Dwight, I, respectfully, disagree about the scrubbing of metadata being akin
to erasing signatures from contracts. The metadata is applied by the
application through the process of drafting a document. It is not something
the user consciously is adding.  So, I’m not sure scrubbing metadata
violates fundamental records principals of integrity & authenticity. I do
see your point and think there is some validity to it. (Thanks for brining
that up, this is the whole purpose for raising the discussion). However,
again, the metadata in question is not something the business process chose
to put in place. It is something which happens through the normal course of
the application or systems.  If the policy were to only store pdf/A
documents as records and all born digital (word processing documents) needed
to be saved to pdf/A format then you would be losing much of this associated
metadata.

As Jesse points out, the question is “..what part of an electronic record is
the record?” If the metadata is the record (or is clearly a significant part
of the record) then there is a need to retain it. If, however, the record
consists only of the text on the page and the underlying metadata is not
“record material” then why retain it? Of course there can be some serious
questions about when you will know what is record worthy and when you will
know that. Often hind sight will prove something to be record worthy when at
the time the user thought it only good for the waste bin.

I absolutely agree that the practice of scrubbing metadata with the sole
purpose of eliminating litigation risks can be perceived to raise some red
flags. On the other hand, if there is no pending litigation, what is wrong
with getting rid of information when there are no legal, operational or
historical requirements  to retaining it? Isn’t that what your records
retention schedule is supposed to be doing? Reducing risk through the
elimination of information which is no-longer necessary?

I guess like many things, it depends on the situation for each organization.
There will be some, where the retention of the metadata is the expected
process because it provides valuable information about the development of
the document, whereas there will be other organizations where the opposite
is true and the final content of the document is all that matters and the
organization wants to not leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs about how it
got to that state. Each organization will need to make its own decision,
bearing in mind, the legal requirements, one of which may be certain case
law stating metadata must be produced in a lawsuit under certain
circumstances, and your in ability to do so may lead to consequences.

(fascinating discussion all around)

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