Disposal authorisations are only issued by the State Archivist through an approved:
- Retention and disposal schedule
- Early or one-off disposal authorisation application
- Damaged or missing public records application
Retention and disposal schedule
Retention and disposal schedules are issued to a specific agency or group of agencies. The most common ones are:
- General retention and disposal schedule (GRDS) and GRDS Lite—cover records common to most agencies or created by multiple agencies, such as administrative, transitory and short-term records
- Agency-specific / core schedules—cover records unique to the functions and business activities of a certain agency
- Sector schedules—cover records of similar agencies that perform the same functions, such as local governments or universities.
All retention and disposal schedules are format-neutral, meaning they apply to all record types, and will provide you with information on the minimum retention period, disposal trigger and disposal authorisation number.
You might also want to seek assistance from your IT area to upload the retention and disposal schedule into your business system or recordkeeping application. This will assist you to:
- manually sentence records to determine how long the records need to be kept
- map retention and disposal schedules to your business classification scheme so that when a file is created it will automatically be sentenced
- have the system calculate disposal dates
- run reports to identify when records may be due for disposal.
Remember, records should be sentenced at the file or container level, not at the document or individual record level. This will prevent valuable contextual information being lost.
Developing or updating a retention and disposal schedule
Changes to retention and disposal schedules are sometimes required if:
- The schedule no longer reflects the functions and activities performed by your agency
- The schedule no longer covers all of your core business records
- Your agency has been affected by significant legislation changes
- Your agency has made significant changes to business processes, or the business value of records has changed
- You have inherited records from another agency as part of a machinery-of-government change.
How to apply
If you need to develop or review your retention and disposal schedule:
If you need to change an existing class or create a new record class:
Your application will be assessed, and written notification of the next steps will be provided.
Early disposal
You can apply for early disposal when the records are:
- Covered under a retention and disposal schedule
- Temporary, with less than 5 years remaining of a minimum retention period
One-off disposal
You can apply for one-off disposal when records are:
- Not covered under a retention and disposal schedule
- Likely to have less than 5 years remaining of a minimum retention period
How to apply
Your application will be assessed, and written notification of the outcome provided.
The State Archivist may seek additional information, clarification and/or action from your agency if necessary.
Retain your completed application and written notification from the State Archivist in addition to your agency's usual destruction documentation.
Damaged or missing records
You must ensure the impacted records cannot be salvaged.
Records affected by water, smoke, mould, and pests can often be saved. Your agency should also have one or more backups of your systems and the impacted records that you can use and restore.
Disposal authorisation will be required if the impacted records are:
- Damaged and cannot be salvaged, and/or
- Missing
How to apply
Your application will be assessed, and written notification of the outcome provided.
The State Archivist may seek additional information, clarification and/or action from your agency if necessary.
Retain your completed application and written notification from the State Archivist in addition to normal destruction documentation.