II.8.1 Data Retention

Currently, Circular A-110 provides that recipients must maintain "all . . . records pertinent to an award" for three years following completion of the project. OMB Circ. A-110, § ___.53(b). While the circular does not define "records", it appears that in establishing a three year document retention policy, OMB was focusing on financial records, as opposed to the kinds of scientific research data now being discussed.

Although a three-year period makes sense for financial data, three years may well be an insufficient length of time for purposes of preserving data that, perhaps years after the grant, may become of interest to others, or may be used in developing federal policy or rules. Unlike financial data, the value of scientific data is of indefinite duration. OMB should encourage the retention of this valuable data. CRE therefore proposes that a mechanism be created whereby the recipient takes measures to maintain and safeguard the data for possible future disclosure.³⁴

One logistical problem that OMB should anticipate and resolve in this regard is how the public will obtain access to data where the investigator or subrecipient who performed the research has left the awardee institution. This will often be the case, for example, with graduate students who are no longer attending the research university where they worked on the study, or with individual doctors or investigators who later leave the awardee hospital. OMB's revision to A-110 should specifically provide that awardees must require that subrecipients be subject to the long-term obligation to retain data in order to respond to a future FOIA request (including an agreement to provide the data when required by a future FOIA request).

³⁴ Assuming that Circular A-110, section ___.53 applies to research data, as well as to "[f]inancial records, supporting documents, [and] statistical records", section ___.53 will need to be revised to allow for the record retention policy CRE is proposing.