It is important to determine these roles early in the planning process as this may identify additional requirements that need to be incorporated into the system design. The implementation will not succeed without the support of all these groups. Information security provides one of the chief points of shared interest and potential collaboration between records management programs and the priorities of information technology organizations. Protection, preservation, and responsible systems of access to computer-stored data, including electronic records, will be vastly enhanced if the IT organization has an active and responsive program of information system security. If the agency's systems cannot support the integrity of the records and provide ample evidence of their authenticity, the agency will be in a poor position to protect its rights or the rights of citizens affected by the agency.
Records act as the 'voice' of an agency in legal proceedings.
It is important to understand the distinction between the life cycle of records and the life cycle of information systems that create, manage and use the records and the life cycle of the media on which the records are stored. The life cycle of records often exceeds the life cycle of the information system in which the records are originally created or captured. Likewise, some storage media will significantly outlast the hardware and software necessary to retrieve and display the records stored on them. To successfully manage and maintain electronic records, it is important to determine if the records will be needed beyond the life of the system where they are currently stored and, if necessary, to plan for the migration of the records to a new system before the current system is retired. Migration strategies to counteract the hardware and software dependencies of electronic records are essential for the long-term management of records.