1. Applying the COSCA Principles of Records Management
National Association for Court Management
2014 Annual Conference
Greg Linhares, Missouri State Courts Administrator
Nial Raaen, CRM, NCSC Principal Consultant

2. To Protect and Preserve: Standards for Maintaining and
Policy Paper
To Protect and Preserve:
Standards for Maintaining and
Managing 21st Century Court Records

3. Records Management An Essential Component
Support for judicial decision making
Documentation of legal status and rights
Public access to court proceedings
Enforcement of court orders and judgments
Preservation of record for appellate review
Preservation of historical information

4. Records Defined – (ISO 15489-1)
Information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.

5. Court Records Defined – CCJ/COSCA
Any document, information, or other thing that is collected, received, or maintained by a court or clerk of court in connection with a judicial proceeding; any index, calendar, docket, register of actions, official record of the proceedings, order, decree, judgment, minute, and any information in a case management system created by or prepared by the court or clerk of court that is related to a judicial proceeding; and Information maintained by the court or clerk of court pertaining to the administration of the court or clerk of court office and not associated with any particular case. (CCJ/COSCA guidelines, 2002)

6. The Records Lifecycle
The span of time of a records existence from its creation or receipt, through its useful life, to its final disposition, whether that disposition is destruction or retention as a historical record.
-ARMA International

7. The “Continuum of Care”
The management of records requires a “continuum of care” throughout the life cycle, beginning with creation and continuing through disposition and destruction.

8. The Challenges… Meeting the growing demand for access
Maintaining both paper and electronic systems
Managing unstructured records
Coordinating multi-media retention and disposition
Managing increasing amounts of information
Rising to the challenge of information governance

9. COSCA Principles of Judicial Records Management
ACCESS
GOVERNANCE
COMPLIANCE
INTEGRITY
PRESERVATION
DISPOSITION

10. Principle of Compliance
The requirement that management practices are in line with applicable statutes, rules of court, administrative orders, and organizational policies.

11. Records Practices Must Comply With:
Statues and court rules
State financial and labor relations laws
Applicable federal regulations
FLSA
Equal Pay Act
FMLA
Immigration laws
… and others

12. Compliance Fundamentals
Oversight and assignment of staff responsibility
Policies and procedures
Audits and reviews
Classification systems
Retention requirements

13. “Unstructured” Records
Office automation work products
Documents
Spreadsheets
Presentations
Social media
Web content

14. Key Issue: Email Compliance
is not a records series
must be managed and retained according to content
must be classified and preserved accordingly
Messages created or received by employees in connection with official business are generally considered public records

15. When is Email a Record? Is the message evidence of work?
Is the message the completion of a message string?
Are other records available about this issue/topic?
Do confidentiality requirements apply to the content of certain messages?

16. Principle of Integrity
The principle of Integrity addresses the need for records to be created and preserved in a manner that guarantees their authenticity, reliability and accessibility.

17. ISO 15489 – Characteristics of Records
Authenticity – Proven to be what it purports to be, created or sent by the person purported to have created or sent it, and created or sent at the time purported. Reliability –Trusted as a full and accurate representation of the transactions, activities, or fact to which it attests. Integrity – Complete and unaltered. Usability – Can be located, retrieved, presented, and interpreted.

18. Integrity Fundamentals
Technical and Infrastructure
Backup and redundancy
Updated security and virus checking
Tracking and audits of changes
Review of audit trails and system logs
Documentation record of chain of custody
Sampling of media for corruption or failure

19. Processes and Procedures
Control of physical security and user access
Training and documentation
Quality control
Necessary metadata
Internal compliance audits
Hazard mitigation and disaster planning

20. Key Issue: E-record Integrity
Techniques/processes to ensure integrity:
Encryption
Access control and security
Check sums/hash algorithms
Audit trails and access logging

21. Principle of Access
The principle of Access addresses the ability of court staff, litigants, and the public to access information to which they are entitled.

22. Access Fundamentals Metadata and indexing to facilitate
retrieval by staff and the public
Storage and security appropriate to the type of record and storage media (preservation)
Non-proprietary formats ensure long-term availability of electronic records
Security and access controls appropriate to the record type and users/requestors

23. Metadata Matters
Metadata is data that describes or characterizes a digital object, whether internal or external to the object itself. It is essential to record retrieval and integrity. Types of metadata include descriptive, administrative, structural, and preservation.

24. Metadata Standards & Guidelines
Dublin Core – 15 metadata elements adopted as an ISO standard OAIS – Open Archival Information System Extensible Markup Language (XML) PREMIS - Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies METS – Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard …and more

25. Security and Access Control Critical for E-records
Access controls that identify rights, (input, change, delete)
User authentication, authorization, and audit trails
Application and operating system protection from intrusion and attack

26. Key Issue: Third Party Use of Court Information
Should there be increased obligations for data collectors to “sunset” information?
Should there be a “right to forget”?
Who would have the duty to remove records to protect a “right to forget”?  
Should court record retention periods be revised?

27. Digital Rights Management
The use of encryption to allow the creator to control use of a document, such as:
Who can access
How long the document can be read
Prevent printing
Require network logging
Restrict forwarding
May not be appropriate for records
requiring long-term preservation

28. Principle of Disposition
The principle of Disposition recognizes that all records reach a point in their lifecycle where they are committed to long-term archival storage and preservation, or are scheduled for destruction.

29. Appraisal
Archiving
Destruction

30. Records Appraisal
The evaluation of a document’s worth or value for retention or archival purposes, based upon its current or predicted future use(s) for administrative, legal, fiscal, research, or historical purposes.
~ARMA Glossary, 4th edition

31. Record Value
Business
Legal
Fiscal
Historical

32. Disposition by Archiving
Transferring records is the process of moving records from one storage system to another within the organization. Accession is the movement of records to the custody of another agency, such as a state archives.

33. Disposition by Destruction
Disposition methods should be appropriate to the type of record and media
Methods for electronic records:
Degaussing
Overwrite, encryption, file deletion
Physical destruction of media
Documentation, audit trails and metadata
Standards are available for reference

34. Disposition Fundamentals
Maintain records according to established state and local retention schedules
Remove non-essential, obsolete or duplicate records
Use destruction methods appropriate to record content and media
Conduct a periodic records inventory and appraisal

35. Key Issue: Multi-media Retention Management
Are you a “digital hoarder”
How long is too long?
Coordinating paper and electronic retention schedules
Managing the deletion/retention of interrelated information

36. Principle of Preservation
The principle of Preservation addresses the need to maintain the integrity and accessibility of judicial records throughout their life cycle.

37. Preservation Fundamentals
Proper levels of protection
Audits and validation
Monitoring, disaster preparation and recovery planning
Third party compliance with requirements
Selection of appropriate media and storage systems to sustain access and usability

38. Key Issue: Long Term Digital Preservation

39. The Technical Issues Media longevity and obsolescence
Hardware lifespan and compatibility
Software and file format obsolescence

40. Preservation Risk Factors
Preservation risk increases with the following variables:
Age of the record(s)
Frequency of access to the record and media
Complexity of the record and its features
Volume of the record series
Storage media

41. Hardware Challenges
Storage medium may be superseded by newer versions or by new types of media—smaller, denser, faster, and easier to read.
Computers are continually superseded by faster and more powerful machines that can store and process more content.
Computer components and media physically fail due to human error, natural events, and normal aging.

42. Remember When? 8 inch floppy: 1971-81
5.25 inch floppy: – mid 1980s
12 inch optical: – 1992
Jazz disk: – 2002
source: Cornell University Chamber of Horrors

43. Software and Formats
A file format may be superseded by new versions, no longer be supported by the current vendor
Software used to create, manage, or access digital content may be superseded by newer versions or newer generations with more features
Characteristics as hidden text and change history, macros, and animations may be difficult to archive
Vendors compete, merge, or go out of business leaving application software unsupported

44. Methods of E-Preservation
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
Ensures the integrity of, and access to, digital objects and their associated metadata.
Attempts to keep the original object intact without changing the storage or access technologies.
Ensures continued accessibility by active intervention to move the digital object from legacy to current storage environments.
May involve technologies not in existence when the record was created.

45. Migration Migration is a strategy for avoiding obsolescence
Cycle is approximately every years, or less
Electronic records should be periodically migrated to stable media and stable file types
Media and file types must provide a reliable and stable repository for preservation and access
A migration strategy and schedule should be established for specific media and file types

46. Other Preservation Approaches
Emulation - Applications software that recreates the legacy technical environment required to run earlier programs Refreshing – moving records from one medium to another, primarily as a preventive measure Preservation – maintaining the original technical environment

47. Open Formats
TIFF (?)
XML
JPEG
PDF/A

48. Cloud Technology Advantages: Concerns: Shared cost Quick startup
Shared resources
Scalable to need
Concerns:
Security
Ownership
Access
Vendor viability

49. Have a Preservation Strategy
Identify acceptable risk for record types
Assess current capabilities and capacity
Survey existing tools for adoption
Apply standards and use open formats
Consider emerging technologies

50. Trusted Digital Repositories
Scheme developed by the National Archives and Records Administration
Audit mechanism for assessing ability of repositories for secure and reliable long-term preservation of digital records
Includes technical requirements as well as organizational infrastructure and policies
Provides a set of assessment criteria
m2.pdf

51. Open Archives Information System (OAIS) Model

52. OAIS Elements
Ingest. The steps required to transfer items from their current location into the archive in a managed manner.
Archival Storage: The storage of the bulk data using standard storage management tools.
Data Management: Tools to manage the storage of the archive, including the metadata
Administration: A set of tools to administer the system and access to it.
Access: Tools to search, browse and download the contents of the archive
Preservation Planning: The module that manages the information for long term access.

53. Principle of Governance
The principle of Governance addresses the need for organizational authority and control over records, as well as accountability.

54. Governance Fundamentals
Features of a comprehensive records management program –
Roles and responsibilities clearly defined
Strategy to ensure preservation and access
Documentation of systems and processes
Oversight and accountability
Goals & performance measures
Auditing and review
Adoption of standards

55. Standards Organizations
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Association for Information and Imaging Management (AIIM)
ARMA International
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
Department of Defense (DoD)
European Commission (MoReq2)

56. Key Issue: Enterprise Management

57. The Growth of Information
Over the next 20 years there will be a 40% increase in information growth
57% office documents
65%
75% attachments
81% instant messages
- John Mancini, AIIM President

58. Gartner Forecast…
The rise of big data, social networking and mobile interactions, coupled with an accelerating increase in the amount of structured and unstructured information enabled by cloud- based technologies, is creating an information crisis.

59. The Need for Greater Collaboration
Coordination among multiple record holders
Maintaining strategic alignment
Acquiring adequate resources
Anticipating future needs

60. Assessing Your Records Program The Records Management Maturity Model
Original concept developed at Carnegie-Melon
Based on ARMA RIM principles and model
Follows the COSCA principles framework
Four levels of maturity
Key elements under each principle
Self-assessment and scorecard available at:

61. Other NCSC & COSCA Initiatives
Joint Technology Committee – addressing the principles of disposition and preservation
Development of RIM training programs
Refinement of maturity models
Identification of best practices and model programs
Engagement with the records management community

62. Resources ARMA International – www.arma.org
Association for Information and Image Management –   
National Archives and Records Administration –   
Council of State Archivists -
National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators –