Managing electronic records in modern business.

TITLE: Electronic Records Retention: New Strategies far Data Life Cycle Management

AUTHORS: David O. Stephens and Roderick C. Wallace

ISBN: 1-931786-08-9

PUBLISHER: ARMA International

PUBLICATION DATE: 2003

LENGTH: 196 Pages

PRICE: $51 U.S. ($35 for ARMA members)

SOURCE: www.arma.org or 888.241.0598

Electronic Records Retention: New Strategies for Data Life Cycle Management is David Stephens' and Roderick Wallace's second book-length publication addressing the management of electronic records in modern business. Their previous work, Electronic Records Retention: An Introduction, published in 1997, served as the foundation upon which this book is based. New Strategies takes a more managerial approach in the control and disposition of electronic records and devotes more attention to developing practical electronic records policies. These differences make New Strategies a more useful tool for the records and information management (RIM) practitioner and the classroom instructor.

The first two chapters of this new volume constitute the authors' prognostications on the future domination of business and government documentation by electronic formats. The case is a familiar one: a prediction of the paperless office and the inevitable loss of culture and commerce if the management of electronic information is not aggressively and comprehensively addressed. While there is much to the plea for attention to be given to electronic records management, it is overstated. Few who work in commerce or government see the disappearance of paper as an impending state of informational evolution.

As is the case with many other chapters, this first chapter provides an interesting and useful model--this one for a general records retention policy that shows how to unify electronic and traditional record formats into a single information management policy.

Chapter 3, "Legal Issues," is one of the most interesting and timely chapters in New Strategies. The authors make the traditional case for controlling both electronic and traditional organizational records. Compliance with record creation and maintenance legislation and reducing organizations' exposure to nuisance legal actions are treated in a balanced fashion. In addition, federal records legislation such as the E-Sign Law, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are digested and analyzed in a concise and precise manner. A case study on the Enron and Arthur Andersen debacle is followed by an analytical section of lessons learned and recommendations for policies that could prevent such a debacle from occurring again.

Chapter 4 presents 10 principles for retention scheduling of electronic records. While several of the principles are primarily tactical or procedural, others are of wider or strategic importance to developing an enterprise-wide and comprehensive records management program.

The content of Chapter 5, "Computer Applications Managed by IT Departments,' helps the organizational user come to terms with the systems that are managed by installations larger than a simple unit-dedicated file server. The techniques for gaining control of mainframe applications or complex installations require both diplomatic skills and an inventory methodology, and this chapter provides a seven-step methodology to control and manage complex systems and their products.

While the authors call for retention dispositions to be approved and authorized by the operations or program manager, legal counsel, and chief fiscal officer or auditor, they find no role in the process for the corporate archivist or recording secretary. This oversight is significant and can affect the balance and authority of retention policies in government or business.

Chapter 6, "The Desktop," is brief and covers a rather small segment of electronic records created and stored on the individual personal computer. The chapter advocates essentially the arrangement and grouping of electronic documents similar to the order that one uses in paper files and considers common grouping of documents to constitute a records series, a grouping that can be disposed of in accordance with established multi-format records retention schedules.

The discipline to apply the schedule to documents stored on the computer is structured around quarterly desktop purge days. This is a rational and long-advocated method of records control at the desktop level; unfortunately, it has yet to prove itself to be successful or widely used.

In this chapter, the authors also discuss the principle of the "official" and "unofficial" record in a way that leads to confusion--if not conflict--with many state records laws and may lead to inappropriate understanding of judicial rules of evidence.

Chapter 7, "E-mail,' will be one of the most interesting sections of the book to the majority of PC users and institutional information and records managers. The remarkably short, concise chapter devotes much discussion to the critical nature of e-mail to modern business operations and the extent and consequences of its mismanagement or non-management.

Stephens and Wallace recognize that automated management functions, such as timed or volume-triggered deletions, eliminate the most important components of information management, human intelligence, and judgment. They recommend that e-mail users be made aware of sanctioned e-mail uses and the general records retention guidelines as they apply to all records, and that users apply the retention guidelines to their e-mails based on their content and appraised value to the business enterprise. This is a low-tech but rational and reasoned approach to the problem of e-mail retention. The chapter also contains a model e-mail company policy and a brief case study of corporate e-mail management.

Chapter 8, "Software Solutions" describes the evolution and convergence of automation in records and information management over the last several decades. It bases its recommendations on several federal government requirements for document management and makes a strong plea to require software solutions to electronic records and image management problems in the design and bid phase of system acquisition, not after the installation of an inadequate system.

Chapter 9, "The Web" is one of the shortest and least specific in the book. It recommends that Web page creators perform retention analysis whenever pages are created and/or revised. In addition, the authors suggest that "official records" be separated from "unofficial records" in HTML or XML and saved in a manner and format that preserves informational or evidential content and important contextual and interactive attributes. This is a simple and useful guide for those who have not given extensive thought or preparation to the preservation of corporate or institutional Web sites.

Chapters 10 and 11 introduce the problems, nature, and challenges of long-term electronic records and data preservation, and they provide some best practices that may be bridging strategies in preservation of electronic records until some true archival solutions can be developed, tested, and successfully implemented.

Chapter 11 is a digest and commentary for the portion of the international records management standard, ISO 15489-Information and Documentation--Records Management, that deals specifically with data preservation practices. In addition to a sample long-term data retention policy, this chapter presents eight best practices for electronic preservation. This is one of the most substantive chapters in the book and provides interesting, balanced commentaries on the practices that have evolved during the last three decades of thinking about and working with this problem.

The final chapter deals with practical strategies for managing data and electronic records of a transitory or temporary nature. The authors rely heavily upon staff to make informed decisions on the purging and retention of documents and information during routine annual or quarterly purge days. While the authors see that there is great promise in automated purge and retention systems in the future, the practical solution for the present lies in putting human judgment and knowledge behind the delete button of each personal computer and file server. This chapter is accompanied, as are many others, by a sample policy for the implementation of temporary records retention routines.

Well in excess of half of New Strategies consists of appendices containing the texts of U.S., Canadian, and Australian government policies, procedures, regulations, codes, and acts that play an important role in controlling electronic records creation and retention. The book also contains a very useful and thorough glossary of computer- and electronic information-related terms and a lengthy bibliography.

New Strategies is immensely useful in ways that more than compensate for its shortcomings and deficiencies. For the majority of practitioners trying to get a handle on how to begin the process of getting their electronic records and information under control, there is no comparable volume.

Michael E. Holland, CA, is the Director of the University Archives for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Interim Head of the University Libraries Special Collections Department. He may be contacted at [e-mail].