I've been through this several times.

NSW State Records says you should in general keep the paper originals for
six months, or until your QA is complete, whichever is the longer. The QA
must include all the metadata and indexing that Larry discusses. They do
allow for shorter periods for low risk activities, so where I am the
accounts payable team scan any incoming paper invoices and we keep them for
only a few weeks - after all, if you mess up an invoice, your supplier will
be shouting at you after 30 days, and will be only too happy to send you a
copy.

They also say that when back scanning, any paper originals created prior to
2000 must not be destroyed even after scanning, at least not without
specific permission. They recently called for comments on whether they
should roll back the year 2000 restriction by another ten or twenty years.

All their good advice is here:
http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/recordkeeping/advice/digitisation/digitisation

Keep in mind too that the best way to go all electronic is to stamp out
paper at source. For example, requiring all your suppliers to submit
invoices directly into your system, or at least as PDF's, is a lot simpler
than scanning them as they come out of the mailbag.

Back to the retention, my view is that if you set up a good process, with
good controls, QA and auditability, with risks properly assessed and
mitigated as necessary, then converting something from paper to electronic
also declares the electronic version to now be THE RECORD, and you can
dispose of the hardcopy as a temporary working copy, whenever you like.
Some of us believe the NSW State Records Act allows this as 'Normal
Administrative Practice' but don't quote me.

For older material no longer part of current processes, of course you may
want or need to preserve historical artifacts on paper, vellum or stone,
but that's the province of the archivists and I'm happy to transfer the
artifacts to them so when I retire I can drag out my history degree and get
back to enjoying tactile as well as content. As a records manager I'm
concerned about content not medium, and a verifiable transfer from paper to
electronic is fine, I don't then need the paper.

Cheers

Glenn

Glenn Sanders
[log in to unmask]
Australia
0467 740 161 (new mobile number)
These views are mine alone. They may or may not be those of any
previous or present employers or clients. I don't know. If I'd asked and
they'd agreed, I would have signed it "Harry Peck and Co and Glenn".
Or whatever. But I haven't, so I didn't.


On 4 June 2014 01:35, Larry Medina <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Toner, Alex John <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >
> > Within the University Registrar's Office at the University of Pittsburgh
> > we've been implementing electronic imaging for document retention and
> > access purposes, in particular for those records requiring permanent
> > retention.
> >
> > I'm interested to know how similar conversions to document capture
> systems
> > have affected your physical retention time of the corresponding paper
> > record? For instance, a paper record for a certain term would remain
> onsite
> > for two years following the applicable term, after which it would either
> be
> > microfilmed or purged. Now, we're processing, capturing, and indexing
> > documents on a daily/weekly basis.
> >
> > It seems to me that it has become unnecessary to retain the paper copies
> > for such a long period following their electronic conversion, and I'd
> like
> > to know how others have modified their retention schedules to deal with
> > retention of hardcopy records following digitization.
> >
>
> You'll likely get a range of opinions on this from various individuals
> working in a range of industry segments, and they'll go from "discard as
> soon as you've validated capture" to "retain the source materials until
> retention is met for the information contained in them".
>
> The site Gary provided gives decent information as to some of what should
> be considered when making your decision, but your organization has to
> ultimately determine how comfortable they feel with the ability to
> persistently access any information converted to digital form, for as long
> as they are required to retain it.
>
> An important piece of the puzzle is the quality control component of
> capture and post-capture evaluation of the images AND the indexing to
> ensure content is able to be viewed and that the data captured while
> indexing is accurate. If your metadata is not entered properly, searching
> for content will be a huge problem.... the images are stored randomly on
> media (platters, tape, whatever) and you can't just hit and miss find
> things.  When paper source materials are misfiled, if they're alphabetical,
> chronological or numeric, you can search adjacent areas and typically find
> things (eventually).  You don't always have the same success rate if SMITH
> is entered as SIMTH or 12/14/2011 is entered as 12/14/2001.
>
> Another key consideration is the need for periodic sampling and review to
> ensure content captured on media remains stable.  The typical review period
> is 3-5 years, and media should be refreshed between 7-10 years.  This means
> ALL of your content with retention periods in excess of 10 years will be
> converted and/or migrated that frequently.  This helps to avoid
> obsolescence of both format and media.  This means if you have permanent
> retention content, it will need to be potentially migrated 10 or more
> times- this is NOT an inexpensive proposition, depending on how much data
> you have.   You'll need to estimate the cost of effort and materials... and
> also plan that hardware will need to be replaced periodically, most of it
> goes out of cycle every 10-15 years MAXIMUM.
>
> The source materials being maintained are typically quite stable, they
> require protection from theft, fire and environmental controls to ensure
> they remain stable.  But properly indexed and protected, if the access rate
> is low, they remain persistently accessible and relatively low cost to
> manage in a properly designed setting.
>
> In projects I've been involved in with long-term (25+ year) and permanent
> retention records, our decision has been to retain the source materials as
> the formal record until retention is met, and to use the images as
> reference copies. We also include a 'location code' as a pointer to the
> source materials with the metadata for the images, to assist in locating
> them if needed.  As a means of controlling cost for conversion and
> migration, we also segregate images of permanent records onto independent
> media from those with shorter retention periods, which reduces costs and
> facilitates the effort when conversions do happen.
>
> Larry
> [log in to unmask]
>
> --
>
>
> *Lawrence J. Medina Danville, CARIM Professional since 1972*
>
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