Federal Records Management: Creating an Effective Data Preservation Schedule and Best Practice in Implementing a Credible Policy
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Federal records management has assumed more significance given that the regulations governing electronic documents are now more elaborate and severe. Agencies handling government records management previously concentrated on files like e-mails as opposed to electronic documents as entirely. With the changing times, their focus has expanded and now encompasses all kinds of e-documents. An appropriate record of all kinds of documents in Excel and Word format, sound files, picture files, etc should be maintained, with the court also allowing these to be presented as evidence. If the laws are not complied with, the federal records management agencies have no choice but to levy huge fines on companies and contractors.
These laws were put into place in order to control sub-contractors, contractors and government firms and make sure that they create an appropriate recording system for all the data used by employees. Whenever an employee e-mails someone, records an audio clip or saves an image file on his. It is not sufficient to take e-data backups only when a court case arises; the back-up should be done routinely and follow a stringent timetable.
If it is found that the document retention records were created only after the court asked that they be made available for the case, government records management judges as well as agencies will not allow these documents. The schedule for document retention must have been in place previously; if not, the firm will be held liable for breaching the laws. In some cases, companies who have not clearly understood the laws have had to pay up large fines. One notable instance is Morgan Stanley, which had to cough up almost $2 billion due to retention errors concerning electronic documents.
The only way to ensure something similar does not happen to your company is to have an appropriate documents retention schedule. With a schedule, everything is clearly laid out and planned. When documents are retained, how often they are retained, until when they are retained and where they are retained are all valid questions that must be answered by the company and embedded into the retention schedule. Dealing with these issues is important, after which you can rest easy.
With the right schedule and staff to monitor document retention, you can comply with the newest ediscovery laws without any troubles. |
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Author Resource:-
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By :
Philips Mcgill
Submitted
2011-10-26 23:15:57 |
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