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Creating and Maintaining Proper Systems for Electronic Record Keeping

Abstract

National Electronic Commerce Co-ordinating Council

I. Introduction: Accounting for Electronic Records in E-Government

II. Identifying the Risks and Benefits of Moving From Paper to Electronic Transactions and Records

III. Identifying the Requirements, the Records, and Their Value

IV. Managing the Risks of Moving to Electronic Records

V. Conclusion

VI. References and Resources
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IV. Managing the Risks of Moving to Electronic Records

Disposition of records

Disposition is the final chapter in the records life cycle, resulting in destruction of the records or their permanent, archival retention. Most states have laws establishing a process that determines which records are to be destroyed and how long those records must be kept before destruction. Often the laws delegate this authority to the state archives or a records management program. These laws apply to all records, regardless of format. It is important to follow the legal process to determine a retention period (called scheduling) and to obtain authorization to dispose of records. Most records laws contain a penalty for unauthorized destruction of records.

The records retention laws are intended to protect information of lasting value to the state. Of greater importance to the agency, the ability to demonstrate that records are destroyed according to the law and routine procedure is a defense against charges of spoliation or tampering with evidence in the case of litigation.

Destruction of records requires that all copies of a record be destroyed. Designing procedures to delete records must address not only the record keeping system, but copies of data kept for backups, disaster recovery, and the like. System designers should also work with risk managers, archivists, and business managers to assess the need to completely erase the data by overwriting it to make recovery unfeasible. Media containing records with private or confidential information should be sanitized as part of destruction.

Records destruction should be coordinated with backup and storage procedures so that deleted records are purged on a regular basis. Ideally, backup and disaster recovery copies should not be kept more than a month to ensure that deleted records do not survive much longer than their official date of destruction.

If records are to be kept permanently, then it is essential to develop a strategy to preserve those records. The challenges of long-term storage of electronic records are compounded when planning to keep records forever. Possible strategies include:
  • Archives may negotiate with agencies to maintain records in the agency, rather than transfer those records to the archives. This approach is based on the assumption that the same process to migrate active records in the series can be used to migrate archival records from that series. Because of the caveats for long-term preservation, not all archivists believe this ‘post- custodial’ approach to archives will succeed in the long term.
  • Agencies may have records exported to a standard, well-established file format that have several commercially available applications capable of viewing those records (packaging) before transfer. Packaging electronic records provides a self-contained electronic document that has all the contextual clues of the system from which it was generated. The goal of packaging is to minimize the long-term costs associated with maintaining the software for retrieval and display by using file formats that are based on open source design, specification and algorithms. While ASCII text files lack flair, they are a good example of a standard open source format that has proven the test of time. Likewise, technologies such as XML hope to provide the same transportable package of the electronic record preserved over time. This approach will require archives to address issues of media degradation and obsolescence. If the records are in a marked up format, it will be necessary to ensure that viewers remain functional. (With XML, that may require the preservation of externally referenced components, such as Document Type Definitions and style sheets). Archives will also have to address the problem of indexing the records for access. However, it will not be necessary to worry about the more complicated problems of proprietary applications or changes in operating systems.
  • Until standards for electronic records preservation are developed, exporting records to computer output microfilm (COM) remains a viable option for preserving archival e-records.9 As with long-term records, if the loss of the records would put the state at significant risk, agencies should consider transferring these records to a durable medium as a backup. For example, loss of birth and death records or of property records could result in loss of many individuals' rights.
Not all records are equal candidates for transfer to film or electronic preservation. Transfer to COM makes little sense if the ability to analyze or manipulate the records electronically is the basis of their value. However, archival use of records often differs from their primary use by the creating agency and the loss of functionality may not be significant.

The decision to preserve records electronically or on a durable medium is not an either/or proposition. A decision to preserve records exclusively in electronic format should be made in consultation with the archives professional responsible for their preservation.
9 Many archivists believe that in the absence of tested best practices for preserving records in electronic format, COM remains the best – if imperfect – solution for permanent, archival preservation of electronic records because COM’s accessibility does not require future resources that may not be available.