Couple things...

First of all, I would expect that the WY State Archives, the State
Archivist, or the Secretary of State's office (or whatever elected
government official ultimately has responsibility for the State's
records) would take responsibility for responding to this bill. I would
tend to think that a bunch of email from out of state records managers
would have little bearing on the deliberations of a state legislative
body. Certainly, local governmental officials in WY who are impacted by
the law have something to say.

Second, in reading the redraft of the law (which needs to be
proofread), I'm not quite as alarmed. I don't care for the term "latest
state of the art technology", but I can see what they are getting at.
They just wrote the inserts in a manner that probably says what they
intend, but likely could be phrased more broadly and accurately. Having
said that, the law still provides controls. The "director" of public
records is accountable to approve the means of conversion and must
write rules to govern the process. My experience is that the rules and
regulations ultimately contain the meat of how things get done in
government, not the statute. The statute merely opens the door for more
permissive regulations to be written.

Third, while shifting governmental records away from microfilm
technology tends to give me the willies (I've always been a fan of
microfilm for preserving historical records merely because a strong
magnifying glass and a light source allow you to retrieve information),
the reality is that many organizations would like to be able to do more
with public records from an accessibility standpoint. They would like
to make records available over the Internet and having records in
electronic form makes that possible. I'm also reasonably certain that
there are municipalities in Wyoming that are putting into place records
management systems for public safety, which effectively convert most
paper reports into electronic documents. In my view, the onus is on the
State Archives to write reasonable rules that allow the use of
electronic record-keeping systems, but still protect the integrity nad
future availability of the information. A key point here is ensuring
the future migration of the information as technology evolves.

As we know, microfilm is not a perfect medium of storage and is often
difficult to integrate with today's records creation systems (how are
you going to microfilm the contents of a GIS system?).

So is this the worst EVER? Hardly. If the legislation disbanded the
State Archives and put all governmental records disposition into the
hands of elected officials, I'd say we all had something to scream
about. As long as the rules are well-written, I think the people of
Wyoming can rest easy. I'm not going to downplay the potential
stupidity of gullible local officials, but law or no law, they might
still make bad decisions regarding their records.

Patrick Cunningham, CRM

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