Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Better shred than read: Community paper on what local organizations are doing to protect personal information

Thanks to HIPAA Blog for pointing me to this interesting article in a local paper that chronicles what community businesses and organizations are doing in in Muscatine, Iowa to protect personal information. For example, city hall is shredding like crazy:

MuscatineJournal.com:

"...City Hall, schools

David Casstevens, director of Administrative Services for the city of Muscatine, says there are three paper shredders in City Hall, where shredding receipts and personnel information has been practiced for at least five years.

Nearly every county office has at least one shredder. Check stubs and vendor claims are destroyed after two years; primary and general election materials are destroyed after 22 months; and city, school board, and county supervisor election results are destroyed after six months.

Current school records are all that's stored at the respective schools in the Muscatine School District. Superintendent Tom Williams says that space for records is limited and older records are stored on microfiche and CDs. The paper copies are stored in bins until June when staff can begin to shred them.

Muscatine Power & Water, does its own shredding and also uses a boiler in the power plant to burn some of its sensitive documents, according to MPW spokesman Gary Wieskamp. He said accounts payable and invoices are recorded on microfilm...."

The article discusses the local police, a number of local merchants and other organizations. Interesting to see a community paper take such an interest.

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