Document destruction put on hold in Connecticut

Though the technology is readily available, inexpensive and easy to implement, some organizations choose to destroy old documents rather than move them to an electronic means of storage using conversion services. However, each year, a number of institutions find that digitizing would save them financial and legal trouble.

Such is the case in Connecticut, where Carol Carson, the executive director for Connecticut's Office of State Ethics, will have to cease destroying financial disclosure forms from 2006 until a review can be completed by the Connecticut State Library, the Hartford Courant reported. This is despite the fact that a statute allows financial records five years and older to be destroyed.

The Courant explained that Carson decided to eliminate both tangible files and some electronic ones after her office became swamped with papers and she did not think she had the proper storage resources.

However, particularly when stored on the cloud, archives are mostly scalable, so it may have been worthwhile for the Office of State Ethics to look into alternative digitization solutions before any documents were destroyed. The Courant said Carson is rethinking the elimination policy, so this may be a viable option in the near future.

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