David

Here in Sydney Australia, the NSW and Federal Evidence Acts allow for the 
production as "best evidence" documents on the medium which you normally 
use for business purposes. You must of course be able to prove in court 
the integrity of your documents, so if all your staff have graphics 
editing software, and the images are stored on a writable medium (eg hard 
discs) with no secure audit trails etc, you might be in trouble.

There are a couple of caveats: given we work in a Federation, and under a 
Common Law system, the environment is evolving. There has not yet been a 
Federal or NSW test case, and I'm not volunteering, so NSW State Records 
advises caution in destroying original documents. For this reason, we do 
not destroy anything that is contractual in nature, in case the paper 
original bearing a signature is required. That's a risk management 
decision for you. I worked some years ago with an insurance company, where 
the probability of an original signature being a factor in litigation was 
assessed as so low as to be not a factor. And anyway, we always settled 
out of court in fear of headlines like "Insurance Company Monsters Little 
Old Pensioner". 

Second caveat is that not all Australian states have brought their 
Evidence Acts into line with the Federal one, so when we do business in 
those states we need to keep in mind that they are back in the Victorian 
era and insist that paper is best evidence.

From the RM view, under the NSW State Records Act records can only be 
disposed of properly. It's a moot point in a scanning situation as to when 
something becomes a record, which gets back to the process. If you don't 
keep all the versions of an email as it floats in through firewalls, proxy 
servers etc, why do you have to keep a document as it floats in through 
the mail system, into the scanner and THEN into your DMS?

So it's all process integrity and risk management. I'm with Steve on this, 
I'd shred the lot. The rest of my organisation doesn't always agree, but 
I'm working on them, after that I'll do over State Records, and after that 
the judiciary. (just joking folks!).

So if the situation in NSW Australia is any help, that's it.

Glenn

Glenn Sanders MRMA
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Australia

These views are mine alone. They may or may not be those of any
previous or present employers or clients. I don't know. If I'd asked
and they'd agreed, I would have signed it "Harry Peck & Co and
Glenn". Or whatever. But I haven't, so I didn't.



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