Capturing Departing Employee's Federal Records

A DOECAST dated January 9, 2001, “Annual Information Update on Disposition of Federal Records”, defined Federal Records and discussed retention of these records. This is especially critical as the time of the inauguration of the President and turnover of the political positions occurs. Each Program Office Records Liaison Officer (RLO) and site Records Management Program Officer (RMPO) are responsible to take the actions necessary to ensure that the records of the departing managers and staff are captured and managed as records.

All electronic and e-mail records of these departing employees must be collected along with their paper files. These records should be collected and retained in electronic formats, if possible. A partnership between the RLO/RMPO, information technology staff, and the departing employee’s secretary will ensure that federal records are retained and made available to the incoming administration and posterity.

Capture and storage of these records may be accomplished using one of the following options (in order of preference). The actual method chosen depends on the computer hardware and software configurations at your location:

• Filed in an electronic records repository,
• Stored on the Departmental/Division LAN in a separate directory,
• Copied to portable media (CDs or Diskette),
• Hard drives be removed from the computers prior to making the equipment available to another employee,
• Printed and filed as paper records.

The software necessary to read these records must also be retained if it is not a commonly available program at your site.

The RLO or RMPO must review these records to remove duplicates and files that are not records from the collection. It is not necessary to retain both a paper copy of a record as well as an electronic copy as long as the file creation date, and distribution information is available on the paper copy.