TEMPLATE 7
HOW IS A RECORD CREATED RELIABLE IN THE ELECTRONIC
ENVIRONMENT?
The reliability of any record depends on its degree of completeness,
degree of control on its creation procedure, and/or its author's
reliability.
An electronic record is to be considered complete when it includes the
eight elements of intellectual form.
However, for purposes of reliability, some of those elements, together with
others, need to be also included in attachment to the record, called the
document profile. For an electronic record, the document profile is the
container of all annotations, but also of some elements of intellectual form, as
follows:
- every record made, in order to be considered complete and transmitted
internally, must include in its document profile:
- date
- time
- author
- addressee
- subject
- every record received from outside, in order to be either filed or further
transmitted, must include in its document profile:
- date of receipt
- time of receipt
- date of further transmission
- time of further transmission
- author
- addressee
- classification code
- registry number (if applicable)
The elements related
to the control of creation procedure that have been identified for
traditional records are:
- the express regulation of three procedural phases, that is, of initiative,
deliberation, and execution, and
- the required addition to the record of at least three annotations, that
is, name of recipient, date of receipt, and classification code.
With
electronic records, the second of the above requirements is satisfied in the
document profile, while the first requirement must be preceded by a series of
other controls, as follows:
- identification of the communication networks, electronic record system and
software to be used
- identification of the users of the electronic record system and of their
individual privileges within the system on the basis of the administrative
competence of each of them and of the organization of their work
- definition within the system of the boundaries of general space,
group space, and individual space
- general space = that part of the system that is accessible to all
members of the organization, managed according to established record making
and record keeping rules by the competent staff, and that contains the
central filing system of the organization, including the linkages with
related records in other media. The primary characteristic of the general
space is that no record that has crossed its boundaries can thereafter be
manipulated.
- group space = that part of the system that is accessible to all
the individuals who share the same competence, horizontally or vertically,
temporarily or permanently.This is the space containing many draft versions
of the same record, comments, notations, etc.
- individual space = that part of the system that is accessible
only to individual members of the organization. The individual space within
the organization's records system must be distinguished from the personal,
private space of the individual, which should have also a different
electronic address. This private space may lie beyond the concerns of the
organization
- identification of a secure way of entering the system, such as cards with
magnetic stripe, voice print, finger print, etc.
In addition, it is
essential to distinguish within each creating context between those procedures
that can be embedded in the electronic systems as automated workflows, and those
that can only be regulated by a code of administrative procedure external to the
electronic system. Reliability is served by either or both methods of procedural
control.
As mentioned earlier, the document profile can be used as a primary
instrument for making a record reliable. A complementary instrument to the
document profile is constituted by the metadata, that is, data on the
creation and use of the records within the system that are automatically
generated and preserved by the system and transparent to the user.
The elements related to the author's reliability are procedural ones,
which are expressed in traditional records by the signature of the author.
With electronic records, the procedural elements that guarantee the author's
reliability are best expressed in the control of the access by the users--as
said earlier. This control is exercised by limiting and identifying the persons
who can have access to the system, and, once inside it, who can read what, who
can interact with what and in which way, etc. This control is also exercised by
enabling the electronic system to keep an audit trail of the uses made of the
system.
As it has been seen, when procedures of creation control are in place, the
control on user's access to specific applications is an integral part of
them.The control on user's access has the purpose of making the persons
competent for the actions in which the records take part responsible for
generating them, and accountable for their contents. This is because reliability
is linked to administrative competence for action, not to security, which is an
authenticity issue.
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