Introduction

Electronic documents are an essential part of everyday business, whether the sources are incoming communications or output from organizations. It is important that electronic documents be stored appropriately, either fully or in part, in secure information systems designed for operations and archiving, in order to meet business, legal or regulatory requirements.

The objectives of secure information systems are to resolve organizational issues such as:

a) optimization of long-term electronic document preservation, archiving and integrity;
b) provision of information search facilities;
c) ensuring ease of access and use of electronic documents.

This document is intended to provide a reference framework for organizations. It describes the methods and techniques to be used for the implementation of an electronic information system for managing documents within an archive. In conjunction with related archival policies of organizations, it describes criteria for system design and specifications for operational processes.

These specifications are intended to ensure that all documents to be managed by the information system are captured, stored, retrieved and accessed in a way that guarantees that the archived document is an authentic rendition of the original document for the duration of preservation. An authentic rendition means that the rendered document corresponds to the source document as it was at the time of input in the information system in respect of criteria of fidelity and integrity, and that this state is maintained for the duration of preservation.

This document takes into account the use of three possible archiving media: physical WORM, logical WORM and rewritable media. Archival integrity is ensured on physical and logical WORM media by the inherent properties of WORM solutions. On rewritable media, integrity is ensured using encryption-like techniques, in particular with checksum calculation or hash function, date and time stamp or digital signature. In all cases, it is necessary to comply with related procedures.

Depending on the types of documents to be archived, other specialized standards can be relevant and used to complement the recommendations in this document.

This document provides a specific and complementary definition of issues addressed in other standards or specifications concerning the management of electronic information. Its content is intended to address execution issues raised in several other documents. These include ISO/TR 15801, ISO 15489‑1 and MoReq2^[¹⁵^], which detail specifications for organizing and controlling the lifecycle of archived information for purposes of evidence and operational history, and ISO 14721, which describes the characteristics of an open system for the preservation of digital data.

Annexes A, B and C are complementary.

BS ISO 14641:2018

Electronic document management. Design and operation of an information system for the preservation of electronic documents. Specifications

Current

Published:

30 Jun 2018