I won't weigh in on the "Official Records" part of the debate beyond
agreeing that if you have "Official" records than you must have "Unofficial"
records and I don't even want to go there.  

But I would like to address John Dowling's "heresy".  I agree with most of
what the other John wrote and offer the caveat that I haven't been involved
in the management of a document management system since the 1990s.  However,
the system installed at the Virginia Retirement System in 1992 maintained
multiple "Folders" for different work processes but only one copy of the
image.  Forms, correspondence, etc. were scanned one time and "pointers"
were placed in different electronic "case folders".  When a case was closed,
the individual images ceased to be retained magnetically unless another
folder was open.  Once all folders were closed for 30 days, the image would
only reside on the optical drive.  It would have been very easy to program
the system logic to tie the retention/deletion of the image to the retention
schedules.  One image, multiple cases.  I'm hoping that the current EDMS
vendors have retained that level of functionality.  

Happy Friday to all,   
John Breeden
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804-786-0954
 
John Dowling wrote "Ok - I  maybe speaking heresy to the purists but the
notion of a single 
copy in an EDMS system (perhaps referenced in multiple ways) is 
somewhat of a dream, at least in the record-keeping systems I have seen 
to date. Let me explain...."

 

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