Records Mgmt & Archiving

In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form, open standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the application in which it was initially generated.

http://opendocument.xml.org/news/world%E2%80%99s-first-document-freedom-day

Some good stuff from a US company which also contributed to an excellent AIIM Webinar recently.

- How Long Should Email Be Saved
In this new environment of electronic document-focused discovery, instead of waiting for discovery requests to happen, IT organizations are better off anticipating, understanding and preparing for Legal's needs. Working closely together, Legal and IT can develop policies and strategies to become litigation ready. This proactive approach leads to less disruption, more defensible discovery and lower costs.
October 2007

- An IT Perspective - What Legal Wants... Seven Things IT Can Do To Meet Legal's Needs
This white paper examines the reality of records retention and email archiving, focusing on the process of developing an effective retention policy and automating solutions to enforce rules and satisfy retention obligations. Contoural will also recommend best practices for email retention and real world examples.
October 2007

- Ten Best Practices for Archiving
So why archive data at all? Wouldn’t it just be simpler to delete every e-mail message and file after a specified period of time, making the assumption that computer data is ephemeral? There would be significantly less storage expense with this universal deletion method, but it has never been successful. Practically speaking, there is no guarantee that an e-mail message has been deleted; another copy of every message exists on the receiving end, and messages can easily be copied, forwarded, or saved in a variety of locations. As long as deletion cannot be guaranteed, a policy of universal deletion could open the company to prosecution for ineffective enforcement.
August 2007

free download
http://www.contoural.com/white.html

North Carolina, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania Attempt to Tame the E-Tiger

In March, 2007, the National Historic Publications Records Commission awarded a multi-state collaboration grant to the state archives of North Carolina, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania to pursue their goal of developing and testing an email collection and preservation prototype tool. Working from the standard Internet Message Access Protocol, IMAP, this proposed tool will be able to collect mail from any client software program and transform the message from its native format into an XML file. The tool:

• captures only the e-mail that each user chooses to archive, arranged into folders that the user designates,

• uses open formats,

• has an easy migration path to other content repositories,

• utilizes existing standards and protocols.

Both the original message and the XML copy will be saved and an XML wrapper will be placed around the attachment.

The three states have a long history of working with email and will work with participating agencies such as the Secretary of State’s office to test the user experience and reaction to the tool as a viable option to collect and preserve electronic mail of administrative, legal, or historical significance. For more information, contact names, and progress reports,

please see http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/Records/EmailPreservation/