What is Record Lifecycle

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) and the rapid increase of ebusiness have led to a rapid growth of the number of produced and exchanged electronic documents. The documents range from simple receipts to complex legal contracts and service level agreements. More and more types of documents are required to be preserved for longer periods of time, for example, due to legal reasons or as evidence of a business activity. Although electronic records are created and managed in an electronic form through their entire lifecycle, they are usually printed at the end and preserved in paper form to be legally valid. This has led to a situation where paper archives are becoming too complex to be effectively managed, and need to be replaced with electronic record preservation systems. Properly preserved electronic records have equivalent legal value as records in the paper form and can be used as evidence material in court. Advanced organizations use document management systems (DMSs) for managing large numbers of electronic records. For example, a mobile phone operator creates user contracts in an electronic form or converts them from paper, preserves the contracts as long as required by the law, and disposes them after that. Unfortunately, DMSs frequently do not provide adequate technologies for integrity and authenticity provisions, which are critically important for long-term electronic record preservation in business organizations. More advanced electronic records preservation technologies are therefore required.