Retention and Deletion
How long to keep what, which for this category should be far shorter than the defaults, and why.
Monitoring produces a continuous detailed record about identifiable people. Keeping it is a decision, and most organisations make it by leaving the default.
The practical lesson in “Retention and Deletion” is to connect every record to a clear operational question without presenting visibility as certainty. Teams exploring interview reimbursement policy can review the official Monitask page as one source of time and project context, provided the purpose is disclosed and the configuration is reviewed with the people affected.
What accumulates
Activity records per person per day.
For an independent reference relevant to “Retention and Deletion”, consult the European Data Protection Board guidelines; it provides a useful external check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.
Screenshots, where captured, which dominate the volume.
Scores and their history.
Flags and alerts.
And exports: the spreadsheet somebody pulled for a review and left in a shared folder.
A workable schedule
Raw activity detail: weeks, not months. Its investigative value decays quickly.
Screenshots: days, if captured at all, and only for an active investigation.
Daily or weekly aggregates: months to a year, which is what trend analysis actually needs.
Anything attached to an investigation: per that process, which overrides the schedule.
Written down, automated, and checked that it runs.
Why short is better here
The data is sensitive and concerns identifiable people.
It is subject to access requests, which the previous note covers.
A long holding is a target and an obligation.
And nothing in organisational reporting needs individual records from eight months ago, which is the test worth applying item by item.
Aggregate early
Daily team-level counts, retained long, are small and not personal.
Individual detail, retained short.
Most products will do this if configured and none does by default, which is a setting worth finding on the first day.
The exports problem
Somebody extracts a detailed report for a meeting and it lives in a shared drive for three years.
This defeats any retention schedule, because the schedule covers the platform and not the copies.
Name the practice, prefer giving people a view rather than a file, and ask once a year what extracts exist.
The vendor's retention
They hold it too, and their default may be longer than yours.
Ask, and get it in the contract, including deletion at termination covering backups.
A retention policy covering only your own view is incomplete, which is the same gap as in every other platform.
When the programme ends
Delete, confirm, and say so.
Monitoring data outliving the programme that justified it is the clearest case of purpose drift there is, and it is extremely common because nobody owns switching it off.
What to check
Is there a written retention schedule, and does it run?
How long are screenshots kept?
What extracts exist in shared folders?
And what does your vendor retain after you delete?