Document management and email archiving have come under the business spotlight to an unprecedented degree, following the arrival of tough new corporate governance laws.

Currently, many firms are ignorant of their legal responsibilities in this area. According to a recent survey by software vendor Macro 4, only 65 percent of firms are fully aware of their obligations.

Under the new governance rules, firms must archive crucial data or risk severe penalties. This pressing need has been noticed by IT vendors, who are ramping up their archiving offerings. For example, last month Veritas Software bought archiving vendor KVS in a $225m deal.

A quarter of IT departments worldwide are bent on upgrading their messaging servers for better archiving ; and another third are already completing upgrades, according to analyst firm Radicati Group.

To deal with the new laws, some enlightened companies have appointed a dedicated compliance officer to shoulder the burden, but the majority have dumped all the responsibility on the IT director.

Firms that deal in global markets also have to take account of laws in other countries. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, for example, affects UK firms listed in the US. Under the act, companies have to implement strict document management policies. Anyone who knowingly alters or destroys a record or document with the intent to obstruct an investigation is liable to fines, or prison sentences of up to 20 years.

At some firms, instant messaging (IM) could create a stumbling block on the road to compliance. In many cases, messages are not stored on in-house servers, backup tapes or even on PCs' hard drives.

For local authorities, the arrival of the Freedom of Information Act in January 2005 will pose a big headache. Information silos, poorly integrated systems and inconsistent record-keeping methods could all open the floodgates to legal action by disgruntled customers.

Some companies will need to improve their management systems to ensure that the necessary information is archived. "It is crucial to confirm who decides which document to keep," commented Mike Woodgate, business development consultant at Tower Technology. "Organisations will have to decide whether it is better to keep them all or whether that will put too much pressure on storage resources."

There are also questions over what constitutes a complete document for legal purposes. "It is unclear whether it is the first draft, the revised electronic draft, the paper version with written annotations or the final version," said Woodgate.

Some experts predict that responsibility for archiving hard-copy data will fall on the shoulders of the IT director. "Most organisations have neglected to look at the impact of paper-based documents," said Brennan Peyton of Panasonic. "More and more firms are now looking at creating paper trails that cover documents such as faxes because of Sarbanes-Oxley."

Peyton said many companies had no record of received faxes, although the latest digital fax machines can automatically generate an email so that a digital copy of each message is automatically stored.

The latest printers can also convert important documents into PDFs for electronic archiving, and the latest fax machines can respond to key words through optical character recognition to help firms store key documents, Peyton noted.

The burden of archiving crucial information looks set to increase for some time yet, so IT directors must ensure they work with senior managers or compliance officers now to develop clear policies on what and what not to store.

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