Campus Forum on Electronic Records

April 9, 2003

Sponsored by:

The Office of the Provost
Archives & Records Management Service
Division of Information Technology

From Boxes to Bytes: Managing Electronic Records

Nancy Kunde

Archives & Records Management Service

Overview of Forum

• Introductions
• Why the forum?
• Managing Electronic Records-what we know, roles & responsibilities, what to do
• Focus group activity
• Managing risks and legal liability
• Electronic records and audit
• Where do we go from here?

GOALS of the Forum

• Start the ERM education process
• Provide some initial steps to identify electronic records and to begin to manage them
• Identify next steps

Why the forum? Why now?

• Electronic records are pervasive
• Increased risks of electronic records
• Basic assessment of campus needs and what is needed to meet records keeping challenges

Paradigm Shift

• Emphasis on information sharing
  • Faster communication
  • Less human involvement
  • Increased use of technology
• Business Transactions
  • Once paper-based, now electronic

Records Management Risks

• Legal implications
• Personal liability
• University liability
• Access laws
• Records discovery
• History: Fame/Infamy

Lots of Questions

• What is a record?
• What are the laws and regulations that affect me and my department?
• How do we as an institution comply with records keeping when technology changes so frequently?

Lots of Questions

• When is an email message a record?
• What constitutes an electronic audit trail?
• Can I send my electronic data to the campus archives?
• Is there the equivalent to a records center for electronic records?
• How do I know my data/records have actually been destroyed?

Keep Everything

• Forever
• Forever but purge annually or whenever
• Until department chair changes or other VIP changes
• Until you retire
• Until the new kid is assigned to records
• Until a consultant is hired
• Until you image everything
• Until the next technology comes along
• Until the files are re-organized

Throw Everything Away

• Right after it is created
• When you retire or change jobs
• When the department chair retires
• In reaction to staff or budget cuts
• After 7 years
• Based on a retention guideline from the Internet
• When space becomes a problem
• When the computer gets slow
• When the records are old

An Update On Records Management Laws and Regulations

Henry Cuthbert

UW-Madison Legal Services

Image of Person Sitting at a Computer

Computer:
>Unknown Value
>Error 404
>Invalid Input
>No Such Item

Person: WORL, FERPA, HIPAA, SEVIS, FISA, ECPA, USPA....

One or Two Questions?

Thank You!

Henry Cuthbert
(608) 263-7400
hlcuthbert@vc.wisc.edu
UW-Madison Legal Services
http://www.wisc.edu/legal/

Laws, Rules, Regulations

• State Statutes
  Records Scheduling and Disposition
  Definition of record
  -includes electronically formatted
  Open records
• Federal records laws-FERPA, HIPAA
• Privacy Laws

New Administrative Rule

• Qualitative standards for state and local government.
• Effective May 2001
• More detail at --
  http://enterprise.state.wi.us/static/erecords and at
  http://archives.library.wisc.edu/faq/faq.htm

How does ERM get done?

• New partnerships
• New ways of planning applications
• New Challenges
  • decentralized records management
  • end user as a records manager

Are you a records creator?

• Authority to add, delete, change, revise etc items in a database?
• Explain, advise, interpret policy via email
• Holder of original source documentation

Employee Responsibilities

• Records belong to the University
• Know your records; what you have responsibility for and what you do not
• Maintain records so they can be access
• Comply with State and University records policies

E Records and Audit

Jerry Lange
UW-Madison Internal Audit

E Records and Audit (cont.)

• The original record is the key, without it no transaction can be validated.
• A good audit trail tells:
  • who was responsible
  • what occurred (entry, changes, etc.)
  • when each action occurred
  • where a transaction originated (if electronic)

E Records and Audit (cont.)

• If you replace paper records with E Records there is no change in retention requirements.
• Scalability should be considered when making a decision on E Records.
  Is an E Record best for long term retention.
• Cost benefit should be done before deciding on how you retain records.

E Records and Audit (cont.)

• Archived E Records must be reliable. They must be secure to prevent modification after creation.
• All records must be retrievable in a timely manner, in a usable format.
• If E Records were created using proprietary software, you may need to retain the software to ensure retrievability.

Scalability

• Is the "official" record something that really needs to be retained as an E record? In the format it is currently in?
• Would it be more effecient to archive your "official" records as .pdf or similar files that are easily retrievable, rather than retaining all the files or tables that make up the record.

Cost Benefit

• Is it cheaper to produce the official copy in paper or microfiche, but keep an unofficial electronic copy for planning and analysis?
• Just because its electronic doesn't mean that's how you need to archive it.

Reliability

• A record must be retained in a form that makes modification difficult or impossible. If your official record is electronic it must be protected from unauthorized modification.
• You must keep it in a secure location and, depending on its form, access may need to be controlled and tracked.
• E records must be periodically validated and refreshed to ensure reliability over their life.

Retrievable

• Official records must be made available in a timely and usable manner under the open records law. As the keeper of a record, you cannot store it in an irretrievable manner.
• In the event of audit, we are not given weeks or months to retrieve a record.

Creation Software

• If you retain a record electronically, but need proprietary software to retrieve it, you may have a problem in seven years.
• Will your current proprietary software still retrieve an E Record, or generate the same report?
• Will you need to keep a copy of the old system software and a machine to run it on?

Your E Records - a summary

• Is it cost beneficial to keep your records in electronic form in view of their retention requirements?
• Do you need to keep all of the data or just some extracted reports?
• How will you preserve the integrity of E Records for seven or more years?
• How and where will the E Records, and backup copies, be retained?

Remember!

Records retention, especially for E Records, requires careful, upfront planning to ensure reliability and retrievability during their required life.

One or two questions?

Thank You!

Jerry Lange
(608) 262-1612
jlange@bussvc.wisc.edu
UW-Madison Internal Audit
http://www.bussvc.wisc.edu/intaudit/

What Electronic Records Do You Have?

1. Form small groups of three or four people where you are seated.
2. Introduce yourselves. Where do you work? What is your role in records management?
3. Discuss what electronic records you have in your units. The handout has some examples.
4. Note your electronic records on the handout as you identify them. Who has the official copy?
5. Keep the handout as a starting point for further action this Spring and Summer.

For More Information

• Visit the ARMS web site at: http://archives.library.wisc.edu
• See the pink handout titled: "Resource List for Management of Electronic Records"

E-mail Management

• E-mail System
  • NOT a Records Repository
• E-mail messages
  • Content
  • Transactional info
  • Attachments

E-mail Management-Responsibility

• For messages that are records:
  • The Sender
  • for Internal messages that are records
  • The recipient-for messages received from outside the University
  • Others Copied/FYI -- Treat as duplicates

E-mail Management-Retention

• Retain as long as you would retain the same record in any other format
• E-mail is not a record series. No set retention time for all email. Retention is based on content and business value of the record.

E-mail Management-Organize It

• Establish personal folders
• Mimic an established paper file system
• Filing in folders isolates the records
• Categorize by topic and date to facilitate retention
• Reminder: E-mail is subject to open records law

What to do?

• Assign responsibility for e-records both program and IT staff.
• Records schedules
• Incorporate records / data mgt into applications development process.

• Be aware of the need for extra attention to electronic records -- storage, access, security, etc.
• Implement existing retention policies
  Visit ARMS web site: http://archives.library.wisc.edu
• Manage e-mail
• Dispose /destroy records systematically in accordance with retention policies

• Standardize filing/foldering/directories
• Know your critical information resources, what format they are in, how stored etc.
• Consider record keeping implications of new software or additional features
• Establish a conversion/migration plan

What is current guidance re: electronic records preservation?

• Departments are responsible for migrating and refreshing records stored in electronic formats throughout their life cycle.

Electronic Records Preservation

• Technology shifts every 3-5 years
• Maintaining integrity, authenticity of the record over time
• System upgrades / conversions -- excellent opportunity to address records keeping issues

Electronic Records Preservation-The Challenge

"There is a much greater assurance that 20 or 30 years from now, you'll be able to find records from the Civil War than you will from anything that is going on today."
--Ken Thibodeau, quote from ABC transcript #8508 May 4, 1999. Peter Jennings World News Tonight

Records-The bottom line

• The more you keep, the more it costs.
• The more you keep, the harder it is to find.
• When it's outlived its purpose, get rid of it.
• If it's worth more, spend more to protect it.

Future workshops?

• What topics would you like addressed?
  • Technology
  • Legal issues
  • Policy
  • Education
  • Service
• Please indicate your preferences when you fill out the gold "Evaluation" sheet.

Follow Up?

If you would like to be contacted by ARMS please fill out and leave the green "Follow Up Information" sheet.

One or Two Questions?

Thank You!

Nan Kunde
(608) 262-3284
nkunde@library.wisc.edu
http://archives.library.wisc.edu

Question & Answer Session

• Henry Cuthbert
  Legal Services
• Nan Kunde
  ARMS
• Jerry Lange
  Internal Audit

Thank You for Participating!

• Please fill out and leave the gold "Evaluation" sheet.
• If you would like to be contacted by ARMS please fill out and leave the green "Follow Up Information" sheet.

return to Electronic Records Forum home page

Page provided by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Archives and Records Management Services (ARMS) <http://archives.library.wisc.edu/index.html> 2003