Retention Schedule Management

For each client, the Virgo Research team gathers information on business processes, industry-specific regulators, and other pertinent data to help focus and steer the research for the client's retention schedule.

The Virgo IG database contains both General Business laws and Industry-Specific laws.

The laws we categorize as General Business are all the laws to which 99% of organizations are subject: accounting laws, human resources laws, contract law, intellectual property law, etc. These laws (which include statutes of limitation and the basic bookkeeping requirements of many civil codes) tend to be less volatile regarding changes and new law additions than industry-specific laws. But the General Business laws are still closely monitored.

Industry-specific research (pharmaceutical, aviation, financial services, oil and gas, utilities, manufacturing, healthcare, etc.) laws tend to be more volatile and reactive with changes in response to events and political pressure. Our Research team monitors industry-specific laws using methods like those used in General Business but with additional supporting processes such as closely analyzed trade publications and websites, and monitoring of industry regulators.

When researching laws and regulations in any jurisdiction, the Research team captures citations with requirements directly relevant to retention of documents, records, files, papers, books, manuals, certificates, etc., whether or not a retention period is specified. We also capture broader information governance requirements that inform not only retention, but also location, format, language, storage, data transfer, privacy and statutes of limitations.

Examples of citations we capture

• Companies shall keep accounting records for 3 years from the end of the year to which the records relate.

• Employer shall keep employee wage records for 2 years following termination of employment.

We do not capture citations which are strictly procedural in nature and may only imply a record keeping requirement, such as reporting, filing, or notification requirements. An implied retention does not inform a retention period or even a specific record-keeping requirement. Most regulations that call for a reporting or filing requirement have a separate section that specifies the records to be kept, generally found in another citation under the same part or sub-part of a law. We capture those regulations.

Examples of citations we do not capture

• Each applicant for or holder of a production certificate must provide the FAA with a document describing how its organization will ensure compliance with the provisions of this sub-part... (Although this citation mentions a document, there is no reference to having to retain such document; the text only instructs organizations to provide the agency with documentation.)

• The participants and other persons shall provide the revenue authority with the information needed to ascertain facts which are of significance for taxation.

To summarize, the Research team captures all regulations that enumerate what records need to be kept, but not those that are simply implied. The enumerated records usually appear within a sub-section of the same regulations that call for filing or reporting requirements. So ultimately there is a clear inventory of the records a government specifically wants to regulate for retention purposes.

Gathering IG laws in 162 countries entails several layered processes. Most of the international research is still accomplished in-house by our very experienced Research team, using a logical, methodical process we’ve perfected throughout the years.

One of the biggest challenges in information governance research is finding out in which code, statute or regulation the requirements (record keeping) are located. This is where familiarity with the regulatory system, and with the codification system within a country, are essential. When conducting this repetitive process across multiple jurisdictions, familiarity with the regulatory frameworks within the scope of the research is essential in understanding a country’s legislative environment and locating its IG rules.

Since English is still the predominant language of commerce, our research team can find English translations of foreign acts and regulations through country legislative sites. When laws cannot be found in English, both machine translation and third-party translation services are utilized.

For industry-specific laws, regulators tend to have complimentary structural elements across jurisdictions, as they are all concerned with regulating exact (or similar) processes, and often use model laws and codes as the basis for their own legislation. For example, financial services regulators are concerned with monetary transactions and processes that do not differ for the most part from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The United States’ SEC is equivalent to the United Kingdom’s FSA and FRC, Canada’s OFSI and CSA, and France’s AMF. These countries' requirements in an area such as money-laundering compliance often closely track to each other.

Experienced IG attorneys, paralegals and researchers familiar with these characteristics and trends are thus essential to this gathering and monitoring process.