Legal Admissibility
This topic remains perhaps the single greatest area of concern for companies wishing to destroy their paper documents and rely purely on electronic documentation as evidence for various authorities. As ATIX provides a complete records management service, our customers always have the option of keeping any originals they desire in our purpose built document storage facilities. The best advice for companies wishing to maintain only electronic copies of their business records is to seek qualified legal advice as unfortunately it is impossible to give a blanket yes / no answer on admissibility for all document categories.
The current British Standard covering electronic document mangement and legal admissibility is BIP 0008:2004 "Code of Practice for Legal Admissibility and evidential weight of information stored electronically". The publication provides a framework of standards that should be met in order to maximise the likelihood of creating a legally admissible electronic document. There is little point in creating images that do not meet this standard and ATIX ensures that the guidelines are met and exceeded to create electronic documents of the highest possible quality. We are able to provide any of our customers with documentation detailing processes and adherence to the standard whenever it is required.
In summary, the question of whether a scanned document is legally admissible will only ever be governed by authority rules and regulations and our customers are safe in the knowledge that the quality of the image and the processes that created it will never be a limiting factor.