In the United States, the digital signatures in global and national commerce act authorized the use of electronic records in virtually all situations. Thus, to the extent you have scanned a record, the scanned copy can serve as the official copy for all regulatory and legal purposes. A great many organizations use images as the official record, and there's a great deal of case law going back many years authorizing and ratifying the use of images and other digital records in litigation. Note, however, that this is not necessarily the case everywhere else in the world. Some places still like paper, and other places require the image to conform to specific technical specifications such as digital notarizations, in order to be legally compliant and admissible in court. So, if you're not in the United States, you're advised to check local law prior to relying upon scanned records as your official records.
I think that to some extent this discussion also addresses the prior discussion of destroying paper records after imaging. Generally speaking, in the United States the image can serve as the record so destruction of the original immediately thereafter is unobjectionable from a legal compliance standpoint; but that's not to say it's always necessarily a good idea. For your average business record, say an accounts receivable invoice, there's probably no objection whatsoever, but sometimes, even when the image is perfectly legal for all purposes, people expect to see some sort of wet-signed paper original. Obama's birth certificate is a good example of that. The digital record just didn't satisfy some folks, they wanted to see a paper original, even though the digital record was clearly a completely legal document. Now if only we knew what really happened to Tupac and Biggie.
Best regards,
John
John Montaņa
Montaņa & Associates
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On Sep 14, 2011, at 10:02 AM, Michele Bernard wrote:
> Hello,
> can anyone help me with that?
> The question I have been asked is do we have to maintain hard copies of HR
> files If we image the files and store the images appropriately do we have to
> keep the hard copy?
> can anyone tell me if a scan copy is considered a legal record for canadian
> judges.
>
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