Ellie raises an interesting point about other EDRMS products and the link
between creation and retention rules.  In the digital world, where
containers (if they exist) are a virtual (and visual) construct, how do you
aggregate electronic documents in a way for disposal purposes?

Date created, or date last modified, seems the logical answer, but what is
the 'last action' in an electronic aggregation?  It reminds me of the
expression 'herding cats'.

Another well-known (in Australia at least) EDRMS product that I know very
well has a related problem as follows.  This problem exists because the
product was built around the paper world paradigm, in which the 'last
updated' date on the (paper) file was the date used for 'from last action',
usually the date when the paper file moved from one location to another and
the location was updated.

The problem is as follows:

- Electronic documents are added to a all-digital container.  Those
documents record the date created, date registered, date modified, as
expected.
- Retention rules are set on the container.  Retention triggers on the
container are based on date created, date updated, date closed.
- However, the triggers for the retention rules are based on what happens
to the container, not the contained documents.  For example, when a
document is viewed, edited or even added to the container, the date updated
on the container does not change.  So, the triggers for the container are
not set off by anything that happens with the documents.
- The only way to get around this problem was to use one of the dates on
the container, or to create a user defined field and update that date using
a script that runs on a regular basis by looking for the date any document
in the aggregation was last updated.  (This raised the question as to
whether 'date viewed' was an action).
- The alternative was to base retention triggers on one of the dates
(created, modified, closed) on the container, but this leads to the
potential problem that the last action on an electronic document could take
place a moment before the date the container was closed.

Date last modified on electronic records seems the logical 'last action'
for a trigger, but how do we get all these digital cats lined up in the
container for disposal?  Not necessarily as easy as it sounds.  'Date
everyone lost interest' might be a better trigger, based on the last date
anything was recorded in the record's audit trail.

Andrew Warland
Information Architect
Uniting Care NSW.ACT
Sydney, Australia

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 1:43 AM, Ellie Kim <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> To add to Andrew Warland's comment which I completely agree, this creation
>

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