2.7 Strategies and Policies to Manage E-Records
2.7.2 Strategies
even supranational levels. This participation can be enhanced by the provision of materials produced by government in electronic format to those citizens able to access it in, combined with e-mail facilities to permit citizens to communicate with legislators and decision makers at all level of government.
Well-developed policies help organizations to improve the quality and reliability of their electronic record keeping systems and can protect organizations against litigation over improper use of information systems for record keeping purposes (Hedstrom 2000: 167).
As a starting point, every organization should determine whether e-records are acceptable in the jurisdictions in which they operate and for the purpose for which the records will be created and used. Hedstrom (2000: 167) points out that policies should define the acceptable uses of information technology for record-keeping purposes, delineate the processes and methods necessary to ensure accuracy and authenticity of e-records, specify provisions for quality control, storage and retention and set parameters under which access to e-records are permitted or denied. E-records policies should spell out the roles and responsibilities of management, systems administration staff and end-users for the creation, maintenance, protection and release of e-records.
2.7.2.1 Refreshing
Deegan and Tanner (2002: 1 96) explain that digital storage media have short lives, the length of which can be estimated but which is ultimately unknown. They explain that data therefore has to be moved periodically to new media to ensure its longevity.
Sometimes this involves a change of medium: CD-RaMs will be copied onto hard disks in a digital data store, floppy disks may be copied on to CD-RaMs; at other times refreshing may take place because a particular substrate has become unstable and the files need to be copied to a newer, more stable version of the same medium. Refreshing copies the bit stream exactly as it is and makes no changes to the underlying data. It is a process that needs to be carried out whatever other preservation strategies are adopted. It is technically relatively straightforward, with low risk of loss if performed and documented properly (Deegan and Tanner 2002: 1 96).
2.7.2.2 Migration
Migration is the process of transferring digital information from one hardware and/or software setting to another, or from one computer generation to subsequent generations.
It specifically addresses the issue of technological obsolescence. For example, moving files from Mac to a PC involves accommodating the difference in the two operating environments. Migration can also be format-based. An example of this would be the moving of image files from an obsolete file format to DOS, to increase their functionality. Migration is common and is practised at basic levels, that is access to word processor files, statistical data files and image files have been maintained by migrating from one format to another, often by the imported facilities of current application (Harvey 2003: 1 7).
According to Wato (2003), migration is normally criticised because its results are often unpredictable, due mainly to a lack of testing and documentation. When new software is brought out, it is common for many people to simply refresh their documents by recopying. This often results in the loss of information, whether record content, format, behaviour or appearance. The new application reads the record in a different manner from that in which it was designed to be read and, during the migration process, some
processing instructions, content and functionality may be lost or even gained. The loss of this information varies, depending on the extent and nature of the migration performed.
Migration results are difficult to predict, unless a substantial amount of work is done in advance on the source and target format specifications. Migration can affect a records status as authentic and any record which is preserved must be preserved authentically, otherwise its meaning and validity cannot be assured.
The complexity of the migration process usually depends on the nature of the digital resource, which may vary from simple text to an interactive multimedia object.
Converting data to another software format entails a loss of functionality. Furthermore, the authenticity of the original object is thereby corrupt. When considering migration one needs to address the issue of compatibility. Backward compatibility of software means a newer software version can read and process files created by an older software version.
Forward compatibility of software, on the other hand, means that an older software can read and process files created by a newer software version. People most often desire backward compatibility of software to read and process older files, since the software is continually updated. Forward compatibility of the software is less frequently needed, usually required by people who fall behind in software versions, e.g. trying to read an MSWord 97 file with MSWord 95 (Wato 2003).
Rothenberg, cited by Lazinger (2001 : 83), contends that migration is not a viable solution for long-term digital preservation, for two reasons. First, migration is too labour-intensive to be feasible. Long-term preservation needs a solution that does not demand "continual heroic effort or repeated invention of new approaches every time formats, software or hardware paradigms, document types, or record keeping practices change". The second problem with migration arises because it is impossible to predict what it will involve.
Paradigm shifts cannot be predicted and may necessitate highly complex conversions that are not affordable, "leading to the abandonment of individual documents or entire corpora when conversion would be prohibitively expensive" (Lazinger 200 1 : 83). In addition, it is impossible to predict when migration will be necessary, because the cycles
of migration that must be carried out are determined by new formats being released on the market, so the time frame for migration can neither be controlled nor estimated.
2.7.2.3 Emulation
Emulation is using software that can emulate, or pretend to be, different software or operating system. Emulation involves the re-creation of the technical environment required to view and use a digital collection; the recreation on current hardware of the technical environment required to view and use digital objects from earlier time. This is achieved by maintaining information about the hardware and software requirements so that the system can be re-engineered. Emulation has been practised for many years and there are several commercial and public domain emulators for a variety of hardware/operating system configurations. A good example is MS DOS emulation in the Windows NT operating system (Harvey 2003 : 1 7).
Emulation is essentially a way of preserving the functionality of, and access to, digital information, which might otherwise be lost due to technological obsolescence. Because it is impossible for any organisation to retain working examples of every computer and every piece of software, and because the cost of any attempts to do so would be prohibitive, emulation offers a viable alternative strategy to ensure access to digital information in the future.
One of the benefits of emulation strategy, compared with migration, is that original data need not be altered in any way. It is the emulation of the computer environment that will change with time. Another advantage of implementing emulation is its possible efficiency. Once the data is archived with appropriate metadata software, no other action is required, apart from media refreshing, until access is desired. One emulator can also be used as a solution for several data objects requiring the same operating environment. This is especially important because of limited resources to handle each digital object separately and therefore economies of scale are important.
Theoretically, emulation is the most stable model and a conceptually clean solution. In fact, if preserving the original functionality and recreating the look-and-feel of a document is a prime objective, it is the only reliable way. Emulation has attracted similar criticism to migration, on the grounds that it can be costly, highly technical and labour
intensive. The criticism is not always justified, as there is currently no specific methodology for emulation and future costs cannot yet be predicted and may or may not turn out to be less than for migration.