Regarding the question about record retention, there are different
requirements by type of agreement.  For Federal grants and cooperative
agreements, you should refer to A-110, part __.53.  Basically, it's a three
year retention requirement from date of submission of final expenditure
report but there are exceptions for other types of records or litigation.
 Note that the Department of Education has a statutory five year retention
period.

For contracts, the provisions of the FAR apply with varying times, but six
years is a good number.  And then there are the provisions of your
agreements with other sponsors such as your state or foundations, etc.

Here at Rochester we retain all of our records for seven years from the date
of project termination.  We think this provides us pretty good coverage.
 The problem (because we don't microfilm) is one of storage space especially
for those projects that go on endlessly.

Remember, retention should be in accordance with PROJECT not BUDGET period.

Also, be reminded of the NSF IG initiative whereby they asked OMB if the
record retention requirements extended to technical data and OMB said yes.
 Many of us have now developed technical data retention policies.

Regarding rejected proposals, there are no sponsor retention requirements of
which I am aware.  We keep them for a year then send a notice to the
department saying that unless they want the proposals, we will toss on a
certain date.

Jane Youngers
Director
Office of Research and Project Administration
University of Rochester
(716)275-5373
(716)275-9492 (fax)
xxxxxx@orpa.rochester.edu