As a Washington State agency, all records created and received by the University must be retained according to a legally approved records retention schedule based on their content and purpose. This includes entire webpages, the content hosted by a webpage, and other digital materials posted to the web like social media posts. All of these materials are created and posted for a specific purpose and must be retained for the legal retention period before they can be deleted.

However, it may not be prudent to retain all the content ever published on the webpage in perpetuity. Just because webpages fall under retention requirements does not mean that users should refrain from ever changing, unpublishing, or even deleting content from their sites. There’s a whole host of reasons content may need to be removed:

  • Entire webpages or subsections of pages may no longer be accurate or relevant;
  • The information may be duplicative and found elsewhere;
  • The webpage may not receive many visitors, the content may not meet current accessibility standards.

It’s important therefore to know under what circumstances you would need to save content from a webpage versus when it is acceptable to make a change without keeping a copy of content.

Scenarios that do not require content to be retained:

Edits being made to transitory content or display:

  • There is no need to keep a copy of previous versions if:
    • You are only modifying the layout or display to the website
    • You are making revisions that do not substantially change the content, there is no need to keep a copy of the previous versions.

The web content being changed is beyond the retention period and not archival:

  • There is no need to keep a copy of previous versions if:
    • If the entire page, the entire webform, the entire section is duplicated elsewhere.
    • If the entire page, the entire webform, the entire section is beyond the legal retention period.
    • If the page and the content are not archival and do not require being sent to the UW Archives for preservation.

Scenarios that do require content to be retained:

The original content being changed is not beyond the retention period:

Edits being made to substantive content that could include revising, adding, or removing substantive information to policies, procedures, requirements, deadlines, program or course descriptions. You must retain that original content for a certain period time after they have been superseded or after the date they were created. If the retention period has not been met yet, you must retain that old content.

The original content being removed is not beyond the retention period:

There may be entire webpages, subpages, graphics, or even webforms that are no longer relevant or up to date. If the retention period has not been met yet, you must retain that old content.

Legal destruction hold

Webpage content pertaining to ongoing or pending audits, lawsuits (or even reasonably anticipated lawsuits), litigation holds or public disclosure proceedings must be preserved until the issue is resolved. You will work with the following offices to decide which webpages you will need to retain: Attorney General's Office, Office of Public Records & Open Public Meetings, or Internal Audit.

Use the UW General Records Retention Schedule or your Departmental Records Retention Schedules to determine the retention period of your web content. Follow this link to view common retention examples around web content. For content that is archival in nature, units should contact the UW Archives prior to deleting any content.

Call to Action

Once determining whether the content needs to be retained, there are a variety of actions your office may pursue. The method of extracting and retaining the information may depend on the reasons its being retained (retention value vs destruction hold), the website infrastructure being used, and digital expertise in your unit. Here are few examples of the actions units can take to retain web content for retention or destruction hold purposes. The links will explain how to manage the content in that scenario as well as technical instructions on how to accomplish those actions:

Contact our office with questions.