Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter 6, Protection of Privacy. Updated 27 February 2023. 297 7. Transitory records Local authorities create and collect a large variety of records, but not all these records have ongoing value. Consider, for example, emails or posters about internal social events, or multiple copies of a report. While these records serve a short-term purpose, such as informing staff of a bake sale, or distributing copies of a report to many people, they do not serve any significant business purpose to the local authority or to the public. Records such as these are called ‘transitory’ meaning that they are only useful for a short and temporary amount of time. These types of records may be used for simple tasks and have their own records retention schedule that allows them to be destroyed. In developing and implementing RIM practices, it is vital that local authorities clearly define the difference between transitory records and non-transitory records and establish protocols for deleting transitory records. When an access request is received, staff may need to search through a multitude of record holdings. This task can be made significantly easier if transitory records are destroyed appropriately. The following considerations can help local authorities define transitory records: • Was the record produced by your organization. • Does the record document your organization’s business. If the record contains information pertaining to your work, it is more likely to be a record that should be kept. If, however, the record pertains to internal social events, or external news clippings, it may not have a lasting value. • Are there multiple copies of the same record. It is important to save the official copy of a record, but duplicates may not be needed. Transitory records should be kept only for as long as they are needed. Destruction of transitory records that no longer have value reduces the amount of material being stored and the resources associated with storing and searching through unnecessary records. In addition, transitory records are subject to access to information requests and legal holds. For these reasons, local authorities should destroy transitory records on a regular basis. For more information on transitory records, check out the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan’s Guidelines for the Management of Transitory Records. 8. Email management As described above, records can be in any format. Even though email is one of the main forms of business communication, many people see emails as inherently transitory. However,
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