State Archives - Scan and Toss guidelines

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Washington State Archives Office of the Secretary of State Requirements for the Destruction of Non-Archival Paper Records After Imaging Version 1.1 (May 15, 2012) Page 5 of 6 How Do I Manage, Store, And Retain Images? Images MUST be stored, maintained and accessible for the entire length of the required retention period. An agency needs to factor in not only the retention period (e.g., six years), but also the trigger or the cut-off that starts the retention clock. For example, a record with a minimum retention of “six years after life of building” would likely need to be retained for much longer than just six years. Agencies MUST retain legal custody of the imaged records. If agencies choose to use outside providers (including other government agencies and “cloud” storage, but excluding Washington State Archives) to store/host the imaged records: • Contracts/agreements must require that legal custody of the records remains with the originating agency and that all imaged records (including associated metadata) be returned to the agency, in a format accessible by the agency, at the end of the contract/agreement. • Agencies should undertake appropriate mitigation strategies to ensure that they can fully recover records (including associated metadata) which have not met their minimum retention period in the event of vendor failure. Imaged records MUST be protected against alteration and/or deletion, damage, or loss throughout the entire retention period. • Specific protective measures may include, but are not limited to: • Establishment of security protocols, and approved administrators and users. • Employment of system checks and error-checking utilities. • Implementation of back-ups and disaster preparedness measures. • Storage of a regular backup at least 50 miles off-site to enable recovery and access to the imaged records in the event of a wide-spread disaster or emergency. Imaged records MUST remain accessible for the minimum retention period. To address technology changes, agencies are to either: • Maintain the ability to retrieve and view imaged records in systems and file formats that the agency is currently using; or, • Migrate or export the record images (including associated metadata) to succeeding systems and file formats throughout their required retention periods. It is recommended that an agency use a records management application which has been certified as DoD 5015.2 compliant for the ongoing storage and management of the imaged records. • A link to a list of DOD 5015.2-certified products is available at http://jitc.fhu.disa.mil/cgi/rma/. Note: For Non-Archival records with a required retention of “Permanent” or “Life of the Agency”, it is strongly recommended that the agency create state standard-compliant 35mm security microfilm from the digital scans and transfer it to Washington State Archives’ Security Microfilm vault in Olympia. This microfilm will be inspected for compliance and stored as a disaster backup at no cost.