in Mississippi

months after the action is settled. 13 Disposal of records dated 1940 or earlier must be
approved by MDAH or the Local Government Records Committee. 14 Confidential
records or those containing “personally identifiable information” such as social security
numbers should be disposed in a secure manner, such as shredding or incineration.
IMPLEMENTING A RECORDS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
Now that it has been determined that records management is a beneficial program, how
does a county go about implementing it? Here is a brief outline of the steps involved.
• The Board of Supervisors appoints someone to be in charge of records
management. This gives that person authority to implement the program. While
this person should be an elected or appointed official to act as a “champion for the
cause,” the day-to-day duties will often fall to a subordinate.
• The Board votes to adopt the Records Management Fee authorized in Code, § 25-
60-5. For any document filed (or generated) for which a fee is charged, 15 $1.00
may be added to that fee for records management. The county keeps half of the
money collected, dedicated for records management purposes, such as purchasing
storage boxes, shelving, and scanning equipment; contract services such as
shredding and off-site storage; and other expenses directly related to the
management of the county’s records. The other half goes to MDAH to operate the
Local Government Records Office. While the fee may not generate large sums of
money, especially in smaller counties, it is additional revenue outside the general
tax collections, and it shows citizens that their government is interested in
managing their records. By 2015, forty percent (33) of Mississippi’s 82 counties
had adopted this fee.
• The records management officer conducts an inventory of all the records in the
county, by either a physical inventory, a survey of each department, interviews
with other employees, or a combination of these. This may be done all at once or
in stages, depending on the volume of records and time allotted. The inventory
should include each record series, date range, format, volume, location, growth
rate, and other information as necessary. Then retention schedules are applied to
each record series, in order to determine which records in each series are eligible
for disposal. With Board approval, eligible records can then be disposed. Other
inactive records may be moved to secondary storage locations within the
courthouse, in other government buildings, or to an off-site storage location. The
general rule-of-thumb for an initial “purge” is that one-third of the records can be
disposed, while another third can be moved out of primary office space. Through
this process, the entity can also develop a file plan that identifies where records
are located, and which ones are essential records.
• The Board develops policies and procedures for managing records. These can
include an overall records management policy, a policy for handling open records
requests, 16 a policy for imaging paper records, policies for managing electronic
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