Electronic Records Management

Records management is the part of technology that most people would prefer to ignore, but it is essential to business. It is like designing the plumbing for a house - not nearly as much fun as laying out the rooms, but ever bit as important, if not more so.

• Administrative vs. Customer Documents, or why you shouldn't try to keep all your business documents in a single system (Last updated July 1, 2001)
• COLD Storage for Computer Generated Documents, contrasting the technologies used with Enterprise Report Management tools and the COLD computer generated document management tools. (Last updated March 15, 2001)
• Retention of Original Paper Records, in an image system environment, particularly in the financial services industry. (Updated March 28, 2001, written August 16, 1999)
• Durable Format Documents, a discussion of what file formats should be used for long-term storage of business records. (Last updated March 9, 2001)
• U.S. SEC Electronic Records Keeping Requirements for investment companies and investment advisors, including changes dictated by eSignature act. (As published on the SEC web site May 24, 2001)
• Changes to the SEC Regulations allowing brokers and dealers to use electronic images as the document of record. (As originally published in the Federal Register in February 1997)
• Insurance company executives keep warning me that the New York State insurance record keeping requirements are horrifying. One of them provided the regulations to prove their point. They may have been bad, but the revised 1996 NY Insurance Recordkeeping Regulations are now both reasonable and typical.
• Record keeping requirements for web-based queries, in traditional and web-based commerce. Last updated October 22, 2000, based in part on discussions at the Managing Electronic Records conference.
• E-Mail, a records keeping disaster area. Last updated October 22, 2000, based in part on discussions at the Managing Electronic Records conference.

New documents are being added as I have the opportunity to generalize reports I have written recently, or update previous documents, and reformat them for the web. Please check back periodically.