Articles - Advanced Imaging Solutions

What will your lack of a Records and Information (RIM) program costs you?

The link below is to a lawsuit in which the court found both parties at fault for lack of

production of proper documents,
failure to stop destruction of documents that pertained to the lawsuit (HOLD),
and then fined the top executive personally for his failures in the document preservation program.

“We reject the suggestion that Mr. Elliott cannot be held accountable because the people who discarded documents "did not even know about the litigation," and were doing as a result of office closures and not "to destroy [documents] because of the litigation. This only further underscores the problem with the preservation program that Mr. Elliott (through Mr. Monson) put into place: it permitted many documents to be discarded without a review to ensure that nothing relevant was lost.”

Both parties paid in excess of $ 700,000 to litigate, but the court held that both parties failed to provide for a proven document preservation policy or that “both parties abused the discoveyr process thus neither party should be awarded or rewarded by repayment of attorney fees and costs by the other party”.

Mr. Elliott was fined $ 10,000 personally, and his personal attorney fees and costs ran $159,632.63.

For the entire case see: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/digitaldiscovery/library/preservation/danis.html

Do you want to be compliant? We can assist you.

ADVANCED IMAGING SOLUTIONS, INC.

E-MAIL TROUBLES?

Morgan Stanley continues to pay for withholding e-mails that it claimed were lost during 9/11. In late Sept. of 2007, the securities firm agreed to pay $ 12.5 million to settle charges that it lied to regulators, telling them on several occasions that e-mails they requested had been destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center.

A recent IDC study revealed that a company spends on average $ 5,000.00 annual costs PER information worker because of the time spent on unproductive e-mail searches.

“Employee’s now use e-mail as a 21^st century filing cabinet in which they document their activities, store files and important communications, and conduct business”. –OSTERMAN RESEARCH

In an article entitled “Archiving Email for Compliance and Competitive Advantage” Osterman gives 10 key reasons to archive e-mail:

Compliance and Legal Discovery-E-mail records are being used more and more to incriminate or protect organizations.

Storage Management-Hardware based solutions provide centralized storage for all e-mail accounts.

Risk Management-Archiving all e-mails in a central location enables organizations to quickly produce a paper trail to help resolve disputes and prevent litigation.

Knowledge Management-Archiving ensures that corporate knowledge is retained and stored in an accessible format while protecting the integrity of the database by preventing users from altering or deleting files.

Employee productivity-Archiving e-mails in a central, searchable repository saves search time and enhances competiveness by providing instant access to the company’s knowledge base.

Business Continuity-Automatically archiving employee e-mail ensures that organizations retain access to e-mails when employees leave or a system crashes.

Improved network performance-Archiving e-mail on a dedicated device can eliminate the need to keep old mail on the server, thereby improving server performance.

Disaster Recovery-A centralized; automatic e-mail archiving solution provides a consistent way to protect e-mail data, as well as a more cohesive method for restoring e-mails in the event of disaster.

Reduce IT’s workload-Osterman found that IT spends more than 4 hours per user per year in managing e-mail. An e-mail archiving system helps reduce IT’s time burden by reducing the wear and tear on network resources and allowing users to resolve some e-mail related concerns on their own.

Organizational dexterity—Integrating an e-mail archiving solution will create a standardized way for e-mail to be stored, change poor and/or inappropriate use habits, and eliminate the need for rogue databases and personal archives. All e-mail can be searched and accessed, allowing organizations to access information faster, have more complete information, and make better business decisions.

Advanced Imaging named 2007 INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR by City Business magazine

Standards for Record Storage

Hard Copy Records

Paper records are of an organic base, and therefore, are subject to deterioration, especially when not stored in a proper manner. Hard copy records require a differentiation between those that have a limited "life expectancy", commonly referred to as business records, and documents that have a long-term retention designation.

Business Hard Copy Records are those paper records having a designated life expectancy of up to twenty years, after which time they are usually destroyed or otherwise removed from the storage system. Most paper, commonly used in business or similar applications, not specially created as an acid-free permanent type, will have an expected life of no more than fifty years. Of course, this assumes the record is kept dry and subjected to proper handling.

Ref: NPP ISSN 0160-9297 Paper: Environmental Controls

Long-Term Hard Copy Records are paper records that have been designated as such due to their historical value, organization retention schedule or other mandate. Tests have shown that with every ten-degree decrease in storage temperature, the useful life of paper is approximately doubled. Humidity also has a serious effect on the longevity of paper; too low, the paper becomes brittle; too high, the degradation is accelerated.

Temperature (Max) 70 degrees Fahrenheit

Relative Humidity 40% - 50%

Ref: NPP ISSN 0160-9297 Paper: Environmental Controls

Significant and repeated changes in temperature and relative humidity (cycling) can also lead to further weakening of the paper's structure. Therefore, the occurrence of cycling must be minimized and should be maintained at less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 percent relative humidity.

Ref: NPP ISSN 0160-9297 Paper: Environmental Controls

Microforms

Storage of microforms represents perhaps the most exacting of all formats in terms of environmental conditions and manner in which the film is stored. Although the proper storage conditions are of paramount concern, the basic quality of the film itself, as well as the processing controls and the packaging storage (as done by the client or his/her vendor) are of equal importance in achieving total protection and preservation.

Temperature and relative humidity within the storage vault must not only be maintained within the specified ranges, but must also limit any short-term cycling.

	Medium Term	Extended Term
Temperature (Max)	77 degrees F.	70 degrees F.
Relative Humidity	20% - 50%	20% - 30%

Ref: ANSI 1T9.11 Chapter 7.1 Humidity & Temperature

Ref: SARA Information Leaflet No. 17

Equally critical to temperature and humidity control is properly maintained air-flow and filtration. The facility's dehumidification air-delivery system must be equipped with a filter capable of removing dust and other pollutant particles.

Ref: ANSI 1T9.11 Chapter 7.2 Air Conditioning Requirements

Magnetic Computer Media

Damage to magnetic tapes, disks and similar media may begin when the internal temperature of the storage vault or vehicle used for transport exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit, therefore design/implementation of the storage vault and/or vehicles should be considered.

Ref: NFPA 75 Appendix A-1-3 Risk Considerations

The environment of the storage vault must be maintained with consideration of preservation of the computer media for long duration as well as a compatibility with the client's data center in the event of emergency recall.

	Magnetic Tapes	Magnetic Disks
Temperature (Max)	62-58 degrees F.	65-75 degrees F.
Relative Humidity	40% - 50%	40% - 50%

Ref: SARA Information Leaflet No. 18 Magnetic Tapes

Ref: SARA Information Leaflet No. 19 Magnetic Disks

Significant and repeated changes temperature and relative humidity (cycling) can result in condensation on or within the media's shell; cycling should be maintained at less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 percent relative humidity.

Ref: SARA Information Leaflet No. 18 Magnetic Tapes

Ref: SARA Information Leaflet No. 19 Magnetic Disks

Abbreviations used in this document

ANSI: American National Standards Institute

NFPA: National Fire Protection Association

NPP: National Preservation Program

SARA: New York State Archives & Records Administration

DID YOU KNOW?

WITHOUT A PROPER RECORDS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN PLACE AN ORGANIZATION SPENDS BETWEEN 20 TO 30 PERCENT OF THEIR TIME STORING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION?

ACCORDING TO THE GARTNER GROUP THIS NUMBER IS EXPECTED TO RISE TO 40 % BY 2003 (GartnerGroup, Research Note, September 27, 2000)

IN AN AVERAGE OFFICE:
A 1996 Coopers & Lybrand study found that 7.5 percent of paper documents get lost completely and 3 percent are misfiled.
That same study estimates that it costs $120 to locate a misfiled document and $250 to recreate a document that is permanently lost. With the average office worker responsible for at least 15,000 documents, 1,050 are permanently lost and 450 are misfiled. Again, this is in an AVERAGE office, not one with a designated records manager. But, This means an average business could spend more than $310,000 just looking for, and recreating information.
How Long Do Documents need to be kept?
While the time period does vary from document to document, most need to be stored for between 3 and 10 years. Some need to be kept forever.
Do you know which ones they are?
WHAT ABOUT DISASTER RECOVERY IN THE EVENT OF A FIRE, OR FLOOD, OR A HURRICANE?
Do you have a proper disaster recovery program in place?
Again, this is what we with ARMA do—we try to help educate and support your records administrators.
Zig Ziglar said:
"The only thing worse than training good employees and losing them is
NOT training your employees and KEEPING THEM."

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