Executive Office Records Disposition Approval

executive office records disposition approval

Coordinate executive office retention and disposal decisions through approved schedules, legal holds, accountable review, and verifiable completion records.

Begin with the approved record schedule

Identify the record series, business owner, system of record, retention trigger, and authorized disposition rule. Do not infer a deletion date from file age or storage pressure. Ask records management to classify material that does not fit an existing schedule.

Check holds before proposing disposal

Confirm whether litigation, investigation, audit, regulatory, employment, transaction, or other preservation instructions apply. Search the governed hold register using the scope supplied by the responsible owner. A normal retention period never overrides an active hold.

Distinguish records from convenience copies

Map originals, official versions, drafts, duplicates, exports, chat attachments, local downloads, and paper sets. Assign each location an accountable owner and treatment. Avoid calling a copy disposable until the official record and any preservation duty are confirmed.

Prepare a reviewable disposition list

List the record series, date range, quantity or location, schedule authority, proposed action, exceptions, and reviewer. Keep descriptions precise enough to audit without exposing unnecessary executive content. Separate routine eligible material from ambiguous or sensitive items that require individual review.

Obtain authority before action

Route the list to records, legal, privacy, security, and business owners according to policy. Record approval, conditions, exclusions, and expiry in the governed repository. Silence, a calendar reminder, or an assistant's prior practice is not disposal authorization.

Use an approved destruction method

Match shredding, secure deletion, media handling, vendor service, and backup treatment to the information class. Protect material while it waits for destruction and verify vendor custody where applicable. Stop the batch if the approved scope no longer matches the items presented.

Document completion and exceptions

Capture when disposition occurred, who performed it, which authority applied, and what was excluded. Reconcile failed deletions, inaccessible systems, retained backups, and newly discovered copies. Provide exceptions to the control owner rather than marking an incomplete batch as closed.

Review the disposal program

Sample completed batches across paper, collaboration tools, email, local storage, and vendor systems. Confirm that schedule authority, hold checks, approvals, destruction evidence, and exceptions agree. Give unresolved copies and failed deletions to named system or records owners with a due date.

Common questions

Can old executive email be deleted in bulk?

Only under an approved schedule after applicable holds and record ownership are checked.

Who approves destruction?

Use the authorities named in the organization's records and legal process.

Should a destruction certificate list document content?

Record enough to verify scope while limiting unnecessary sensitive detail.

Source and service boundaries

Teams organizing governed files can review administrative support alongside the retention schedule guide. Contact the team with a records coordination question, excluding protected files. Source: National Archives records scheduling guidance.