managing electronic records in governmental bodies - National ...

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Migration Strategy
5. Store records in more than one
format:
This can reduce the uncertainty of software
Obsolescence and increase the options for future migration (e.g.
textual documents may be kept in two different word processing
formats). This may be a sensible approach if no open standards
exist and where several software products are competing for
market share. Many systems today provide the capability to
export documents in two or more formats so that special
conversion is not needed.
6. Create surrogates for the original records:
If the software dependencies are so extensive that
the record cannot be migrated to different systems
it may be necessary to create a ‘surrogate’ of
the original record. Surrogates are documents
that represent the original but that do not reproduce
its original structure or content (e.g. summaries
or abstracts of documents might serve as surrogates
for textual records). This strategy may be
necessary when access, retrieval or display of records require
maintenance of executable software.
This strategy should only be used when other
options have been considered and found too
expensive to not be feasible from a technology stand-point.
Advantages
• the organisation has an alternative format should
one of the software packages become obsolete
• retains both functionality and integrity of records
when a single format cannot support both
functions (e.g. electronic records stored as both
bit-mapped image files and as scanned text in
ASCII code. The bit-mapped images provide a
physical reproduction of the original document, but
the bit-mapped image cannot be searched; the
scanned ASCII text may not have sufficient
structure and contextual information to stand alone
as a reliable record, but can be used for access
and retrieval. (The term bit-mapped refers to
hardware and software that represent graphic
images as bit maps. Bit maps are a
representation, consisting of rows and columns of
dots, of a graphics image in computer memory.
They are often known as raster graphics.)
• if surrogates are created in software-independent
formats or in formats that comply with open
system standards, the complexity and cost of
future migration will be reduced
Disadvantages
• Increases the cost of storage and maintenance
• unless the process is carefully controlled and
fully documented, the integrity of the records will
be lost
• surrogates rarely retain the functionality and
utility of the original documents and often result
in loss of content as well
• the authenticity and legal admissibility of the
record is open to challenge
Managing electronic records_Policy Guidelines.doc
First Edition
Version 1.1
April 2003