Hi there,
I've not contributed to the mailing list before so I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm one of three project managers working to build a new Content Management System for the University of Edinburgh based on the Drupal CMS.
We are also migrating all our content from our old CMS to our new one.
I'm just wondering if anyone has been thorough a similar process and if so did you archive all the old content?
So 2 questions really.
1) Have you archived old web content and if so why and for how long?
2) We are contemplating deleting all our old content (explanation below!). If this fills you with horror could you explain why?
Please feel free to email me directly if you don't want to reply to the whole list. Email is [log in to unmask] With folks permission I'll summarise and share with the list.
We are contemplating deleting all data due to the cost and difficulty of keeping our old CMS running purely for archival reasons. We don't have anything set up yet within the University that could archive this complex data and keep all the page version history. Also decommissioning servers many years down the line can cause all sorts of problems with no one wanting to take responsibility for the decommissioning process!
People are worried about deleting this data for a number of reasons e.g.
1) Legal. Namely Freedom of Information, Data Protection, Limitations Act, being sued for a variety of reasons.
2) Losing historical data
3) Deleting golden copy data
4) Ignoring internal archiving procedure.
As far as I can tell none of these have obligations which state categorically that the University 'MUST save this data for these reasons for this long'. People say they 'RECOMMEND we should save the data for X years' to avoid being sued for example but are unable to say how big this risk is. (Anecdotally it seems quite a few court cases are settled very quickly by Universities paying compensation rather than disputing cases anyway. But of course it's very difficult to get these in concrete facts.)
As far as I can get tell deleting all data does not have any Freedom of Info or Data Protection issues. In fact it's probably better to delete the data responsibly than hold on to it for no reason. But I want to make sure that I'm not missing that reason.
Thanks very much for your help with this.
Bruce
Bruce Darby
Project Manager
University Website Programme
The University of Edinburgh
21 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LN
+44 (0)131 651 5201
www.ed.ac.uk/website-programme
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The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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