Anthony
In reply to your "Surely the hard copy of these should be stored" the
answer is quite simple: No, you do not have to store the paper after
scanning, SO LONG AS you create and keep the scanned images in a way
which results in you being able to have sufficient confidence in them.
In other words, you should store the images (and associated indexes) so
that, in the event of any legal or other challenge you can satisfy the
challenger and/or a court that the images tell the truth - at least to
the same level of confidence as you could have with paper, or failing
that to a level of confidence which you find acceptable (note that there
are many reasons to think it is easier to mess about with paper than it
is to mess about with images). The acknowledged source of best practice
for creating and keeping images is, as others have pointed out, BSI BIP
0008. If you doubt your ability to implement procedures compliant with
all or most of BIP 0008, then either you destroy the paper and accept an
increased level of risk, or else you keep the paper and incur horrendous
costs.
There is one "obvious" proviso: you should keep the paper for a couple
of weeks after scanning, just long enough to ensure that each image is
looked at (so that scanning problems can be rectified) and that the
image has been properly backed up. Then you destroy it. Nothing to do
with records management, this, just a practical QA point.
In practice, many, many government and public sector organisations scan
paper documents, including many, many signed documents. So far as I
know, they all destroy the paper afterwards.
Marc Fresko
EDM & ERM Consulting Services Director
Cornwell Management Consultants plc
Home Barn Court, The Street
Effingham, Surrey
KT24 5LG
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: The UK Records Management mailing list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Anthony Thomas Rose
> Sent: 03 February 2005 10:54
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Retention Periods
>
> Thanks Claire.
>
> Could you confirm how long, after scanning, i would have to
> keep a signed contract and tax information regarding each
> employee. Surely the hard copy of these should be stored.
>
> Anthony
>
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