Electronic archiving - Issues and standards

The more companies develop new technologies and introduce new ways of working, the more archiving methods and procedures lose their effectiveness": this is the paradoxical and provocative observation of the ICA-Req standard, Principles and functional requirements for archiving in an electronic environment (2008). Why is this so?

We've been talking about electronic archiving for nearly thirty years, but the subject became a major issue at the turn of the year 2000 with the conjunction of four phenomena:

• 1. recognition of the legal value of electronic writing ;

• 2. the explosion of data volumes in companies and public organizations;

• 3. the multiplicity of software and hardware solutions for digital information, and the speed of their obsolescence, with difficulties in interoperability between platforms;

• 4. the challenges posed by digital material in terms of security and integrity.

Archiving, in its function of maintaining the information carriers produced today over time, concerns everyone, individuals and organizations alike, as soon as they hold documents or information that they need or want to keep over time, for a period of a few years or for an unlimited period.

When these documents and information are produced in digital form, archiving will necessarily be electronic. In fact, 90% of the information circulating today is produced in digital form. Electronic archiving should therefore be widespread. This is without taking into account the fact that many documents produced in digital form are signed on paper, and that many documents or data received in digital form are printed and managed in paper form, then archived on this medium; it is also without taking into account the stock of paper archives which is always there, which can be digitized, but which is not always digitized and does not always need to be digitized.

Digital archiving is making progress, but it still has a long way to go to meet the demands of keeping everything that needs to be kept, and keeping it well. To begin with, electronic archiving needs to definitively distinguish itself from the notions of backup or computer storage, with which it has been confused for too long. It also needs to assert its specificity and interest for organizations in the face of electronic document management (EDM) and dematerialization projects, which all too often still ignore the requirements of long-term, managerial archiving.

The decade of 2000 saw the emergence of numerous archiving standards, of varying origins, to address different issues of quality, authenticity, security,...