Digital Record-Keeping Practices: Electronic Records and Archives in the Cloud

The lure of cloud computing services tremendously impacts electronic records and archives management. Due to the use of many different clouds by employees, organizational records and archives are stored in a widespread manner that no longer conforms with the principles, rules, regulations, and legal requirements of the way public records and archives are managed. Thus, protecting national governments, state, or business secrets and long-term preservation of the organizational memory in the cloud have become critical issues. Given the increasing use of various architectures for digital government, it is crucial to investigate the impact of cloud computing architecture on the fundamental principles of records and archives. This literature review aims to explore whether the cloud computing architecture is sufficient to maintain the life cycle process, provenance and original order of electronic records and archives. The finding revealed that there is a lack of consensus on the concepts of records and archives architecture that support records and archives management.