AFI 33-322: Records Lifecycle, Litigation Holds, and Penalties

AFI 33-322 is the Department of the Air Force instruction that governs how every official record is created, filed, protected, and eventually destroyed or transferred to the National Archives.¹ It reaches every Air Force and Space Force member, civilian employee, and contractor who touches an official record in any format, and it translates the federal recordkeeping duty in 44 U.S.C. Chapter 31 into concrete tasks, deadlines, and consequences.²

What Counts as a Record

An official record is any recorded information the Department of the Air Force makes or receives while conducting government business. Medium does not matter. Paper, database entries, files on a shared drive, documents in SharePoint or OneDrive, and email are all covered by the same rules.¹

Not everything in an office is a record. Nonrecord materials include library and museum items kept only for reference or exhibit, extra copies preserved only for convenience, and publication stocks like catalogs or trade journals that require no action.³ Personal papers are a separate category again, and the instruction requires them to be identified and kept separate from government records so the two do not get mixed up.

The distinction matters at the moment of filing. Nonrecord material can be disposed of without following the disposition schedule; official records cannot. Getting the label wrong at creation either loses a record that should have been kept or clutters the filing system with material that never belonged in it.

Who Is Responsible

AFI 33-322 builds a chain of accountability from the installation down to the individual office.

The Records Manager (RM) runs the installation’s program, trains and assists subordinate offices, keeps custody of staged records awaiting transfer, and stays accountable for records sent to Federal Records Centers.¹
The Chief of the Office of Record (COR) is the head of the office where records live. The COR holds physical and legal custody, approves the office’s records inventory, and is responsible for ensuring the office creates only necessary records and preserves the ones that matter.
The Functional Area Records Manager or Unit Records Manager (FARM/URM) is the day-to-day point of contact inside a unit or functional area, helping the COR build file maintenance and disposition plans and making sure required training gets done.

Beyond those roles, every person who creates, receives, or handles an official record shares the duty to protect it. Commanders carry an added obligation: records with sensitive, classified, or Privacy Act information must be properly marked and controlled from creation through final disposition.¹

The Records Lifecycle and the Disposition Schedule

Every record moves through three stages: creation or receipt, active maintenance and use, and disposition. Filing is not discretionary. Each office of record must build a File Plan that groups records by office function and maps directly to the Records Disposition Schedule (RDS), so that retention and final action are already determined when a document is filed. The COR reviews and approves the File Plan annually.

The RDS is the single source of truth for retention periods and final actions.⁴ Retention varies widely by record type. A supervisor’s copy of an office personnel file is destroyed one year after the employee separates or transfers; long-term contents of an Official Personnel Folder can be retained for up to 129 years; emergency planning files documenting agency-wide continuity of government operations are permanent and transfer to the National Archives 20 years after cutoff.⁵ Applying the RDS correctly is the core skill the program demands.

Temporary records are staged and then destroyed once retention runs out. Permanent records leave Air Force custody through accessioning, the formal transfer of legal ownership to the National Archives. Beginning July 1, 2024, all legal transfers of permanent records to NARA must be in electronic format to the fullest extent possible, regardless of the original medium.¹

The Air Force Records Information Management System (AFRIMS) is the mandatory system for tracking all of this. It provides online access to the official RDS, tracks physical and electronic records through their lifecycle, logs the location and disposition status of each records series, and supports the staging and transfer of permanent records to Federal Records Centers.

Email, Cloud Storage, and Other Electronic Records

Electronically stored information is held to the same standard as any other record. There is no lighter rule for digital files, whether they sit in a database, on a shared drive, in a cloud tenant, or in an email inbox.¹

For email, federal agencies can use the Capstone approach developed by NARA. Rather than asking every employee to categorize each message, Capstone categorizes email by the role of the account holder. Email of designated senior “Capstone officials” is permanent, with retention periods between 15 and 30 years before transfer to the National Archives. Email from other employees is temporary and deleted after 7 years, and email from support and administrative positions can be deleted after 3 years.⁶ An agency has to get NARA approval before implementing Capstone.

For working files, the Air Force directs personnel to keep nonrecord materials on government-approved cloud solutions such as Microsoft Teams file shares, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive rather than local shared drives. When records live in cloud environments run by a third-party contractor, the contract must let the Air Force export those records into a new system at the end of the contract and transfer any permanent records to the National Archives on schedule. Unscheduled electronic records cannot be disposed of until NARA approves a schedule covering them.¹

Privacy Act and PII Requirements

Records with personally identifiable information or Privacy Act data carry an added layer of duties. Commanders ensure these records are marked from creation through final disposition, and several specific protections apply.

Files and folders holding Privacy Act data must be protected with passwords, group permissions, encryption, or least-privilege access before filing. Commanders assign read-only access limited to personnel with a demonstrated need to know.
Records inventory titles and folder names must not contain PII, classified data, or other sensitive information. Electronic folders that hold sensitive records, however, must show the appropriate security marking in the folder title itself.
Sensitive unclassified information, including Privacy Act material, must be destroyed using methods approved for classified information, or by any means that make the information difficult to recognize or reconstruct.
Commanders must describe how a Privacy Act system of records can be identified to the base records manager and base privacy manager in their records management plan.

Electronic records containing PII also require data-at-rest encryption on top of the access controls above.¹ Health-related records that qualify as electronic protected health information carry separate HIPAA safeguards that run alongside the Air Force’s rules.

Litigation Holds and Records Freezes

Normal disposition stops when litigation, a formal investigation, or a legal discovery request is pending. The Managing Attorney issues a Search Request and Litigation Hold document to the Air Force Records Officer, the servicing legal office, and the affected individuals or units.¹ The moment the hold issues, all disposition and destruction schedules for potentially relevant information are suspended. A records freeze works on the same principle for records whose scheduled destruction has been temporarily halted because of special circumstances.

Once a hold or freeze is in place, anyone with potentially relevant records must preserve them immediately. Paper goes into clearly labeled folders or containers in a secure location. Electronic records must be segregated and stored in a way that preserves the native file format and leaves metadata unaltered. No one may modify or destroy potentially relevant material until the hold is lifted, and the base records manager runs the local search, collection, and preservation. When the Managing Attorney determines the hold is no longer needed, the Air Force Records Officer notifies the records professionals involved, and the material returns to normal disposition under the RDS.

Training, Staff Assistance Visits, and AFRIMS

Compliance runs on mandatory training and regular inspections. Everyone who handles official records completes initial and recurring training tied to their role. Newly appointed records professionals at the installation level must complete initial training within a defined period after taking the position; local supplements often set that deadline at 30 to 60 days depending on the role.

Records Managers verify compliance through Staff Assistance Visits on each Office of Record at least every 24 months.¹ A visit checks whether the office is following its File Plan, applying the RDS correctly, and meeting marking and protection requirements for sensitive records. Findings and corrective actions are documented and tracked in AFRIMS. Most problems surface here. An office that has been filing under the wrong disposition schedule for two years will not discover that on its own.

Penalties for Unauthorized Destruction or Removal

A poor inspection score is not the ceiling of the consequences. Military members who violate AFI 33-322 can be prosecuted under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for failure to obey a lawful regulation, with punishment as a court-martial may direct.⁷ Civilian employees face administrative disciplinary action.

Both military and civilian personnel are also subject to federal criminal law. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2071, anyone who willfully conceals, removes, or destroys a federal record can be fined and imprisoned for up to three years. A person who does this while having custody of the record faces the same penalty plus forfeiture of office and disqualification from holding any federal office in the future.⁸ Federal law also requires agency heads to notify the Archivist of the United States whenever actual, impending, or threatened unlawful destruction of records comes to their attention, and to work with the Attorney General to recover records that have been unlawfully removed.²

1
Department of the Air Force. AFI 33-322 Records Management and Information Governance Program
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 44 USC Ch. 31 Records Management by Federal Agencies
3
eCFR. 36 CFR 1222.14 What Are Nonrecord Materials
4
Air Force. Records Disposition Schedule
5
Department of Defense Executive Services Directorate. OSD Records Disposition Schedules Series 200 Management and Operations
6
National Archives and Records Administration. General Records Schedule 6.1 Email and Other Electronic Messages
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 892 Art 92 Failure to Obey Order or Regulation
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2071 Concealment Removal or Mutilation Generally