1.0
Responsibilities and Authority - Administrative Services
Manager, Information Technology Department
2.0
Definitions -
2.1
Back-up, a process of creating a copy of the database for the
purpose of data recovery in the event of a disaster or corruption of the
database
2.2
Purging which physically removes data from the database with
no intention of recovery or using the purged data again; and
2.3
Data archiving which removes data from the dynamic production
database to a static system
2.4
Destruction - the act and method of irreversible removal of
information. Destruction also covers the incapacitation of storage media.
2.5
Degaussing - A method of electromagnetic destruction of
information.
3.0
Approaches to Archiving -
3.0.1
Data archiving assumes that the data will be needed in the
future and therefore, archived data have the ability to be viewed in the
future. From the definitions, it is clear that data archiving and data backup
are distinctly different processes in which the stored data are targeted for
different purposes. The backup data are for system recovery in case of a major
system failure and are stored in a different form and on different storage
media than the archived data. Also, backing up data in the database does not
result in the ultimate removal of the data from the database, as is done in
data archiving.
3.0.2
Databases - responsible provider will monitor database table
growth, with IT assist, and determine which tables are the largest and also
growing the fastest. From this information, the business process related to
those fast growing tables can be determined and the appropriate archiving
procedures established by IT.
3.0.3
Examine the business activity of various documents and
determine the growth of those related business documents. The archiving
candidates are then derived from the documents that have the most activity. It
is then necessary to age the documents in the candidate business processes and
determine where archiving has its most potential gain.
3.0.4
Determined by the business needs, documents can be dependent
on other documents in such a way that archiving of one type of document without
archiving other related documents can disrupt the business process. Hence, the
aging of documents must be based on these dependencies. That means that all
related documents must be eligible to be archived simultaneously. This dictates
that documents to be archived must be placed into batches in which all related
documents must be archived at once.
3.0.5
Reporting requirements must also be considered. While a report
may not be needed for operational concerns, there could be needs for year-end
reports. Obviously, standard reports that run on the production system do not
reference any archived data. Hence, these reports must be analyzed before
making archiving decisions to be sure that they do not rely on any data that
may end up being archived. For example, for some documents, it may be
appropriate to archive the data after they are six months old since the end
users no longer need access to them. However, if a report uses these documents
in an annual statement, then these transactions can not be archived until a
later date.
3.1
Destruction
3.1.1
Information Destruction
- Information stored in data files, which the
responsible provider has identified for destruction must be irreversibly
destroyed from removable electronic media. Approved methods of destruction
are by reformatting the media device, unconditional deletion and
overwriting of all data files. Data files that reside on Agency network
data servers must be deleted by the Owner using standard operating delete
procedures.