RE: OT Document archiving...continued

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
>Do any of you "legal" types know what the "law" is
for scanning
documents?

Not a lawyer myself, but I sought legal opinion for my own company with
regards to scanned versions...

And the situation is basically that there is no clear law stating what
is, or is not, an acceptable storage mechanism for the documents.

It comes down to what it's used for. Customs & Excise, Inland Revenue
and Companies House (the only three groups who really have a legal right
to insist that you maintain paper records) all take the view that as
long as you can make a paper version available to their staff when
required on demand, you are free to store the documents electronically:

You still have a duty of care, however, and storing documents in
electronic format without a backup, such that you conveniently
"lose"
some receipts would be viewed in exactly the same light as losing the
paper copies...

My lawyer's advice was to retain paper copies of any larger contracts,
simply because you may get a judge on the day who is a bit of a
technophobe and suffer for it, but that for 99.9% of normal use,
electronic copies were perfectly acceptable.


AIUI, this isn't actually a new question, as these same legal questions
were already asked about microfiche, and scanned docs are to all intents
and purposes just a digital microfiche of the page.

HTH

Ian.


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