Guidelines

Updated ERC guidelines now available

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Greetings! The Ohio Electronic Records Committee would like to announce major updates to our published guidelines for Managing Email, as well our guidelines for Managing Social Media. The Managing Email guidelines were last updated in 2012 and this represents a major effort to update the language in the guidelines, simplify them, and to make them more user-focused for our records management cohorts in public agencies throughout the state. The primary focus of the update to our Social Media guidelines was to remove outdated terminology and to update the various social media definitions to increase accessibility and relevancy in the current social media environment. We will continue to review and revise our existing guidelines, as well as develop new guidelines as needed. If you have questions or comments on the updated guidelines, or recommendations for existing or emerging topics for the Ohio Electronic Records Committee to investigate, please contact us at: [email protected]

Scanning Feasibility Tool

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The OhioERC is proud to promote its latest tool to assist in the managing of public sector agency records. While today the majority of our records are born digital, many public sector agencies are still pressed with issues of storage, retrieval, and management of growing or displaced physical, paper-based records in their possession. A possible solution for managing these documents is to scan them, thus converting them to digital documents which then can be integrated with born digital documents and enterprise systems.

Public sector agencies using paper in their operations should consider whether the conversion of paper to digital will improve operations before investing in such a project or workflow. They should consider potential efficiencies in information accessibility, management, and disposition, while also feasibly complying with organizational records retention and management policies.

This new tool provides a means to assist public sector agencies in properly analyzing the records they manage and maintain to determine whether to digitize them. It encompasses several factors, including employee costs, storage space, supplies, equipment, reproduction, and migration to future systems. This tool is not intended be used to conduct a cost benefit analysis (CBA) nor business process management (BPM); it would be wise to conduct these business and financial analyses along with using this tool. The Scanning Feasibility Tool can be  found on our Document Imaging Guidelines page.