What Percentage of Digitized Records Actually Get Assigned Retention? (Spoiler: Not Enough)

A friend of mine who works in the scanning industry asked me a question recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

“What percentage of digital records actually have retention applied after scanning? Or do most simply end up as another old legacy archive — just a digital one this time?”

Here's the thing — I think about this constantly, and I've never actually spelled it out so clearly before. So let's do that.

The intention is there. The prep work isn't.

The majority of people I work with go into digitizing their records intending to apply retention once everything's scanned. That's not the problem. The problem is that almost nobody preps enough ahead of time to actually be able to do it once the records are digital.

Let's be honest: if your retention is time-based — end of year, end of month, that kind of thing — you're in good shape. You can apply retention at the folder level and clear out a whole batch in one move. Delete all invoices from 2019 on 1/1/2026. Easy.

But a huge number of records don’t have time-based retention. Instead, they're event-based. Their retention clock doesn't start until something happens — a contract expires, a project closes, a case resolves, and employee leaves. And here's the catch: to apply retention to a digitized record like that, the event and its date has to be captured in the title or the index. If it isn't, you're stuck applying retention the same way you would with paper — manually opening every file, reading it, figuring out the cutoff, and disposing of it by hand. Just as tedious as paper. Sometimes worse.

Digitizing isn't the finish line — it's step one

If we're being real, digitizing without proper indexing gets you exactly one thing: a pile of text-searchable documents. That IS genuinely useful — don't get me wrong. But it doesn't get you automation. It doesn't get you reporting. It doesn't get you sorting. And those are the tools you actually need to do more with your records than just find them a tiny bit faster (and believe me, it really is only a small improvement).

The “more” that gets budgets approved

Here's a pattern I see constantly: administrations and councils don't love funding digitization on its own - or rather, ‘simply’ because you are drowning in public records requests (believe, me I know there is nothing simple about that!). They want the “more.” Telling them your life is hard wont get you anywhere, the “more” that tends to land is:

Greater efficiency, because digital records are faster to find than paper ones. Automated retention and disposition, which reduces legal risk and the odds of a costly records-related lawsuit. And public access — allowing residents to browse and find their own records, which checks the transparency box everyone wants checked.

Here's the hot take, though: only the first one is still true without proper indexing. And if you don't have records management software or some way to OCR and search the text within multiple documents, you don't even get that.

Digital transformation has more moving parts than people budget for

If we're being real about what “going digital” actually costs — in money or in time — there isn't one line item. There are several:

Buying the right records management software is one. Digitizing the actual physical records is another. Building a usable digital environment for those newly scanned legacy records is a third. And creating proper architecture for the born-digital records your organization is creating right now — the ones that often don't fit neatly into your legacy structure — is a fourth.

There is no single “buy this and it solves everything” solution. I say that as plainly as I can, because there are a lot of software vendors out there selling exactly that dream — and it isn't real, no matter whose logo is on the demo.

Pro tip: start with the indexing plan, not the software demo

Digitization is absolutely the way to go — it's the future of records management, full stop. But planning for it takes more than buying a system. It takes budgeting for the whole picture: the software, the digitizing and indexing, the environment for your legacy records, and the architecture for what's coming next.

Records management isn't a one-and-done project. It's closer to a Capital Improvement Project than a checkbox — it deserves the same time, dedication, and realistic planning you'd give any other major city initiative.

If you're heading into a digitization conversation with your council or finance office, start with the indexing plan. It changes everything that comes after it.