ARTICLE

23.

Section 1 - Official Records and Files

No personnel record may be collected, maintained, or retained except in accordance with law, governmentwide regulations, Department regulations, and this Agreement or its Supplements. All personnel records are confidential and shall be known or viewed by officials only with a legitimate need to know for the performance of their duties; they must be retained in a secure location. Employees shall be advised of the nature and purpose of their Official Personnel Folder (OPF) and its location.

Section 2 - Access to Records

A. During normal duty hours, employees and/or their representative(s) designated in writing, shall have the right to examine records personally identified to the employee (i.e., OPF, EEO, evidence files, appeal and grievance records), position descriptions , and classification standards during normal duty hours. Employees, or their representative(s) designated in writing, may receive at no cost copies of personally identified records which have not been previously furnished. Additional copies will be provided; however, there may be a charge in accordance with the Department fee schedules in effect at the time of request.

B. Employees' access to their own medical records maintained by the Department may be refused only if, in the sole judgment of a health care professional, their disclosure would be harmful to the mental or physical health of the individual. In such cases, the medical record(s) may be released only to an employee's representative designated in writing. There may be instances where the Department health care official may encourage the release of medical information to another health care professional.

C. The employee shall have the right to prepare and enter a concise statement of disagreement with any document filed on the left (temporary) side of the OPF. Nothing in this Section shall negate an employee's right to grieve any matter.

D. Access to personnel records of the employee by the employee and/or the designated representative will be granted when requested if such records are maintained on the facility where the employee is located. If the records are not so maintained, the appropriate Administrative Office will immediately initiate action to obtain the records from their location within three (3) working days of the request and make them available to the employee and/or designated representative.

Section 3 - Outdated Records

A. All official personnel records shall be purged and information disposed of in accordance with appropriate records control schedules.

B. When OPFs are purged, personal materials provided by the employee shall be returned to the employee (e.g., transcripts, certificates).

C. Each facility will maintain a system of follow-up to assure that any written counseling, disciplinary, or similar action with a time limit on it is removed on the proper date and returned to the employee.

D. If any outdated or unauthorized material is accidentally left in a file, it may not be used to support any personnel action detrimental to the employee.

Section 4 - Supervisory Notes

A. Individual files on each employee not approved by the Department as an official system of records will not be kept by management officials at any level.

B. Subject to Paragraph C, if supervisors make a personal decision to keep notes on employees, the notes or files: (1) must be absolutely uncirculated-- they cannot be reviewed by anyone else (this includes secretaries, other supervisors, or management officials) and (2) must be maintained in secure fashion in order to prevent disclosure.

C. Supervisory notes may only be used to support any action detrimental to an employee if such note(s) have been shown to the employee at the earliest available time after the entry was made and a copy provided to the employee. Once an employee has received a copy of the supervisory note(s), the note(s) can be provided to an appropriate management official with a legitimate need to know for the performance of their duties.

D. The time frames for retaining supervisory notes will be up to six (6) months, unless used in a personnel action.