The vulnerabilities of your paper records

Paper-based systems come with a very extensive list of downfalls. These include the environmental costs, the price of the paper itself and the expensive storage spaces which are often necessary to house records. One of the biggest vulnerabilities is how susceptible paper records are to damage. 

While damage or loss can result from a variety of circumstances, some of the more common causes of catastrophe for local governments include:

• Fire – Fires can be caused by arson, mechanical malfunction, human error and a host of other reasons., Fire damage along with the subsequent water damage can rapidly destroy large stores of records with no chance of recovery;
• Flood – What if a records room is flooded due to a weather event, a burst pipe, or other accidents? Government records can be decades old and vulnerable to rapid disintegration when exposed to water. If the records are deemed to be recoverable, the process to do so is very time-consuming and expensive. The recovery process may include freeze-drying the records so that they can be saved. After such recovery, the records become even more vulnerable the next time disaster strikes; 
• Overuse – A municipality may have records that are over a hundred years old. These documents may have been handled by thousands of people. These older records require extremely careful handling and likely will need to be placed in separate storage areas. This additional space can be quite expensive given the care that has to be placed in maintaining such historical documents;
• Snowstorm – A snowstorm can cause many of the same problems as a flood can. Snowstorms may also make paper records inaccessible as snow could block access to records rooms. This can lead to challenges with supplying freedom of information requests.
• Dust – Dust can be a serious problem when dealing with paper-based records. Dust can spread over rooms and make reading records a difficult and unpleasant process. No one wants to go into a dusty room.
• Mold – Mold can infect records and make them unsafe to access. Mold is both an annoyance and a source of fear for workers. The process of removing the infestation can be very expensive, requiring the hiring of specialists who must inspect the site, and cleanse everything. The biohazardous nature of mold can lead to the inaccessibility of affected records until the issue is resolved causing delays. Ricoh’s solutions help to prevent the damage caused by these types of situations and more. We have worked with over a hundred local governments across Canada, digitizing records and storing them in secure electronic repositories or in the cloud.We provide a wide range of customizable services and can implement automated business process for your requirements. Our solutions not only rescue governments from the issues raised by paper-based records management systems but also increase overall efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance.

Protect your constituents’ records.