The Comparative Study On Chinese And Foreign Electronic Records Management

Human society has entered the information age.As one of the mainstreams in the development of modern information technology,computer technology is rapidly infiltrating into science and technology,agriculture,entertainment,transport,health, education,finance and other fields of social activities to become one essential part of modern society and life.The application of computer technology not only helps people improve their work efficiency and quality of life,at the same time,it produces a large number of electronic records.So the management of informationization has become the focus in the circle of archives.Tenth Five-Year Plan of the Development of the National Archives stressed the irreversible trend of development of electronic records and set the record informationization as a strategic task.The management of electronic records is one of the key elements in the process of record informationization since it is closely related to the sustainable development of record cause.Archives Technology Research Centre of National Archives Bureau put forward the suggestion to do research on the filing and management of electronic records in 1995 and approved by National Archives Bureau.National Archives Bureau set up the leading research group to guide the research on the filing and management of electronic records.As technology environment and management thought is changing very fast,the management of electronic records in information age is a topic that needs to be further studied both theoretically and practically.As the improvement of E-Government in China and our integration into international management of electronic records,some advanced experience has been brought into China and provides lots of references for domestic theoretical study.But on the whole,our management of electronic records is still in the initial stage. Through the comparative study on the management of electronic records both at home and abroad,the thesis finds out weak links in our management of electronic records and offers positive improvement measures.There are important theoretical and practical value in improving our management of electronic records and strengthening our control of information resource of electronic records.After extensively collecting and analyzing relevant research results at home and abroad,the thesis gets a full grasp of the advanced management theory and experience abroad and management characteristics and current situation at home.Then,the thesis makes a deep analysis on theory of document life cycle and theory of document continuum and sets it as the theoretical basis for the present thesis.After that,the thesis conducts an in-depth comparative study on concepts,models and laws and regulations of management of electronic records at home and abroad to search for the direction and ways which can further improve our management of electronic records. The management of electronic records abroad is mainly guided by the concepts of front-end control and whole-process management.The so-called front-end control of electronic records is to put in advance the formation,operation and filing management in the management of electronic records,and establish a uniform-standard,closely related,mutually-guaranteed and relatively independent operation mode in order to form a primitive and authentic security system for the well-organized and complete electronic records.The so-called whole-process management is to manage the entire life cycle of electronic records,from its creation to permanent preservation or destruction.It begins to control electronic records from their creation,and organically links its formation,circulation,collection,classification and storage together.Business process reengineering is restructured according to uniform norms and standards,and it is guaranteed that the file attributes are embedded in business process to make it organically linked with file process.In practice,China usually pursues the integrated management of electronic records and paper records. The so-called integrated management is to correspond electronic records with paper records for centralized and unified management according to their different attributes and characteristics.Essentially speaking,our integrated management of electronic records and paper records in fact refers to the electronic realization of record phase-management under the guidance of traditional theory of record life cycle. Comparatively speaking,the author believes the concept of electronic records management in Europe and the United States is more advanced because it can better ensure the authenticity of electronic record content,the security of electronic record information and the convenient use of electronic records,more in line with the objective law of the development of electronic records.There are two management modes of electronic records abroad at present, including organization decentralized management and archives centralized management.The so-called organization decentralized management refers to self-preservation of the electronic records with preservation value by the organization that produces those records.This management mode helps ensure the identifiability and integrity of electronic records,and ease the financial and technical difficulties of the archives.But the biggest hidden danger of this mode is the over-decentralization of the document entity,which might fail to well preserve some electronic records with permanent preservation value.The archives centralized management is to preserve the electronic records that should be filed and their carriers collectively in the archives. This mode not only can well preserve the document entity,but also can effectively prevent arbitrary modification and destruction to ensure authenticity and reliability of electronic records.However,the archives have to invest a large sum of money to convert the format of electronic records for their long-term readability.Until now,we have not decided which management mode to choose.The author believes we should complement their advantages and build up a mode of management that is suitable for us after analyzing the current situation in China.There is relevant legislation concerning management of electronic records in every country all over the world,among which the legislation system in the United States and European Union are more comprehensive.Their content of legislation centers on the security and legal effect of electronic records and other important issues that need to be solved.The thesis introduces and analyzes in details the relevant laws and regulations concerning the management of electronic records in the United States and European Union.Our legislation on the management of electronic records is still in the initial stage,among which laws and regulations on information security mainly focus on the protection of information on the internet,the security of internet information service and other related fields.Up to the present,there is no clear legal provision on the evidence function of electronic records.After comparison,we can find that the laws and regulations on management of electronic records abroad are attached great importance,besides they are richer in content and clear in guideline. While there exist certain problems in our management of electronic records:the content of legislation is not rich enough,and we emphasize executive legislation and underrate legislation by legislative authority.Besides,we lack uniform guiding principles for our legislation.At last,on the basis of the comparison between management modes of electronic records at home and abroad together with the concrete practice and environment needs of our management of electronic records,the author thinks that centralization-decentralization management mode is more suitable for the management system in our country,which can be chosen as the most preferred mode.Concretely speaking,first,there are archives in nearly all the provinces,cities and counties in China.And the condition of the archives above city-level is generally favorable,which can ensure the preservation of electronic records with permanent preservation value and their carriers.Secondly,every agency and unit is provided with file room(or information center),specially used for preserving their own records and documents.The distributed preservation of non-permanent records could undoubtedly makes full use of the file room in each agency to manage the records effectively and scientifically.Besides,it should be mentioned that the implementation of centralization--decentralization management mode changes the traditional management mode,that is,the archives preserve all the records.But the practice of record producing agencies and archives performing their respective duties still complies with the general principle of unified leadership and level management.On that basis,the thesis put forward suggestions to develop management system with comprehensive functions,to strengthen the management of hardware system,to ensure the security of internet environment and improve our legal system of electronic records management.The author hopes those four suggestions could be helpful in the improvement of our electronic records management.We believe that our management of electronic records can definitely reach a higher level through benefiting from advanced experience from abroad and making full use of all the advantages to push the development of the record cause in information age.