[ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping

[Dimiter Popoff]

I can comment based on what we do here at TGI (where we design and manufacture
electronics, mainly spectrometry).
The vast majority of our data never get to paper; however, some critical
end products - mainly circuits - do get printed and perhaps pencil marked
during the design evolution process.

Security is obviously always a concern but not a huge issue for us
since we store our truly critical data - e.g. sources our DSP conversion
algorithms for our HPGe MCAs, DPS (our OS) etc. - on the disks of DPS
machines only which are 100% under our control, i.e. we know they
are configured in an impenetrable way. I don't think this is achievable
for many people so my comments on this do not really apply.

Another huge concern is data longevity. No electronic carrier can
come even close to the longevity of properly preserved paper.
A HDD can store data for a decade, may be two decades if it lives.
Floppy disks we had from the late 80-s and early 90-s were still
readable some 3-4 years ago when we last located some which had not
been transferred to new media. Beware not to try to write to such old floppies
if you need the data on them though, the sectors you attempt to
write just fail in an unrecoverable way. I think I discovered that
when the flopies were somewhat more than 10 or 15 years old (not
sure exactly).

Nowadays we do archive on DVD-s (our data are not overblown and our
volume is not so huge; for a larger organization this could easily 
become impractical).

Our CDs from 15+ years ago are still readable and our DVDs from
10+ years ago are still readable, too. So far so good one might
be tempted to say :).

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff, TGI             http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/


>Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 12:54:28 -0400
>From: Hans J Wiegert <hjwiegert at gmail.com>
>To: "The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List"
>	<radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
>Subject: [ RadSafe ] Electronic Record Keeping
>
>I would like to get the group's opinion regarding electronic record keeping
>and the potential of going to a "nearly" paperless system.  Landauer has
>already started pushing industrial users to go paperless and there may come
>a time when we might see an advantage to storing many files electronically.
>Redundancy and security are primary concerns.
>
>Have a good weekend!
>
>Thanks
>
>Best Regards,
>
>
>Hans
>
>*Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is
>Sunday - so you are not late for church!*
>_______________________________________________
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>