Good morning,

Barbara Rake asked "does anyone have any 
documentation that they can share regarding what must be retained in hard copy for legal, regulatory or internal business process compliance."

I assume you meant "when these records have been converted to a digital format."

While there are variations in the USA from State to State, I would say there is a consensus, supported by Federal and some States' legislation, that you normally do NOT have to retain a hard copy of your records, PROVIDING they have been converted to a generally-acceptable digital format, using a process which you can document as reliable and accurate (in the context, "document" may include testifying under oath), and are stored in a fashion which ensures they are authentic. I'm sure others (John Montana, are you OK?) can contribute chapter and verse.

That said, there are two circumstances in which you may want to keep the hard copy nonetheless.

The first is if your records are very long-lived AND, in some fashion, very valuable (this is where the "Vital Records" designation comes in handy). By "long-lived" I mean with a retention exceeding 25 years.

In this case, because electronic records in any format are simply unreliable over long spans of time, keeping the hard copy makes good sense. The cost of storing the hard copy, providing your retrieval rate is low --- which should the case if you're using the electronic version --- is quite small.

You could also convert the hard copy to a reliably long-lived medium such as microfilm, but the initial cost of this conversion may be unacceptable (it's pretty low, particularly if you use the digital version of the records to create the microfilm images, but times are tight).

The other case in which you might need to keep the hard copy falls under the heading of acceptability in legal proceedings. 

While most courts in most jurisdictions will accept in evidence an electronic surrogate of the records, there are still judges who won't accept them. Lawyers with whom I have spoken about this, when I point out the existence of legislation supporting their right to use an electronic surrogate of the records, simply quote what they describe as the Number One Rule of Court Proceedings: "don't piss off the judge!"

Hope this not entirely clear answer is helpful.

Fred

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