| Conundrum
|
 |
Disaster recovery
planning for your records: What are the options?
Imagine this
scenario:
There's been
a fire or flood in a neighboring municipality that has destroyed
some of their records.
Soon thereafter,
the elected officials in your municipality vote to implement a "comprehensive" disaster
recovery plan for your records.
Your task is
to develop a plan that fulfills the intent of the vote. That is,
they want the disaster plan to be comprehensive, but cost-effective.
Once again, the challenge is to do more with less.
Goals:
Whether you are
working with paper and/or microfilm documents or you have converted
to electronic filing, the goals of a disaster recovery plan for
municipal records are generally the same:
- To get back
to work as quickly and as fully as possible.
- To be sure
that backup copies of records are legally acceptable and are
going to remain that way.
| Conventional Solution
|
|
Paper files: You
can try to maintain an exact copy of your entire paper filing system,
including indexes, in a secured off site facility. In the event
of a disaster, you could start working and serving your constituents
again as soon as needed files (and equipment) are loaded at the facility,
trucked over to your offices and unloaded.
Microfilm files:
Microfilm is a reliable, durable and reasonably portable medium
for storing files off site.
Microfilm is
a difficult medium, however, when the goal is to get back to work
as quickly as possible. You will still spend long hours finding
what you need. Plus, you'll struggle to recreate works in progress
| 21st Century Solution
|
|
There
are generally three types of technological approaches to disaster
recovery for records in common usage:
Virtually every
computer network creates backup tapes of all digital records at
regular intervals. If you have scanned your paper files into a
document imaging system, this will backup your scanned paper files.
The backups save your documents, but if the central computers have
been damaged it may take considerable time to restore the network
before you can access your records.
Some organizations
use a "mirrored" server-a server hundreds of miles away
that is instantaneously making copies of all files-to back up their
files. This is a commendable but very expensive way to back up
your documents
A far more practical
and less expensive approach to disaster recovery for records is
to save them to a document imaging system and then copy them to
read-only CDs. Ideally, you would make multiple CD copies of your
records and place them in different locations off site.
If the CDs include
database structures, you will be able to recreate your files in
your document imaging system very quickly and get back to work.
If you have a Laserfiche document imaging system, you can also
use Laserfiche Plus to create CDs that can be viewed on virtually
any PC in the event that your document imaging system is unavailable.
Images on read
only CDs can't be altered and are accepted as bona fide legal documents
in most jurisdictions.
To learn more
about document recovery visit these links:
Disaster Recovery
Journal http://www.drj.com/
Protecting Paper
Records http://www.Laserfiche.com/basics/benefits.html#5
Disaster Recovery
World http://www.disasterrecoveryworld.com/
This newsletter
is an open space for you to share your experiences and knowledge.
If you have a story to share about disaster recovery planning for
your important records, let us know. Similarly, if you'd like to
suggest a document related conundrum for a future issue, please
drop us an e mail at usernews@Laserfiche.com We
look forward to hearing from you.
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