Do board meeting minutes and committee records have to be kept permanently in a federal agency?

The short answer is: it depends. Whether board meeting minutes and committee records must be kept permanently in a federal agency is determined by an approved records schedule, not by a blanket rule that all minutes are permanent.

What “permanent” means

In federal recordkeeping, every record is either permanent or temporary:

• Permanent records have enduring historical, legal, or evidential value and are eventually transferred to the National Archives for ongoing preservation.
• Temporary records are kept for a defined retention period to meet operational, legal, or accountability needs, then destroyed under authorized disposition.

The decision is documented in a schedule approved by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). No federal record may be destroyed without such authorization.

How minutes are classified

Meeting minutes and committee records are not automatically permanent. Their disposition depends on what the body does and the significance of its records:

• Minutes that capture major policy decisions, governance, or the formal actions of a principal board or senior committee are frequently scheduled as permanent because they document the agency’s mission and decisions over time.
• Minutes of routine, administrative, or short-lived committees — internal working groups, advisory subcommittees, facilities or social committees — are often temporary, with retention periods that may range from a few years to longer.

Agencies look first to NARA’s General Records Schedules (GRS), which cover common administrative records across government, and then to agency-specific schedules for mission records the GRS does not address.

What an agency should do

1. Identify the body. Determine whether it is a governing board, a statutory committee, or a routine internal group.
2. Find the applicable schedule. Check the GRS first, then your agency’s records schedule.
3. Apply the correct disposition. Mark records as permanent or temporary and track retention from the trigger event (often the close of the calendar or fiscal year).
4. Schedule the unscheduled. If no schedule covers the records, treat them as unscheduled and work with your records officer to propose a schedule to NARA — do not destroy them in the meantime.

For more on retention, scheduling, and disposition across the lifecycle, see our federal records hub.