Record management: SECP outsources archiving service to a private firm

Solution helped SECP maintain its record.


Waqas Naeem March 25, 2013
Theft and tampering of files are major concerns at government offices. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: In November 2011, this paper reported that 400 “highly classified” files had been stolen from the petroleum ministry over a period of six months. The files contained information about inquiries into alleged financial misappropriations.

Theft and tampering of files are major concerns at government offices. But the lack of proper storage and classification of records is also a problem.

Quite often when the courts demand officials to produce paper records during litigation, the officials either ask for more time or respond that the files have gone missing.

Now, at least one government agency has decided to secure its records.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), the country’s corporate industry watchdog, has outsourced its document storage to a records management firm.

“The archiving and storage solution has greatly helped the SECP in properly maintaining its record,” the commission’s media and corporate communications director Imran Ghaznavi said, in an email. “This was not possible before due to
multiple ways of storing files, information within files was not clean and was not classified in various categories.”

SECP has employed Islamabad-based Archive Technologies (AT) for its off-site records storage.

AT, with a warehouse spread over 40,000 square feet in I-10/3, provides a highly secure environment and efficient retrieval for the records, said Naeem Piracha, the owner of the firm.

The company claims its warehouses are rain and flood water proof with
CCTV cameras, fire suppression systems and termite control.

AT is using bar coding coupled with a software management system that works on a principle similar to library cataloguing. Individual files are traced through a combination of two bar codes — one barcode on the box in which the files are stored and the other barcode on the shelf where the box is placed.

“The cataloguing ensures a minimum retrieval time, with urgent delivery in a day, as compared to government offices where it could take many days to manually locate an old file,” AT manager Waheed Murtaza said.

Digital data warehousing and cloud computing are efficient alternative solutions for private firms that are producing increasing volumes of digital data and trying to go ‘paperless’.

But government offices and private banks have to retain paper records for litigation purposes, and the SECP is required to maintain physical records for five years.

Piracha said that cost varies depending on the file load of the company. “The companies are charged a per box rate,” he said.

The third-party storage has proved to be 20 to 50 per cent cheaper than in-house storage for the SECP, Ghaznavi said in the email.

The AT, which started its work two years ago, is one of only two off-site records management companies in Pakistan at the moment.

Piracha is touting the “anti-corruption” line for his business and focusing on getting storage contracts from government departments, but his company has so far been able to get only one client, SECP.

Piracha said that government officials were usually hesitant in considering off-site storage. Some have shied away from the solution citing possible legal concerns.

“The government officials are confused,” Piracha said. “There is no legal hitch and the law is probably silent on this issue.”

Off-site storage firms are most commonly employed by private firms worldwide but some governments have also used this option. In 2012, the UK government awarded the financial management company, Iron Mountain, a contract for off-site information management services including records storage.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25th, 2013.

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