Businesses, organizations, and public offices of every kind are adopting internet-based technologies to improve their communication infrastructure. Internet channels are many and diverse. However, the scope organizational communication with internal and external audiences must include not only websites, but also blogs, video outlets, and social media efforts.
Most organizations have an enterprise messaging platform in place for preserving e-mail, SMS messages, and other types of electronically stored information (ESI). Yet, most do not have a process in place to archive and research web and social media records. Certainly, failing to capture and preserve web and social media activities risks violating any number of evolving compliance, regulatory, and legal archiving requirements, and in particular, it leaves organizations unprepared for producing data during e-discovery.
Here’s a quick guide on how to archive interactive online content for government and the financial and healthcare industries:
A.Financial Services (According to FINRA Regulatory Notice 17-18)
- Firms need to capture, archive and make e-discoverable all written business communications. Firms cannot simply rely on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, or the newer networks such as WhatsApp or WeChat to retain those business records for them. Thus, firms need to work with third-party archiving firms to capture and store business records that appear on social media.
- Treat third party content the same way that you treat your in-house content. It needs to be pre-approved for suitability and appropriateness and recordkeeping rules apply.
- Technology that automatically erases or deletes the content of an electronic communication would preclude the ability of the firm to retain the communications in compliance with their obligations under SEA Rule 17a-4.
- Firms need Written Supervisory Procedures (WSPs) in place for electronic communications before they allow their employees to use social media and other forms of electronic communications.
- A firm’s policies and procedures must include training and education of its associated persons regarding the differences between business and nonbusiness communications and the measures required to ensure that any business communication made by associated persons is retained, retrievable and supervised.
B. Government Offices (According to Bulletin 2014-02)
- Federal agencies must manage web site-related records that result their web operations, including those that are needed to ensure trustworthiness of each site and those needed to document agency programs.
- To help you identify the types of website related records your agency may have, the following list suggests potential series of records that might result from agency web site operations:
- HTML-encoded pages
- Records generated interactively on the website
- Additional content files referenced within HTML-encoded pages
- Comprehensive list of URLs referenced by a web site’s hyperlinks
- Website design records
- Copyrighted web content and records documenting the use of such content materials
- Website program operations records
- Website system software-related records
- Website logs and statistical compilations
- Website map
- COTS software configuration files
- Content on social media is likely a Federal record. Agencies must identify the official record and determine how it will be managed. Some social media records may be temporary; with a transitory, short, or long-term retention. Some may even be permanent, such as a blog by an agency senior official.
- The NARA Guidance on managing social media records addresses strategies agencies could take to manage records, including:
- Using web crawling or other software to create local versions of sites.
- Using web capture tools to capture social media content and migrate it to other formats.
- Using platform-specific application programming interfaces (APIs) to pull content.
- Using RSS Feeds, aggregators, or manual methods to capture content.
- Using tools built into some social media platforms to export content.
- Once records, including tweets and messages, are scheduled, they may not be deleted until the authorized retention period has lapsed. NARA authorizes Federal agencies to dispose records through approved records schedules, so any alteration, deletion, destruction, or removal of records that occur without following the applicable records schedule must be promptly reported to NARA.
C. Healthcare Institutions (According to HHS Digital Council)
- Any material, including written documents (governance, reports, memoranda, promotional pieces, letters, etc.) or design documents (wireframes, sites designs, etc.), dealing with the creation, management, and maintenance of the Web is considered to be a Web record.
- Some Web content and/or pages are considered Web records. Dynamic homepages are considered Web records. Blogs and other interactive Web content are Web records. Public input related to the Web and delivered via the Web is also considered to be Web records.
- For other categories, the schedule remains to be determined. The retention schedule for these categories will be determined in consultation with the Office of Records Management (ORM). ORM will ensure that records schedules are consistent across the Department. Note that offices may keep records longer than specified by the schedule.
- The considerations of a record’s trustworthiness, reliability, authenticity, integrity, and usability cited in NARA Guidance are all applicable to content created from the web and social media platforms. The five distinguishing characteristics of these applications (interactive aspects, collaboration, aggregation, incremental content and content replication) are issues for risk assessment and enter into those considerations.
If you’re using a website and social media networks as communication platforms for your organization, you must be prepared to preserve those communications just like other business records. TeleMessage offer many ways that can help you archive your digital content so that you can be sufficiently prepared.
Visit TeleMessage www.telemessage.com today to learn more about our Mobile Archiving Platforms.
