Presentation

From Records Manager to Digital Records Forensic Expert: Practicing an Extreme Profession

June 17, 2010
Norwood Hotel, 112 Marion Street

Registration: 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Session: 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Registration for this event also allows you to attend our ARMA Winnipeg AGM and Casino Night immediately after the session at no extra cost.

Description

The digital environment is presenting records and information managers with challenges never encountered before, primarily because their actions do not find the support of a clear legislation, tested strategies, and widely shared policies. In 1998, the Uniform Law Conference of Canada (ULCC) officially adopted the Uniform Electronic Evidence Act as a model legislation that proposed reform of the traditional Common Law evidentiary requirements for proof of authentication and best evidence, on the grounds that, while these rules worked well enough for paper records, they could not deal adequately with electronic ones. Among other things, the Act shifted the focus of the authentication and best evidence rules from the record to the system in which the record is kept, inferring trustworthiness from the integrity of the system rather than ascertaining it from the form or other characteristics of the record. Most legislatures, including the federal and Manitoba ones, implemented the provisions of the Act by renumbering themand inserting them as amendments into their pre-existing Evidence Acts.  However, courts face a common problem of statutory interpretation: how to reconcile the new provisions with the Common Law and statutory rules that already deal with electronic records. For example, the electronic records requirements do not expressly refer to pre-existing rules for the admissibility of business records, rules that define them as including electronic records by using the phrase “any information that is recorded or stored by means of a device.” In fact, the Act does not even refer to the business records exception to the hearsay rule, thereby leaving a big legislative gap that digital forensics experts are now filling with their own determinations of what electronic information would or would not fall under that rule and its exceptions. Additional limitations of the Act include the absence of provisions related to the search and seizure of electronic records in both civil and criminal cases; the protection of privacy; the ever-expanding duties of retention and preservation of electronic records; the spoliation, or purposeful destruction of electronic records to escape prosecution; and e-discovery. Also in these cases digital forensic experts are taking position, without consulting with records managers, who should be the real experts on records, and judges are listening.

This presentation will discuss the existing rules and how they are to be understood; the concept of business record in the digital environment according to the law, digital forensics, and the theory of the record; the concepts of authenticity of records and integrity of systems as understood in law, digital forensics and record theory; and the methods necessary to ensure that the records we are responsible for can be admissible as evidence, given proper weight, and maintained authentic overtime. It will also discuss how to practice this newly required extreme professionalism without dying.

Biography

Luciana Duranti is Chair of the Master of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies of the University of British Columbia, and a Professor of archival theory, diplomatics, and the management of digital records in both its master’s and doctoral archival programs. Dr. Duranti is presently Project-Director of InterPARES (1999-2012), the largest research project on the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records; principal investigator in a research project entitled Digital Records Forensics (2008-2011); co-investigator in a research project examining issues of copyright and long term preservation in the context of universities institutional digital repositories (2009-2011) and collaborates with forensic scientists on a project entitled Computer Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections (2009-2010).  She is developing digital records guidelines for nominations to the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register and education modules for trusted digital records professionals for the International Council on Archives. 

For her university work Dr. Duranti was honoured in 1999 with the Faculty Association's Academic of the Year Award. Her research has been recognized with the Emmett Leahy Award for her contributions to records management and the drafting of the DoD and MoReq standards, the British Columbia Innovation Council Award, which is annually presented to “an individual who has opened new frontiers to scientific research,” the Killam Research Prize, and the Jacob Biely Research Prize, the University of British Columbia’s “premier research award.” She is active nationally and internationally in several archival associations and in boards and committees, such as the Italy’s National Commission for Archives (2007-2010) and the UNESCO International Advisory Committee of the Memory of the World Program (2007-2011), and has been the President of the Society of American Archivists (1998-99), of which she is a Fellow. She publishes widely on archival theory, records management and diplomatics.

Co-sponsored by the Association of Manitoba Archives

Coffee break sponsored by

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