Federal Records Management: Safeguarding Documents Through an Effective Timetable and a Sound Policy
With laws pertaining to electronic documents expanding and becoming more stringent, federal records management is now being taken much more seriously. Before, government records management agencies would not be bothered about electronic documents a great deal, and most of their concentration was on email files. With the changing times, their concentrate 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 must be maintained, with the court also allowing these to be presented as evidence. Failure to abide by the laws will compel federal records management agencies to impose big fines on contractors and firms.
These laws were created in a bid to control government firms, contractors and sub contractors so that they create a proper system to record all electronic data that is used or created by their employees. A system to record and back-up emails, sound clippings and images saved or sent by employees on their computers should be in place. 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. Failure to maintain a retention schedule by the firm will be considered a contravention of the laws. In some cases, companies who have not clearly understood the laws have had to pay up big fines. A $2 billion fine was paid by Morgan Stanley for errors in retention of e-documents.
The only way to make sure something similar does not happen to your firm is to have an appropriate documents retention schedule. An appropriate schedule in place ensures good planning. Aspects like the data retention frequency, location, time span are valid, and must be addressed by the company. Once these aspects are addressed, then you have nothing to fret about.
The new ediscovery laws can very easily be abided by if you have an effective schedule in place and an efficient team to oversee the retention process.
Federal records management is changing as well modifications to knowledge and therefore should; visit our site to shop.
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