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County hires consultant to draft records-retention schedule; Dane named project manager
Summary
The committee heard an Iron Mountain presentation on building a county-wide records retention schedule and agreed to retain Iron Mountain services while designating the county's IT director, Dane, as the internal project manager to coordinate departmental meetings and legal review.
Oklahoma County's Policy & Governance Committee approved beginning work with Iron Mountain to develop a county-wide records retention schedule and designated the county IT director, Dane, as the county project manager for the effort.
Iron Mountain representatives presented the proposed process for creating a records classification scheme and a retention schedule, explaining the firm’s Policy Center software and how it will incorporate state and federal retention requirements. Paul Fisher, identified as Iron Mountain’s primary contact for state and local government clients, introduced the team; Chris Whitaker, information governance subject-matter expert, led the substantive walkthrough.
Why it matters: County departments had inconsistent retention practices and data-storage pressures. Committee members said a uniform retention schedule will help IT, legal and each department determine what records to keep, for how long, and what to dispose of defensibly.
Chris Whitaker described the delivery: Iron Mountain will build a classification scheme (a retention schedule without retention periods), validate it with departmental meetings, then apply Oklahoma and federal legal requirements to produce a draft retention schedule. Whitaker told the committee the vendor typically recommends the longer legal retention period when state and federal guidance differ and said the project includes attended monitoring to track legal changes over time.
A major implementation question from the committee involved litigation holds and discovery. Whitaker answered that the schedule and project will provide high-level guidance on record holds and will incorporate local record-management practices as the project team learns where records are stored.
Action taken: The committee agreed to proceed and to name Dane as the internal county contact and project manager to coordinate department meetings, legal review and scheduling. The motion to proceed with Dane as project manager passed on a voice vote.
Next steps: Iron Mountain will mobilize the project, schedule kickoff and department sessions (the vendor estimated eight to ten sessions), set up the Policy Center instance, and begin developing the classification scheme. County staff will identify departmental contacts, assign an executive sponsor for the project, and coordinate legal review. Committee members asked for an initial kickoff within two to three weeks if a contact can be identified.
Ending: With a project manager in place and vendor scope accepted, the county will move to departmental meetings to build a validated retention schedule and then publish the retention rules in the vendor system for on‑going monitoring.
