Retention

The complete working record of a public records office's information-governance unit — the office that decides how long every record series in the organisation is kept, what happens to it at the end of that period, and who signed for its destruction. The authority on what is retained, under which citation, and what left the building lawfully. The signature Retention Schedule is the instrument itself: every record series with its series code, title, the business function it supports, the retention trigger that starts its clock — date of creation, end of financial year, date of last action, date of contract expiry, date of birth plus twenty-five years — the retention period, the statutory or regulatory citation that sets it, and the disposition waiting at the end: DESTROY, TRANSFER TO ARCHIVE, REVIEW or PERMANENT. Behind it: the accession register, recording every transfer into the repository with its accession number, transferring department, date received, extent in linear metres and box count, the box range and shelf locations occupied and the condition noted on receipt; disposal actions for the quarter, each with the boxes affected, the disposal date computed from trigger plus period rather than typed, the authorising officer, the method — CROSS-CUT SHRED, SECURE INCINERATION, CERTIFIED DIGITAL WIPE, TRANSFER TO ARCHIVE — the certificate number once executed, and a status that runs DUE, AUTHORISED, EXECUTED, CERTIFIED or BLOCKED BY HOLD; legal holds in force, each tied to the matter and instructing authority behind it, the series and box ranges frozen, the review date, and the disposal rows it is visibly blocking on the board below; appraisal decisions assessing each series against the selection criteria, with the value found, the sampling method where a series is only partly kept, the percentage retained and the signature that made it permanent; the repository itself as a drawn shelf elevation, bay by bay and range by range, occupied linear metres against capacity, with temperature and relative humidity read against the storage standard; access requests served out of the repository against their statutory response clock, with exemptions applied and the outcome recorded as RELEASED IN FULL, RELEASED IN PART, WITHHELD or NOT HELD; an immutable audit trail naming who authorised, who executed, who witnessed and the certificate reference for every disposal and every hold; vital records designated business-critical with their off-site duplication verified against the required interval; and departmental training compliance, transfer accuracy at accession, and the departments still transferring unscheduled material. Departments get a portal showing their own series, what is due for disposal, their outstanding transfers and the holds affecting them; the records manager gets linear metres against capacity, disposals due against disposals certified, holds in force and the oldest request on the statutory clock. Set entirely in the idiom of 1970s mainframe data-processing output — green-bar continuous-form fanfold stationery and the machine-room printout: pale alternating green banding exactly one text line tall doing the work that card borders would otherwise do, drawn sprocket perforation down both margins, carbon-black impact-printer ink, run headers reading PROGRAM, PAGE OF, RUN DATE and OPERATOR in monospace, tear-off perforation rules between modules, and a single dot-matrix red reserved strictly for DESTROY dispositions, blocked disposals and overdue response clocks. Both fold figures partition exactly against their own totals. Zero photography, zero gradients — every figure is hand-drawn inline SVG.