By David Bauer and Shaun Mulholland

"The Digital Solution” article authored by Shaun Mulholland (November 2015 PM) on the use of computer records in Allenstown, New Hampshire, touches upon an important aspect of today’s local government: the need to record current information for future use.

Preserving information is hardly contestable. We all need to keep information for future reference. The “how-to” answer to this age-old problem must deal with these six questions:

1. In what form shall the information be preserved?

2. Who will do the preservation?

3. Who will keep the information?

4. Who gets to look at the preserved information?

5. How long to keep the information?

6. How to dispose of the preserved information?

These are serious questions, bounded by custom, philosophy, law, and available technology. Each community must find answers that meet its own peculiar needs.

Forms of information preservation technology have ranged from marks made in the earth, to notches on a stick, to pictures on cave walls, to clay tablets, to carvings on stone, to symbols on papyrus and then paper, and to microfilm. Followed by indentations on a hard disk, to electronic signals inside our own machine, and to what may be the latest development—“the cloud’’—which is controlled by others. All of these forms have aspects both positive and negative, and all are subject to limits in answering the six points mentioned.

However the recordkeeping matter is settled, there may be universal agreement on the need for records since, as philosopher George Santayana observed, “Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it.”

With no good system of records, we will have to rely on the memory of “old timers” for the recollection of the past. The faults in that system, in my opinion, eventually led to the marks in the ground and on and on.

Author’s Response

David points out a critical issue as we continue on our voyage of electronic recordkeeping. The answer to how long, in what format, and by whom public records will be retained is varied.

In some states, local government record retention is proscribed by law. In other jurisdictions, the issue is addressed in ordinances or bylaws. Yet in others, there are no regulations at all.

The question of what format will survive the test of time is a difficult one to answer. Some say the PDF format is international and recognized as the mainstay for ages to come.

I remember hearing that same sentiment about the floppy disk. Try to find a device to retrieve records from a floppy disk today. The ability to transform data from one format to another has advanced significantly since the floppy disk. Records that are needed for a relatively short period will be less susceptible to this issue.

Long-term recordkeeping for documents that must be kept forever perhaps should be kept in multiple formats to include paper. Even paper, however, does not last forever and is susceptible to destruction due to long-term deterioration or acute damage from fire or flood.

This is clearly an issue that must be addressed alongside our need to modernize and make more efficient the operations of local government. We cannot stop the hands of time. We have to embrace the need for change. Our residents will accept nothing less.