Can our IT department decide on its own to delete old files to free up server space?

Short answer: no. Freeing up server space is an operational goal, but deciding what may be destroyed is a governance decision. IT typically manages the storage, not the authority to dispose of the content on it.

Why “old” Does Not Mean “deletable”

A file’s age tells you little about whether it can be deleted. What matters is whether the file is a record, and if so, what its approved retention period is. Records are kept for as long as they have legal, business, fiscal, or historical value — and that period is set by a retention schedule, not by how full a drive is.

Many old files still carry obligations. They may be subject to:

• An active legal hold that suspends all destruction, regardless of age or schedule.
• Statutory or regulatory retention requirements (tax, employment, contractual, and similar).
• Pending or foreseeable litigation, audit, or public-records requests.

Deleting files that fall into any of these categories — even unintentionally — can expose an organization to spoliation findings, penalties, and loss of evidence.

Who Actually Decides

Sound information governance separates roles:

• Records and IG staff define retention and disposition rules through an approved schedule.
• Legal/compliance identify holds and regulatory obligations.
• IT executes disposition once it is properly authorized, and documents what was destroyed and when.

In other words, disposition should be a controlled, scheduled, and auditable process — not an ad hoc cleanup. ISO 15489 frames this as managing records through their full lifecycle under defined policies and accountability, rather than relying on individual judgment calls.

A Better Way to Free Space

If storage is the real problem, the right path is to apply the retention schedule systematically: identify records eligible for disposition, confirm no holds apply, obtain authorization, destroy them by an approved method, and log the action. Non-records and true duplicates can often be cleared more freely, but that determination still belongs to governance, not to whoever needs the space.

If your organization lacks a current retention schedule, that gap — not the deletion itself — is the first thing to fix.

Learn more in our information governance topic hub.