The Department of Justice's recent memo claiming the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional triggered a lawsuit from the American Historical Association and American Oversight. Beyond the constitutional questions, this episode reveals how even well-established recordkeeping requirements can fail when organizations make predictable, avoidable mistakes.
These aren't obscure issues. They're the same errors that appear in audit findings, regulatory inquiries, and litigation discovery across industries. The difference is that most organizations don't face congressional scrutiny when their Records Control Schedule breaks down.
Why These Mistakes Keep Happening
Records and Information Management often faces a paradox: everyone agrees it's important until it conflicts with convenience, executive preference, or operational speed. Leadership treats compliance as a checkbox exercise rather than an operational discipline. When recordkeeping requirements lack visible executive sponsorship, frontline staff interpret silence as permission to improvise.
The mistakes below share a common thread. They occur when organizations confuse documenting a policy with actually implementing one, assume good intentions substitute for documented processes, and build programs around people instead of systems.
Mistake 1: Building Your Program Around Individuals Instead of Processes
Why it happens: A strong records manager earns trust, becomes the go-to person for all recordkeeping questions, and gradually becomes the program itself. Leadership assumes "Sarah handles records" means the program is working.
Real consequence: When Sarah leaves, retires, or moves to another role, the program collapses. Institutional knowledge walks out the door. New hires find incomplete documentation, undocumented exceptions, and informal workarounds that no one can explain. The Presidential Records Act was designed to function regardless of who occupies the White House, yet the recent controversy shows what happens when compliance depends on individual cooperation rather than systematic process.
The fix: Document every decision, exception, and procedure in your Records Control Schedule and supporting governance documents. Create process maps that show how records flow from creation through cutoff and disposition. Train multiple staff members on each critical function. Your program should survive a complete leadership transition without requiring institutional memory to interpret how it works.
Mistake 2: Treating Classification as a Downstream Problem
Why it happens: Teams prioritize getting work done over proper record declaration. They tell themselves they'll "clean it up later" or classify records "when we need to find them." Classification feels like administrative overhead that slows down urgent business.
Real consequence: When an investigation, audit, or legal hold arrives, you can't identify what you have or where it lives. The DOJ memo controversy highlighted reports of sensitive materials stored in improvised locations. That's the endpoint of treating classification as optional: you end up unable to demonstrate basic custodial control over records that should have been systematically managed from creation.
The fix: Implement record declaration at the point of creation, not at the point of need. Your Business Classification Scheme should map directly to how work actually happens. If classification feels burdensome, your taxonomy is wrong or your tools don't support the workflow. Fix the system; don't make classification optional.
Mistake 3: Assuming Policy Equals Compliance
Why it happens: Organizations draft comprehensive policies, get them approved, publish them on the intranet, and consider the work done. Leadership points to the policy document as proof of a functioning program.
Real consequence: Policies without implementation are evidence of negligence, not defense. During scrutiny, investigators compare your documented requirements against your actual practices. The gap between what you said you'd do and what you actually did becomes the finding. A well-documented policy you didn't follow is worse than no policy at all because it proves you knew the requirement and ignored it.
The fix: Audit your actual practices against your stated policies quarterly. Document where you fall short and create remediation plans with specific owners and deadlines. If you can't implement a policy requirement, either change your operations or revise the policy to match reality. Your Records Control Schedule should describe what you do, not what you wish you did.
Mistake 4: Waiting for Scrutiny to Demonstrate Compliance Effort
Why it happens: Compliance work is invisible when it's working. Leadership doesn't see the value in documenting routine adherence to retention requirements because "nothing went wrong." The business case for proactive compliance feels abstract compared to immediate operational needs.
Real consequence: When regulators, auditors, or opposing counsel arrive, you're building your defense in real time under pressure. You can't retroactively create documentation showing good-faith compliance effort. The Presidential Records Act situation illustrates this: the costs of investigation, litigation, and operational disruption dwarf whatever time would have been required to follow established procedures from the start.
The fix: Create a compliance evidence file that documents your ongoing adherence to your Records Control Schedule. Log disposition activities, legal hold implementations, audit results, and policy reviews. Maintain records of training completion, exception approvals, and system validations. This isn't busy work; it's the proof that your program functions as designed. When scrutiny arrives, you hand over documentation instead of scrambling to reconstruct what happened.
Mistake 5: Treating Executive Engagement as Optional
Why it happens: Records managers assume their technical expertise is sufficient to run the program. They focus on getting the taxonomy right, configuring the retention rules correctly, and training end users. Executive sponsorship feels like a nice-to-have rather than a structural requirement.
Real consequence: Without visible leadership buy-in, recordkeeping becomes someone else's problem. Staff ignore legal holds, bypass approved repositories, and invent workarounds because they've never seen an executive communicate that compliance matters. The tone at the top determines whether your organization treats records requirements as binding obligations or bureaucratic suggestions. As the DOJ memo controversy demonstrates, leaders' actions signal to both internal stakeholders and external observers how seriously recordkeeping is regarded.
The fix: Make executive engagement structural, not ceremonial. Leadership should review and approve your Records Control Schedule annually, receive quarterly metrics on disposition activities and legal hold compliance, and participate in incident reviews when recordkeeping failures occur. When executives visibly prioritize compliance, the organization follows.
Prevention Checklist
Process resilience:
- Can your program survive a complete turnover of current staff?
- Are all procedures documented in detail sufficient for a new hire to execute them?
- Do you have redundancy in critical recordkeeping functions?
Classification discipline:
- Is record declaration happening at creation, not at search time?
- Does your Business Classification Scheme match actual work patterns?
- Can you identify all records subject to a specific retention rule within 24 hours?
Implementation evidence:
- Do you audit actual practices against stated policies quarterly?
- Can you produce documentation showing routine compliance activities?
- Do you remediate gaps between policy and practice with specific action plans?
Proactive compliance:
- Do you maintain a compliance evidence file documenting ongoing program activities?
- Can you demonstrate good-faith effort independent of specific scrutiny?
- Do you log exceptions, approvals, and system validations as they occur?
Executive sponsorship:
- Do leaders review and approve your Records Control Schedule annually?
- Do they receive regular metrics on program performance?
- Have they communicated recordkeeping expectations to their teams?
The Presidential Records Act lawsuit won't affect most organizations directly. But the mistakes it exposed appear everywhere. The question isn't whether your program will face scrutiny; it's whether you'll have documentation showing you took compliance seriously before that scrutiny arrived.
