DC Records Retention Register | DC Inform+

DC Records.

How long DC government must keep each kind of record — and when it can be destroyed or sent to the Archives. Browsable, filterable, free to download, no login.

33 record series 3 General Records Schedules Source: DC Office of Public Records Free · no login

Independent — not a DC government service. Cites the District's official schedules; claims no endorsement.

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The register

Filter the schedules, then take the result away as data or a document. One filter set, three destinations: CSV for a spreadsheet, JSON for a machine, RTF for pasting into a memo. Filter and view state live in the page URL, so any view you build is a link you can share. Every entry carries a stable identifier and a link back to the official schedule PDF.

These are historical general schedules — verify currency before you rely on them. The schedules carried here were issued between 1965 and 1988 (GRS 7 · 1965, GRS 1 · 1987, GRS 16 · 1988). They remain the District's general disposition standards, but a newer agency-specific schedule may supersede parts of them for a particular agency. Treat this register as a plain-language reference: for a live disposition decision, confirm the current schedule with the DC Office of Public Records, which controls.

Schedule

Business function

Disposition

Personal data

Sensitive data

Requirement

Updated since

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Where this comes from

Source of record

Authority: DC General Records Schedules, issued by the Office of Public Records (Office of the Secretary) and approved by the Records Disposition Committee.
Governing law: Public Records Management Act of 1985 — DC Official Code § 2-1701 et seq.; general schedules under DCMR 1-1509.
Schedules used: GRS 16 (Administrative Management), GRS 1 (Personnel), GRS 7 (Expenditure Accounting) — original PDFs linked on each entry.
Maintained by: In Plain Sight, an independent civic steward. This register cites the District's official records schedules; it does not claim the endorsement of the Office of Public Records, the DC Archives, or any DC agency.

Access — the bright line

Always free, no login, forever. Reading and downloading every entry, in every format (CSV / JSON / RTF), needs no account. Gating oversight data would defeat the point.
Not legal advice. This is a plain-language reference to published schedules. For a disposition decision, agencies must follow the official schedule and consult the Office of Public Records; where a specific statute governs a record, that statute controls.
Coverage. GRS 16 and GRS 7 are carried in full; GRS 1 (Personnel) is a representative selection. Every entry was verified line-by-line against the official published PDF (2026-07-20).

Attribution & licence

This register is modelled on the approach of the LG Inform Plus Records Retention register, a programme of the UK Local Government Association (developed with Invicta Law). It is a design homage to that idea — the DC data here is rebuilt entirely from the District's own public General Records Schedules, and no LG Inform Plus content is reused.

In Plain Sight publishes its own compilation — the plain-language descriptions, the adapted schema, and this presentation — under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Reuse it freely, including commercially; please credit In Plain Sight. The underlying DC records schedules are public records of the District of Columbia.