Trends (and Some Issues) in Electronic Records Management William Saffady, Professor College of Information and Computer Science Long Island University

Important characteristics of electronic records  Contains machine-readable rather than human-readable information  Information originates as electronic signal  Any type of information  Quantitative data  Character-coded text  Images  Sound  Electronically encoded: digital or analog

Important characteristics of electronic records  Originating devices  Computers of all types  Scientific and medical instrumentation  Video recorders  Audio recorders  Obsolete devices  Physical forms  Magnetic media  Optical media  Other

Issues and Concerns  Growth of electronic records  Quantity: paper vs. electronic records  The cause: proliferation of information processing technology: computers, storage, software  E-business and E-government initiatives  Importance of electronic records  Many support mission-critical applications  Computers automate most important activities, store most valuable information  Computer records more complete than source documents

Issues and Concerns  Inadequate controls for creation, storage, retention  Computers are commonplace but operational guidelines are rare  Many records management decisions guided by user discretion  Information redundancy  Same information in electronic and non-electronic formats -- the problem of “official copies”  Problems of space, control, coordination of retention actions

Issues and Concerns  System dependence  Hardware  Software  Media stability  Data migration requirements  Periodic recopying of media  Periodic conversion of records to new file formats  Remote access: an advantage and a security problem

Issues and Concerns  E-discovery issues  The duty to preserve evidence in all formats  Amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure  Broadens discovery process to include records of all types  Electronic records must be produced in usable format  Attorneys must understand electronic recordkeeping infrastructure  Accessibility of backup copies, archived copies, legacy data

Some Ideas and Trends  The declining cost of storage  Do retention guidelines play an important role in cost reduction?  Are retention actions cost-justifiable?  Concept of Total Cost of Ownership for electronic storage -- is purging more expensive than keeping?  Cost consequences of indefinite retention beyond storage costs  The problem of and fileshares  Problem of discretionary retention  Does a uniform maximum retention period make sense?

Some Ideas and Trends  Electronic records as official copies  Definition  Advantages: compactness, reusability, backup  Complications for long retention  Data migration requirements  Keeping legacy systems in service  “Born digital” vs. conversion of paper records to digital formats for retention

Some Ideas and Trends  Software solutions  “vaults”  Records management application software  Concept -- relationship to document management software  Role of DoD STD  Preconditions for successful implementation  Retention schedules cover electronic records  File taxonomy to organize records  Document management software for active records  Automatic categorization