How to Manage Data Retention and Record Destruction

What is this?

The Retention Manager provides a dashboard to track the lifecycle of your organization’s records (e.g., incident reports, SWMS). It categorizes records based on their retention policies and allows administrators to manually confirm the secure destruction of overdue records that require review.

When to use this?

Use this regularly to ensure your organization complies with data privacy laws and internal retention policies by securely destroying or archiving records that have passed their mandated retention period.

Why this works this way

Privacy law (the Australian Privacy Principles) requires personal information to be destroyed or de-identified once it’s no longer needed — but WHS law separately requires many safety records to be kept for a minimum period regardless. The retention policy per record category reconciles both: it’s why some categories can only ever be archived, not destroyed. Statutory safety records (SWMS, incidents) are never auto-deleted by the system — destruction here is always a deliberate, logged, human-authorised action, never an automatic process.

This is general information, not legal advice — confirm specific requirements with your WHS advisor or the current legislation for your jurisdiction.

Prerequisites

• Must have an Admin or Compliance Officer role.

Step-by-Step Guide

Reviewing Retention Records

1. Navigate to the Retention Manager (typically found within the Admin Settings).
2. The dashboard displays summary cards showing counts for Overdue, Due within 90 days, Compliant, and Archived records.
3. Below the summary, view the Active Retention Policies to understand the rules applied to different record categories (e.g., how many years to retain and the destruction method).

Filtering and Searching

1. Use the Tabs (Overdue, Due Soon, Compliant, All Records) to filter the table.
2. Use the Search bar to find specific records by category, description, or Record ID.

Confirming Secure Destruction

For overdue records that have a destruction method of manual_review:

1. In the Retention Records table, locate an Overdue record.
2. Click the Confirm Destruction button in the Actions column.
3. A confirmation dialog will appear, detailing the record’s category and expiry date.
4. Type DESTROY into the input field to confirm you understand this is a permanent action.
5. Click Confirm Destruction.
6. The record will be permanently marked for destruction, and an event will be logged in the system’s audit trail.

Troubleshooting & FAQs

• Q: What happens to records with the auto_archive method? A: Records set to auto_archive will be automatically archived by the system once they become overdue. No manual confirmation is required, and they will display an “Auto-archived” badge.
• Q: Can I recover a destroyed record? A: No. Secure destruction is permanent and cannot be undone. Always double-check before confirming.