Information preservation: changing roles: if organizations want reliable electronic records, they must take the necessary steps to create and maintain that reliability.

• Author: Arp, Charles E.

At the Core

This article:

* Discusses the importance of long-term management of electronic records

* Explains the role of risk analysis

The proliferation of electronic records requires that both records managers and archivists redefine their roles. Like archivists, records managers must plan for the preservation and accessibility of records beyond the useful life of the systems (software, hardware, operating systems) that created them. This action, however, must be taken at the time the record is created, not later in the life cycle. If it is not done, the authenticity and reliability--or the validity--of a record may be very difficult to establish.

Accessibility to records over time is but the first challenge when working with electronic records. Electronic records are by nature easy to create, easy to revise--and easy to destroy. Those attributes make electronic records very useful in today's information-intensive business environment. However, if an organization wants to use electronic records as evidence in a court proceeding or convince an auditor of its financial position, it must have created electronic records that are both reliable and authentic. Looking toward the future, records managers and archivists need to work together to help their organizations create records that meet such attributes.

Indispensable Attributes

Paper records have features we generally take for granted that may not always be present with electronic records. These attributes include content, structure, and context.

* Content conveys the information. It may include text, data, symbols, numerals, images, and/or sound files. In the paper environment these items are readily recognizable, and it is easy to see what is or is not included in a specific document.

* Structure is the appearance and arrangement of the content. With paper documents, this is the physical appearance and includes things such as font style and size, language, paragraph, and page breaks. Structure also shows the relationships between fields, entities, or tables within documents or databases.

* Context is the background information that reveals the origin of the record and enhances the understanding of the technical and business environments to which it relates. With paper records, the context is conveyed by seeing who created/signed the document, the organization for whom the records were created, the function or activity to which the records relate, or the work processes that created the records.

Content, structure, and context are necessary components of valid electronic records as well. In a 1996 Records Management Quarterly article, Richard Cox observed that "The ruling of the court [in Armstrong v. The Executive Office of the President] was in favor of a definition of a record including its structure, content, and context. The real decision [of the court] was that printing out e-mail distorted its structure and tossed off its context, making its contents meaningless or at least open to question" However, content, structure, and context are not sufficient in and of themselves in order for electronic records to stand as evidence in a court.

Electronic records also must be created reliably and maintained authentically. Reliability is the measure of a record's authority and is a function of the record's creation. In other words, a record is reliable when its creation occurs under strict controls. We know who created it, when it was created, how it was created, and for what purpose. In other words, we can trust that the record is what it says it is; we can have faith in the record. Content, structure, and context are subsets of reliability: There can be no reliability without content, structure, and context.

Authenticity is proven reliability over time and is a function of a record's preservation. A record is authentic when its preservation occurs under strict controls. Records are authentic if we know when a record was copied or migrated, how the copying or migration took place, the quality control processes that governed the copying or migration, and who did the copying or migration. We also know if the record was revised, who revised it, when, and why. In other words, we can trust...