Celebrating Electronic Records Day: Thinking Long-Term

Today, is Electronic Records Day, a day sponsored by the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) to raise awareness among US state government agencies, the general public, related professional organizations, and other stakeholders about the crucial role electronic records play in their world.

It is also an opportunity to congratulate CoSA and its members on their work throughout 2017 in creating resources, undertaking research and running education programs on good digital record keeping practices.

For me, it is an opportunity to reflect on how the many information managers I have met and worked with this year are meeting the challenge of ensuring that vital electronic records that need to be kept for the long-term remain accessible and trustworthy over successive technology cycles and custodians.

As compliance, regulation, privacy and cyber-security concerns continue to tighten, organizations are putting greater focus on how they protect and future-proof critical long-term digital information. This requires a different approach to traditional backup, archiving and content management systems. And many of the practitioners I have spoken with this year are just getting engaged in building the business case for long-term digital preservation capabilities and solutions.

This will be the topic of one of my talks next week at the ARMA international conference in Orlando “Justifying the Investment in Long-term Digital Preservation: Reasons to Act Now - Monday October 16 @ 10.15am.

I will also share some success stories and useful tools for building the business case in upcoming blogs.

Hope you enjoy Electronic Records Day - use it as an opportunity to follow and learn from the many tweets on #ERecsDay