ELECTRONIC RECORDS MANAGEMENT IN VERMONT
INTRODUCTION TO MANAGING AND PRESERVING ELECTRONIC RECORDS
2002 Municipal E-Government
Mini-Conference
5/24/02
Presenters:
Gregory Sanford, Vermont State Archivist
& Christine O’Gorman, Center for Rural Studies
1. Vermont
Law
a. What’s
a Record?
“As used in this subchapter, ‘public
record’ or ‘public document’ means all papers, documents, machine readable
materials or any other written or recorded matters, regardless of their
physical form or characteristics, that are produced or acquired in the course
of agency business. Individual salaries and benefits of and salary schedules
relating to elected or appointed officials and employees of public agencies
shall not be exempt from public inspection and copying.” 1 V.S.A. §317(b)
b. What’s
an Electronic Record?
An electronic record falls under the
above definition as a “machine readable material . . . regardless of . . .
physical form or characteristics.”
c. Record
Formats
“Standard formats for copies of public
records shall be as follows: for copies in paper form, a photocopy of a paper
public record or a hard copy print-out of a public record maintained in
electronic form; for copies in electronic form, the format in which the record
is maintained. Any format other than the formats described in this subsection
is a nonstandard format.” 1 V.S.A.
§316(h)
d. Availability
in Electronic Format
“If an agency maintains public records
in an electronic format, nonexempt public records shall be available for
copying in either the standard electronic format or the standard paper format,
as designated by the party requesting the records. An agency may, but is not
required to, provide copies of public records in a nonstandard format, to
create a public record or to convert paper public records to electronic
format.” 1 V.S.A. §316(i)
e. Retention/Disposition
Schedules
i)
3 V.S.A. §§218-219 and 22 V.S.A §§453-457 require all
state government agencies, departments, divisions and local government entities
to manage, preserve, and destroy their records according to Public Records
guidelines.
ii) The
Division of Public Records has published the Retention Time-Table for Municipal Records
(http://www.bgs.state.vt.us/gsc/pubrec/infospec/schedules/municipal.pdf), which
describes records common to Vermont municipal offices and how long each type of
record must be retained. There is no distinction between electronic records and
paper records. The Website also includes
a list of non-records; that is, records with little or no evidentiary value and
thus eligible for destruction without a specific Disposition Order.
iii) The
Public Records Advisory Board has determined that records with a retention
requirement of 10 years or more cannot be maintained solely in electronic
format – there must be a back-up in some other format (paper,
microfilm, etc.). This follows models
from other states and is designed to allowed us time to determine the costs and
risks associated with preserving permanent records exclusively as digital
images.
2. Examples
of Electronic Records
a. Word
Processing Documents. These include meeting agendas and minutes,
correspondence, reports, etc.
b. Spreadsheets.
These might include dog registration information, budget documents, statistical
documents, etc.
c. Databases.
These include NEMRC data, data maintained in other applications, and “home
grown” databases that you create (Access, Filemaker, etc.).
d. E-mail.
All e-mail messages that are “produced or acquired in the course of [municipal]
business” are public records. This is a very broad definition (and it doesn’t
matter whether the messages were sent by, received by, or maintained on
computers at Town Hall or on home computers). Courts around the coutnry treat
e-mail as publlic records. SOS draft e-mail policy.
e. Websites.
When materials are posted to a municipal website, and the materials qualify as
records, and the materials have not already been adequately captured in an
agency recordkeeping system, then the municipality must take steps to establish
a linkage between the website and a municipal recordkeeping system and transfer
the records into the recordkeeping system. publication v. record; move toward
transactional records.
3. Why
Are Electronic Records Special?
a. Unlike
paper records, electronic records don’t survive by accident. and again, don't
confuse the record with the media. example of 5 1/4" disk; you don't care
if a cd lasts a hundred years; the hardware and software necessary to retrieve
the record won't.
b. Hardware
& software dependent (Some 1970s NASA satellite photography files are now
unreadable) Only example we have of
other machine-readable records is audio tapes (Legislative tape example)
c. Recorded
on impermanent media (Viking Mission to Mars tapes are decomposing) teenagers
and CDs; CD fungus--
i)
temperature
ii) water
iii) magnetism
(electrical fields)
iv) hardware/software
changes (remember eight-tracks, Betamax, punch cards?)
v) The
point is that electronic records must be managed from point of creation; it is
very hard, if not impossible, to retroactively begin applying management
decisions to electronic records.
4. Managing
Electronic Records
a. Planning
should be applied to all municipal records and can help mitigate the special
needs surrounding electronic records.
All municipal officers who create, record or use records should be
involved in planning to achieve consistent and effective policies across
department lines. The keys to planning are:
i)
Risk Analysis.
Are we compliant with all mandates? What are the threats to the authenticity
and reliability of records?
ii) Cost-Benefit Analysis. What are the
costs of implementing new technologies? What sustained costs will there be for
upgrades, training, and migration of records from one system to a newer
system?
Use of risk and cost analyses can also
help prioritize what steps to take in creating a recordkeeping system (use
Minnesota risk analysis chart). Planning
should result in an electronic information management plan, which in turn
should be regularly reviewed and updated.
b. Organizations
should develop a policy that addresses the following issues:
i)
Assuring legality (laws; case law; record schedules ;
policies Rules of evidence; --as well as system documentation; licenses; etc.
Back-ups and discovery
ii)
Assigning responsibility for records
iii)
Appraising & scheduling records (define criteria or
bases for retention & assure timely disposition)
iv)
Integrating access (prevent format from being a serious
barrier to access; migration) de facto v de jure
v)
Documenting records (metadata, file naming
conventions)--associating related paper and electronic records thru naming
conventions
vi)
Storing records (who should have physical custody?) off
site; e-mail example of alternatives--print out; on-line; near line, offi-line
vii)
Preserving Media (care and storage of electronic
records)-environment; risk mitigation and response; back-ups; websites
viii)
Security (preserve rights of individuals and
confidentiality); redacting--up front identification of public/exempt;
ix)
Providing for Use (decide how organizations and others
entitles to access will be enabled to use electronic records) who has rights of
access to what?
Reviewed on 08/02/02