Many organizations still rely on a paper records management process, even though most information created is born digital.

As a result, an organization likely has an extensive collection of physical records to store and manage.

This post discusses the strategy and high-level steps to move from paper to electronic records management.

Making the business case

Transitioning from paper to electronic records is often a challenge. Existing process and patterns tend to be “baked in” and difficult to change. Implementing electronic records management and changing processes and roles can be expensive and are often perceived as having lower value than other initiatives in times of fiscal constraint.

Despite the challenges, there is a significant case to be made for transitioning away from physical records management:

• Processes to submit, catalog, retain, provide access to and ultimately dispose of physical records are inefficient compared to digital ones.

• Managing physical records costs a significant amount of money for storage (whether in house or outsourced). Storage requires appropriate dust, temperature and humidity controls for preservation and management. In addition, the costs are potentially rising in these economic times and it’s more difficult to justify supporting and maintaining a single purpose legacy records management system.

• Maintaining any inventory introduces risk of damage should a fire occur, nearby water pipes develop a leak, or a storm damages the storage facility.  Two examples of this are when in 2018 a severe storm tore the side of a records storage facility (City confirms it has documents at storm-damaged Iron Mountain building | Ottawa Citizen) and 2006 a fire broke out in another facility (Ottawa officials fear fire destroyed irreplaceable documents | CBC News). Other similar stories can occasionally be found in the news, but rarely do these types of events get reported.

Let’s go through the steps and strategy for transitioning from physical to records management.

First, turn off the tap

If your organization has a service or team that manages physical records, and staff habitually print and submit records to the team, get an announcement out that physical records will no longer be accepted and leave the documents where they are authored — for the time being. Most content is born digital today and should stay that way.

Consult your legal team to determine if, given the nature of your organization, what, if any, records must be created and retained as a physical record. It is often far fewer than what you expect.

Second, implement electronic records management capability

With the explosion of digital content and records occurring in all organizations, implementing the capability to identify, declare, protect, make available, retain and preserve, and dispose of electronic records (eRM) is essential. eRM capability is a combination of technology, roles and skills, processes, and ongoing monitoring.

You can reference ISO 30301: 2019. Management systems for records - Requirements and related documentation to understand requirements and help you identify and fill gaps in electronic records management. Many organizations are using SharePoint for content authoring and collaboration, which when combined with complementary applications like Microsoft Purview or Collabspace, is an effective electronic records management solution.

Third, digitize paper records processes

On a priority basis, examine key business processes, inputs and outputs and revise them to eliminate physical records and paper. Document-based workflows using Power Automate/Power Apps and SharePoint Online are an ideal solution for organizations who license SharePoint and M365. Other systems like SAP, PeopleSoft and ServiceNow also enable electronic workflows and can eliminate the need for physical records.

Examine and transition roles, processes and services that support physical records management to support electronic records management. This provides a wonderful opportunity to re-train traditional records managers to be part of an electronic records management team and perform tasks like configuring retention and disposition rules in the system, applying retention labels, monitoring records declaration, generating disposition eligibility lists and getting content owner signoff, executing, and monitoring deletion of records after approval, supporting FOI/ATI and e-discovery requests.

Fourth, dispose of eligible physical records

Perhaps stating the obvious, but it is essential to have an accurate inventory of what physical records have reached the end of their retention period and are eligible for destruction and get them shredded. Some organizations have kept up with their dispositions and this is not an issue. Others may find themselves with a significant backlog due to historical staffing, technology or funding challenges.

Resolving a significant disposition backlog may require special funding for additional resources and services to request, examine and verify each physical record for authenticity, get content owner approval for disposal, shred the record, and record the event in a records management system.

Part of the funding could also be to implement a scanning process to scan documents that have not met their retention period, make them available in a document management system like SharePoint, and shred the original. This could be either be a focused effort, or a ‘scan on demand’ approach using existing resources.

Check with your legal team to ensure you retain physical copies when required, but only where required. They will understand related federal and provincial legislation (such as the Canada Evidence Act, Alberta Electronic Transactions Act, BC Electronic Transactions Act) and how they affect physical record keeping.

Part of scanning and saving scanned documents and content into your content management system is ensuring that you have an appropriate metadata standard, and that the metadata is complete and accurate when saving the file into the content management system. Good metadata will ensure findability for users, as well as appropriate lifecycle management for the scanned document or image.

To recap, these are the top-level steps to move to electronic records:

Sustainability and long-term preservation

For some organizations, depending on the scope of their physical records inventory, getting to near “net zero” physical records will take a few years, so monitoring progress is essential to maintain momentum and focus. Regular reporting and updating key stakeholders are also important to ensure adequate funding for the initiative.  

For organizations with a requirement for long-term archiving and preservation, the transition from paper to electronic records includes building and implementing a strategy for archiving and long-term preservation of digital content.

Long-term preservation of physical items has many well documented challenges. This includes the volume of digital content and the rapid change in technology which adds significant complexity to ensuring that digital content preserved over the long term is:

• Usable/readable over time

• Has integrity

• Protected from corruption

• Discoverable

• Available to key internal and external audiences

Implementing a preservation strategy includes:

• Inventory-ing repositories and content

• Affirming criteria and selecting digital content for long-term preservation

• Building a progressive roadmap of preservation priorities

• Enacting appropriate policy instruments including preservation metadata standards and requirements, a technical preservation file format standard, and if applicable, a standard for information or records received by 3rd party creators

• Defining requirements and implementing a technical solution(s) to meet preservation requirements

• Defining and implementing processes, roles and services to support long term digital preservation.

If you need help transitioning from physical to electronic records management, give us a call or send a note. We can help!