Like everyone else I am glad to see that we have returned to a more serious
debate upon our future roles.
I like Carl and I am sure many more of us, have taken on board the need to
to ensure that Archives, Records Management and electronic records
management are joined into a single information management system. The
challanges of providing and understanding the requirements to manage
electronic records are no different in principle to those for paper based
records and archives, the problem is just bigger and more immediate. The
challanges of short term and permanent preservation are the same in
principle even if the media of storage is different. I am sure that our
common sense and training will ensure that we rise to the challange and
remain central to our organisations' information management, storage,
retrieval and destruction requirements. I for one intend to do my best to
ensure that I do for my organisation.
On the point raised by Kevin Mulley about the article in the Guardian this
Morning. I have now read the article and see that BAT did not keep full
lists of everything destroyed and as such probably could not meet in full
the disclosure requirements of the Australian Courts. Also the destruction
of advertising material has always been a mute point some keep it others
dont there are no hard and fast rules. Although the other types of records
would certainly be seen by most as still having some administrative / legal
value to the Company, especially for the later years.
I would also hope that they would argue strongly against the statement that
the Document Retention Policy was designed " to provide a means of
destroying damaging documents under the cover of an apparently innocent
housekeeping arrangement". This is not and should never be the purpose of
such a Policy. If that is how it has been used and it can be proved then
the Court has a right to take exception to it. I would say that it is
unlikely that this could be used as a precedent for other cases provided we
can prove that our Document Retention Policies are complying with the law of
the land, are designed to ensure the efficient management of our records and
the storage space they occupy and are fully documented. It will be
interesting to know how BAT get on with their appeal.
Oh well another coffee break gone and of course the views and opinions given
above reflect my own personal feelings and in no way reflect those of my
company.
Nigel
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