Managing Electronic Public Records

Recognizing Perils and Avoiding Pitfalls

Office Policies

Talking about choosing what file formats to use is important for managing electronic public records not just as an individual but as an office. While taking steps to manage your own records as a state employee is important, developing and following office policies and standards will ensure consistent, active management of public records throughout the office.

Disaster Recovery Plan

The first type of policy an office should have applies to all types of records, not just electronic.  A disaster recovery plan is vital to make sure everyone in the office knows what to do in preparation for, and if necessary, after any type of disaster.  The plan should include contact information for the appropriate people in your office – generally those who will be in charge of any disaster recovery activities, or those who will be the point person for a specific area of the office. For example, the Government Records Branch's disaster recovery plan lists people who have access to our records storage facility and who will have the most information about what records are where.

You need names and phone numbers of data recovery vendors – whom are you going to contact if you lose information?

Information about your back-ups of all data needs to be included. How can you access the data, where is it stored, and whom do you need to contact?

Test the plan. Have a mock disaster and find out what your plan's shortcomings are.  Just as you might hold fire drills, consider having a disaster drill every six months to see if your plan will work.

Always remember that DCR can serve as a resource to answer any questions.

Electronic Records Policy

Your office should have an electronic records policy. The Electronic Records Unit provides guidelines on their Web site that can be used to develop policies specific to your office's needs.

The basics that should be included are:

• Passwords

Everyone needs to have a password on their computer.  There need to be guidelines available to help employees develop good, safe passwords for their computer, so that everyone knows to use long, complicated, frequently changed passwords.

• Back-ups

Should employees use the server or network to store files for back-up, or are they responsible for backing up any files on their desktop?  Routine back-ups should take place, and be stored in secure off-site storage. Current recommendations for hurricane prone areas indicate that back-ups should be stored over 80 miles from the original site, in a region less affected by hurricanes.

• Physical and intellectual security

Protect the hardware – consider access to computers, disks, external hard drives - but also protect the software and files as well – who can modify files, or move them?

• File-naming

Apply the best practices identified by DCR in the file-naming document that's available on the DCR Web site (follow the link in the sidebar) to implement file-naming standards for your office. What abbreviations will you use? What kind of file structure?

• State and federal laws and regulations

All policies should comply with state and federal laws.

Once you have a policy make sure that everyone knows what that policy is.  Be sure and train new employees, too. Making training a regular part of your records management will ensure compliance.

 

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