AN ACT Relating to the
preservation of public electronic records; reenacting and amending RCW
40.14.020; and creating a new section.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE
LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
Sec. 1. RCW 40.14.020 and 1991 c
237 s 4 and 1991 c 184 s 1 are each reenacted and amended to read as follows:
All public records
shall be and remain the property of the state of Washington. They shall be
delivered by outgoing officials and employees to their successors and shall be
preserved, stored, transferred, destroyed or disposed of, and otherwise
managed, only in accordance with the provisions of this chapter. In order to
insure the proper management and safeguarding of public records, the division
of archives and records management is established in the office of the
secretary of state. The state archivist, who shall administer the division and
have reasonable access to all public records, wherever kept, for purposes of
information, surveying, or cataloguing, shall undertake the following
functions, duties, and responsibilities:
(1) To manage the
archives of the state of Washington;
(2) To centralize the
archives of the state of Washington, to make them available for reference and
scholarship, and to insure their proper preservation;
(3) To inspect,
inventory, catalog, and arrange retention and transfer schedules on all record
files of all state departments and other agencies of state government;
(4) To insure the
maintenance and security of all state public records and to establish
safeguards against unauthorized removal or destruction;
(5) To establish and
operate such state record centers as may from time to time be authorized by
appropriation, for the purpose of preserving, servicing, screening and
protecting all state public records which must be preserved temporarily or
permanently, but which need not be retained in office space and equipment;
(6) To adopt rules
under chapter 34.05 RCW:
(a) Setting standards
for the durability and permanence of public records maintained by state and
local agencies;
(b) Governing
procedures for the creation, maintenance, transmission, cataloging,
indexing, storage, or reproduction of photographic, optical, electronic, or
other images of public documents or records in a manner consistent with current
standards, policies, and procedures of the department of information services
for the acquisition of information technology;
(c) Governing the
accuracy and durability of, and facilitating access to, photographic,
optical, electronic, or other images used as public records; or
(d) To carry out any
other provision of this chapter;
(7) To gather and
disseminate to interested agencies information on all phases of records
management and current practices, methods, procedures, techniques, and devices
for efficient and economical management and preservation of records;
(8) To operate a central
microfilming bureau which will microfilm, at cost, records approved for filming
by the head of the office of origin and the archivist; to approve microfilming
projects undertaken by state departments and all other agencies of state
government; and to maintain proper standards for this work; ((and))
(9) To maintain
necessary facilities for the review of records approved for destruction and for
their economical disposition by sale or burning; directly to supervise such
destruction of public records as shall be authorized by the terms of this
chapter;
(10) To assist and
train state and local agencies in the proper methods of creating, maintaining,
cataloging, indexing, transmitting, storing, and reproducing photographic,
optical, electronic, or other images used as public records.
NEW SECTION. Sec.
2. If specific funding for
the purposes of this act, referencing this act by bill number, is not provided
by June 30, 1995, in the omnibus appropriations act, this act shall be null and
void.
