Corporate Records Scanning Strategy

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Corporate

Records Scanning Strategy

For the unitary authority of

Northumberland County Council

DRAFT

Prepared by:

Records Management Service, Northumberland County Council, Woodhorn,

QEII Country Park, Ashington,

Northumberland, NE63 9YF

Email: [email protected]

Version History

Version Date Description Author

0.1 10/03/2008 Working draft K. A. Shiel

0.2 01/07/2009 Updated for Unitary Authority K. A. Shiel

Distribution List

Name Job Title Signature Date

All NCC staff All Woodhorn staff

Date of Next Review: 31/03/2012 Approval and Authorisation

Name Job Title Signature Date

Author:-

K.A.Shiel Records Manager 01/07/2009

Approved by:- Authorised By:-

Purpose

The purpose of this strategy is to state and communicate the principles that guide the legally admissible scanning of paper records within Northumberland County Council.

This document outlines the procedures and processes to be followed in the scanning and image processing of records, to ensure the authenticity, reliability and integrity of information held by the Council in accordance with the standards set out in BSI DISC PD 0008 - 'Legal Admissibility and

Evidential Weight of Information Stored Electronically'.

Northumberland County Council acknowledges the assistance of Norfolk County Council in the preparation of this document.

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Corporate Records Scanning Strategy

Contents: 1.0 Introduction 2.0 Background 3.0 Scope 4.0 Interpretation 5.0 References

6.0 Scanning operations management 7.0 Audit trail

8.0 Standard processes 9.0 Review of strategy

1. Introduction

On 1 April 2009 the seven councils in Northumberland became one unitary authority of Northumberland County Council.

During the Transition and Transformation period many services will be merged and records will be digitised and assimilated into existing Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS). There is a legacy of several EDM Systems from the merged councils and material within these systems has been digitised to varying qualities.

It is therefore important to address current storage of records and ensure that information is properly maintained for business, legal, evidential and historical use and that it should meet the standards set out in BSI DISC PD 0008 - 'Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight of

Information Stored Electronically'.

2. Background

2.1. Projects are already under way, or will begin shortly, to digitise active, semi-current or closed paper records and incoming documents in order to facilitate working in a wholly electronic environment and to free up space in offices for personnel movement. Records being digitised or being considered for digitisation include:

 Children’s Social Care – case file records currently in paper format.  Adult Social Care – case file records currently in paper format.

 ScanFile users – will move to ADOS, the NCC Electronic Document Management System (EDMS).

 Revs and Bens batch scanning.

 Former District Council digitised records.

2.2. It is essential that these digitised records have the same evidential weight and value as their physical originals, particularly if those originals are no longer kept.

3. Scope

3.2. This strategy applies to the scanning of day-to-day business records consisting of text or images.

3.3. This strategy applies to all case files including 25+ year case files that are scanned and to be used as legally admissible records.

3.4. This strategy applies to all staff that creates, uses, and manages digitally scanned documents to be kept as records.

3.5. This strategy does not apply to

 Documents that are scanned solely to facilitate a process, e.g. circulation, where the original is retained for the record,

 Specialist digitisation projects, for example to create electronic cultural resources,  Digital spatial data, for example in geographical information systems (GIS) and

computer-aided design (CAD) applications,

 Fee-based supply of digitised information to businesses and the public, for example under access to information legislation or as part of a research service,

 Public self-service scanning facilities.

3.6. This strategy does not set out system requirements, nor address the scope and content of system documentation. These requirements are set out in the Digital Curation Policy and Strategy.

3.7. The question of when it is acceptable to destroy or dispense with paper records, and who should make such a decision, is addressed in the corporate policy on Digital Preservation of Records, and in guidance on the legal admissibility and evidential weight of electronic information on the Records Management webpage.

4.

4.1. Digitisation means electronic scanning of originals.

4.2. Image processing includes rendering the content of an image machine-readable by means

of optical character recognition (OCR) products.

5.

5.1. Legislation, standards and codes of practice with which this strategy complies or which have informed it are listed in Appendix A.

6.

6.1. Procedures

6.1.1. Local variation to these corporate procedures may be necessary. When this occurs, the fact and nature of the variation should be fully documented and notified to the keeper of the corporate scanning strategy.

6.1.2. Scanning and image processing will be performed to the defined processes and procedures, irrespective of whether scanning is carried out in a central facility or locally.

6.1.3. Scanning procedures should be integrated into and support the relevant business processes and workflows.

6.1.4. Procedures should cover the following, as a minimum: Scanning operations

Data entry

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Back up Security Incidents

Exceptions (e.g. when a document or record may be deleted and replaced by a re-scan)

Disposition of originals.

6.1.5. All procedures, corporate and local, must be documented. 6.2. Staff

6.2.1. All staff involved in scanning and image processing should undergo basic training of the system in use.

6.2.2. Staff may need to be certificated as meeting the requirements of quality tests before they may add documents and records to certain categories of file, or use specific systems, e.g. ScanFile, ADOS, Swift.

6.2.3. Where staff must be certificated, this need must be determined by means of a risk assessment, and the certification process documented.

6.2.4. Staff training schedules should include

 An initial training period, in order to ensure that staff are familiar with and understand the relevant policies, techniques, and procedures, and

 Regular update sessions, for familiarisation with changes to policies and procedures. 6.2.5. All staff who undertake scanning should be provided with the necessary

documentation, and should at any time be able to demonstrate their familiarity with, and understanding of, that documentation.

6.3. Equipment and software

6.3.1. Equipment and software procured for scanning and image processing will comply with any industry benchmarks that have been specified.

6.3.2. Software procured for scanning and image processing will support national or international standards, e.g. for image file formats and metadata input.

6.3.3. Equipment and software will be routinely and systematically checked and tested to ensure that performance and quality requirements are maintained at all times. Checks and tests will be logged.

6.3.4. Equipment calibration will be checked by scanner operators, or other designated persons, on a regular basis. Calibration checks and any necessary re-calibration will be logged.

6.3.5. Equipment maintenance logs will be maintained. 6.4. Quality control

6.4.1. Quality control testing will be undertaken regularly, using a sample set of

documents equivalent in characteristics to original documents, to benchmark system performance against the image quality control criteria.

6.4.2. Quality control tests and their results will be recorded in a Quality Control Log. 6.5. Incidents and Exceptions

6.5.1. Incident and exception logs must be maintained. 6.6. Documentation

6.6.1. A designated role, or named person, will be responsible for the content, quality, production, and dissemination of the documentation.

6.6.2. Documentation should include, but not be limited to:

Technical documentation for all components of the scanning system, e.g. scanner, interface, software products

User guide(s) to equipment and software

Procedures manual(s) for the constituent processes, i.e. scanning, image processing, saving

House rules for inputting data, e.g. metadata values, file-naming protocols Exceptions procedure checklist

Incident and exceptions logging.

6.6.3. Documentation should be distributed electronically.

6.6.4. All changes and amendments to documentation must be formally recorded. 6.6.5. Documentation must be adequately protected against unauthorised or accidental

modification.

6.6.6. If corporate records retention policy requires it, superseded documentation must be retained as specified in the retention and disposal schedule.

7.

7.1. All logs will be subject to inspection, including inspection by auditors.

7.2. The software must record when and by whom scanned images have been created or, exceptionally, deleted.

7.3. The software must record each stage of scanning, image processing, and where applicable, indexing.

7.4. Where an image management system is in use it should automatically generate an audit trail which will

 Date/time stamp each event  Be non-alterable

 Be subject to access control  Be securely stored and backed-up

 Be subject to either the same retention period as the image itself, or a separate retention period

 Have a reporting tool that can produce both standard and customized reports from the trail.

8.

8.1. Figure 1 shows the steps that are performed routinely to ensure that a scanned image is a true representation of the original and has been captured appropriately.

Figure 1. Image capture process

Prepare

Document

Scan

Document

Verify

Image

Index

Image

Commit

Image

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8.2. Prepare document (Step 1)

8.2.1 Prior to scanning, all documents must be examined to determine the actions to be taken to prepare them and the scanning equipment, and to establish their suitability for scanning. Factors to take into account include

 physical condition, e.g. thin or brittle paper, creasing, tears and perforations, presence of staples, clips, or pins

 readability, e.g. fading, poor handwriting  size

 attributes, e.g. black and white, colour, tonal range  the need to replicate dimensions accurately.

8.2.2. Non-paper media such as roll-film, transparencies and microforms should be digitised using specialist equipment, rather than adapters such as slide frames. Advice can be obtained from the Northumberland Collections Service or from the Records Management Service at woodhorn.

8.3. Batching (Step 2)

8.3.1. This step will not always apply. 8.3.2. Batch metadata template completion

8.3.2.1. Where documents are batch scanned, a metadata template will be used to check completeness of the scanning process. This template will include:  Unique identifier for each batch of documents

 Type of material to be scanned, e.g. paper document, microfilm, aperture card  Terms to be selected from a controlled list

 Number of documents to be scanned

 Number of pages in each document to be scanned

 Retention/disposal instruction, e.g. ‘destroy after one year’, ‘original to be retained’.

8.3.3. Batch header update.

8.3.3.1. The batch header should include:  Date and time of scanning

 Identity of the person who performed the scanning

 Confirmation of the number of documents, and number of pages, to be scanned. 8.4. Scan (Step 3)

8.4.1. Check the scanner settings. 8.4.2. Default settings are:

Ratio 1:1

Resolution 300 dpi Bit depth 24-bit colour File format TIFF

Quality High, or numerical equivalent 8.4.3. Optional settings are:

Bit depth 1-bit and 8-bit black-and-white (where a facsimile of the original is not necessary)

Resolution 600 dpi, for originals that are smaller than B6 (postcard), and

where other factors indicate that a higher resolution is desirable, such as: fading, difficult-to-read handwriting, and fine detail.

File format JPEG2000, PDF/A-1b with (OCR) software or PDF- searchable Guidance will be published on choosing settings.

8.4.4. Where a resolution higher than 600 dpi is necessary, for example for scans of 35mm slides or fine-detailed complex images, an exception should be logged.

8.4.5. Image manipulation processes, such as de-speckle, de-skew, and cropping, are not normally permitted.

8.4.6. Where image manipulation is allowable, the permitted action and the grounds for permitting it must be documented, and every instance of image manipulation must be logged as an exception.

8.5. Verify image (Step 4)

8.5.4. This is a visual quality check to confirm that the captured image is a true representation of the original document.

8.5.5. If the scan fails this visual check, the image or batch of images must be rejected and re-scanned.

8.6. Index image (Step 5)

8.6.4. This step will not always apply, but is mandatory for ScanFile, ADOS (and other EDMS), Swift.

8.6.5. Image indexing metadata will be defined in the documentation.

8.6.6. House rules should be written that specify how metadata values are to be determined.

8.6.7. Sampling should be carried out routinely to ensure that staff are applying the indexing metadata correctly.

8.7. Commit image (Step 6)

8.7.1. This is the process of placing the scanned image in a repository, e.g. by saving to a folder.

8.7.2. This may be a system-controlled process. This is the case with ScanFile, an EDMS and Swift.

8.7.3. Where committing the image is a manual process, a file-naming protocol should be put in place, and documented.

8.8. OCR (Step 7)

8.8.1. This step will not always apply.

8.8.2. If an image file is to be rendered as a fully-functioning electronic text by means of optical character recognition software (OCR), this process should be undertaken after the image file itself has been committed (Step 5).

8.8.3. OCR rendition may be accomplished automatically by an image management system, or manually.

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8.8.4. The OCR version is a separate electronic file, although it may, and whenever possible it should, be tightly bound to the image file.

8.9. Disposal of original (Step 8)

8.9.1. The manner in which original documents and records are to be disposed must be fully documented, and recorded in the relevant records retention schedule.

8.9.2. Disposal must always be in accordance with the corporate Digital Preservation Policy, and the guidelines on legal admissibility and evidential weight of electronic information.

8.9.3. Where clear instructions as to disposition are absent, the departmental or the corporate records manager must be consulted, and an appropriate written consent obtained, before any action is carried out that is likely to result in the destruction or disposal of records.

9.

Appendix A

References

The following legislation, policies, standards, and codes of practice have informed this strategy: Civil Evidence Act 1995

Data Protection Act 1998

BS ISO 15489-1:2001 Information and Documentation – Records Management – Part 1: General

BS ISO 15489-2:2001 Information and Documentation – Records Management – Part 2: Guidelines

BIP 0008 Code of Practice on Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight of Information Stored Electronically, 3rd _{edition, 2004, British Standards Institution}

Code of Practice for Information Security Management, BS 7799: 1999/ ISO 17799, 1999 Electronic imaging – Information stored electronically – Recommendations for

trustworthiness and reliability, ISO/TR 15801, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2004