Most local companies have not even considered the magnitude of the storage implications of the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act and many will have to play serious catch-up if they have any hope of meeting its requirements by the required deadline.
This Act has brought with it many a conundrum for local businesses, which have been slow to understand the realities of what needs to be done to comply.
"By now companies should already have done a full gap analysis if they want to meet the deadline," says Tim Schumann, group executive: technology infrastructure at Business Connexion (formerly Comparex Africa).
"The government is driving this process to ensure that we`re in line, in time with the global market. They mean business when they set penalties of fines of up to R10 million or 15 years in jail," says Schumann.
In terms of the Act, companies have to retain any record of business commitments for up to five years after the fact, as well as employee`s contractual information and related matters for up to four years after termination of employment.
"Early indications are that most companies will need to increase their electronic storage capacity," he says, "but the main emphasis will have to be on retrieval methods as, in terms of the Act, documents have to be easily retrievable."
The Act requires documents to be produced immediately if called for, and this will mean a solid document management system. Companies must also prove that once stored, documents have not been tampered with.
"As storing documents in the physical world is now becoming cost prohibitive when compared to electronic storage," says Schumann, "and electronic retrieval is vastly quicker, we`ll see a migration from paper-based storage to electronic storage.
"With today`s technology it simply makes the best business sense," he says.
There are three phases to this approach: scanning documents, creating a storage solution, typically a storage area network (SAN) and auditing/certifying the integrity of the data. And companies will have to look at their network bandwidth to cope with the increased volume of traffic.
Schumann says the sheer volume of work required to comply with the Act is still totally under-realised. Companies must give serious thought to how they intend to meet the requirements and then act as a matter of urgency.
"If you haven`t started yet, then look for outside help," says Schumann, "there are companies such as Business Connexion who have been providing these solutions for some time now, including, most importantly, solutions such as auditing and storage facilities."
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