms, use chat features for messages with transitory substance, and use project channels or emails to organize information with longer retention value. The content being created and received in these platforms are subject to UW record retention policies and must be managed accordingly. Contact our office for questions or guidance about your use of communication platforms.

Reminder about Records Management Responsibilities Amid Disruption

In the midst of funding disruptions and programmatic changes, it’s vital that records management policies continue to be followed. State statutes require the UW to continue following record retention policies amidst these changes. A temporary pause or even permanent loss funding for a study, the sudden closure of a research project, the displacement from a physical office or lab space, or the loss of staff members does not absolve the UW from the responsibility of maintaining the records for the legal retention period. In fact, these are all opportunities to ensure that UW records are retained safely and securely. These disruption events are often the precipitating event to begin the retention countdown. Units should look to ensure that records are accessible and readable for the full retention period. Our office is here to help with resources and are available for consultations to ensure that UW records retained for the legally approved retention period.  Thank you for being data stewards of the UW.