15 Nov Why Should Federal Agencies Notify NARA About “Unauthorized Disposition” in Government Records?
Under federal law, federal agencies must “notify [the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)] of any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency (see 36 CFR Part 1230 for the full statute). Upon such notification, NARA creates an “unauthorized disposition case file” and tracks each allegation until resolved.
Overall, unauthorized disposition – damage, loss, destruction, or alteration of records – isn’t too common, and most of them are the result of accidents or legitimate mistakes rather than some kind of malfeasance. Water damage seems to be a particularly common culprit.
Read the full post on our TransAccessDM blog.