Electronic Official Records and the Official Record Concept 

Official records may be created and maintained electronically without ever being produced in hard copy. It is important to determine the final content of the official electronic record and to institute procedures to dispose of working copies, drafts, and duplicates when the final record is complete. Because of the ease with which electronic records can be copied and shared, the presence of copies represents a vulnerability to the organization.
 The use of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system addresses the following: 
  • Records retention.
  • Document sharing.
  • Version control.
  • Access management and security.
  • Reduces storage space, equipment, and associated costs.
  • Enforces the use of metadata to improve the ease of searchability.
When implementing and developing an Enterprise Content Management system, it is critical to determine and coordinate the official record responsibility.
Chapter 4, File Management, and Chapter 5, Electronic Records offers procedures that support management electronic records.