There is no official organisation where you could turn to to ask if it is ok to delete your data. Maybe it would be good to have a good record retention policy in place. A policy will allow you to check if it is the right to destroy your data. Why don't you have a look in our schedule store?

Funny you should ask. A record has been disposed of when it is really gone and you cannot access it anymore. So no copies, no cache and no backup tapes are available and you have no means to reconstruct the record. EU data protection regulators call it "irreversible deletion".  So get your shredder, burner, eraser out and destroy those documents. It is not sad, it is part of records retention (and life).

Unfortunately records retention laws vary from country to country. Governments generally focus on international relations and world peace. They do not talk  about records retention. Why? Because this is a matter of how the court systems, government agencies and criminal prosecution of a country work. And that is exactly something that countries want to decide on by themselves, something to do with sovereignty. Consider this, the minimum retention periods with regard to book keeping vary from [...]

Well that is quite easy. Almost all countries have both minimum and maximum retention periods for certain records. A minimum retention period tells you for how long you should keep data at a minimum. Say the bookkeeping requirement in the Netherlands is minimally 7 years. You could keep your books for longer, but that is not required. A maximum retention period tells you when to destroy a certain record. When this period has lapsed you are really not [...]

Well that depends on the law of course.

Now it gets technical. A retention trigger is the moment when a law tells you when a maximum or minimum retention period starts running. Easier said, it tells you when you should officially start storing the document. A retention trigger could be related to the actual creation or use of a record, say: The moment of creation of a record, or The date of last activity or update A retention period can also start on [...]

Well, without a data retention schedule your company will probably be storing data until the end of time. No, filerskeepers really believes that you need a comprehensive and up to date data retention schedule. But a schedule alone will not cut it. You will need to actually implement the data retention terms in your IT-systems.  

With a filerskeepers data retention schedule you will never be stuck in the maze of data retention again! A data retention schedule contains all retention periods applicable in a country in one comprehensible schedule. filerskeepers data retention schedules tell you who should keep what data, for which time period, starting when, and if it is a maximum or minimum period, all with a link to the legal reference. Take a look in our schedule store to see which ones you [...]

Well you don't have to care. It is just that your client, supplier, book keeper, accountant, lawyer, notary, controller, auditor and many governmental officials care. there are literally thousands of retention rules that require you to keep or destroy records. It is a matter of good corporate housekeeping. If you know what to keep and what to throw out you will be more in control. You will also run a smaller risk of trouble. What [...]

Let's ask the dictionary to answer this one: Data: The quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, which may be stored and transmitted in the form of electrical signals and recorded on magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media. Document: A piece of written, printed, or electronic matter that provides information or evidence or that serves as an official record. Well, that still sounds complicated right. We mean that data is [...]