Corporate governance, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act and the legislative requirement that corporations have to save both electronic and paper documents for a set period of time have been hammered to death in the press.
Everybody now knows they have to keep business records in specific, legal (free from tampering) formats for a certain number of years and that there are also legal requirements stipulating the maximum amount of time a company may retain data before it has to be destroyed. These are not issues to be assigned to a junior clerk; rather, they need to be addressed at the highest levels of management.
Electronic media is changing rapidly; it seems to have its own Moore`s Law driving it to faster, smaller technologies.
Paul Mullon is marketing director for Metrofile.
While the conversation continues about the legalities and who needs to store what, where it should be kept and for how long, it seems few people have stopped to ask one important question: How?
The "how" is a vital consequence of legislation and demands careful consideration from management. Keeping documents for 100 years or more is not an impossible or even an extremely difficult task. However, these records need to be kept in a media and format which will last for the appropriate duration, and, more importantly, which will be retrievable and readable in 100 years.
With the rapid changes in technology, what media do firms need to select for their storage purposes? Is an insurance company going to be able to read a life assurance contract stored on tape in 40 years time when the assured dies?
Electronic media is changing rapidly; it seems to have its own Moore`s Law driving it to faster, smaller technologies. For example, most people who have been using a computer for a few years will be able to look in a box or cupboard and find backups they did years ago on a 5.25-inch floppy disk.
Who, today, still has the drives to read these disks?
Media degradation a reality
Technically, the data has been stored and it still exists, but what good is it if nobody can retrieve it? Even in the unlikely event that someone has a working floppy drive, is the actual media still of a high enough quality to be read?
Media degradation is a reality as media are only designed to last for a certain period. Then there`s the evolution of software. Do you still have a program that can interpret the format in which the old data was saved?
Saving data for five years is one thing, but for long-term storage, these issues need to be addressed. Fortunately, there are ways to get around these problems.
One solution is to keep archived material in paper format. Keep all current business records in electronic format so that the company can take advantage of the benefits of instant retrieval, but don`t destroy the original. Send it off-site for long-term storage. If it is needed 100 years later, it can be scanned in on demand using the imaging technology of the time and imported into the business application currently in use.
Another "old" stalwart that never went away is about to make a comeback. Microfilm can be kept safely for years with simple retrieval technology that has stood the test of time.
These two options require little effort, but care must be taken in the storing process and in recording where the documents have been stored.
What point is there in storing anything if you are unable to find it when it is needed?
The third option is to implement an ongoing technology migration plan. The company can use its current technology and periodically (such as every five years) recover all long-term media from its archives, restore the data to its current systems and back it up again onto new media via the current storage platform.
This is certainly the most expensive solution in terms of infrastructure, resources and cost, but for companies determined to move to the paperless office, it may well be the only way.
How secure are you that your archived information will meet the test of time? Media, software and technology obsolescence is real and needs to be considered if companies are to meet legislative requirements.
Understanding media degradation is critical and meeting this challenge is key to staying on the right side of the law.
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