Legal Admissibility
Falcon provide comprehensive advice on Document Management legal admissibility and compliance. When considering the paperless office it is important you comply with the latest BSI standards relating to legal admissibility of document data saved within your document management system. We work closely with the leading authority in the UK on legal admissibility and compliance of records and can offer comprehensive consultancy if required. By ensuring that you achieve compliance with your document management system your scanned documents may be safely disposed of while your digitised documents meet the requirements of governing bodies as authentic replacements to the original. Falcon ensure all document management systems have been certified to comply with BSI standards meaning your digital data would be accepted by HM Revenue and Customs.
Falcon Document Management, in association with Group 5 Training together form one of the leading independent consultancy firms in legal admissibility and other compliance requirements. Falcon can help you with all your legal compliance issues.
Whether it is compliance with the BIP 0008 Legal Admissibility Code of Practice, with Data Protection and/or Freedom of Information legislation, or with one of the other International or UK publications, Falcon Document Management will take you down the right paths.
There are many general and industry specific information management compliance requirements. The following is a selection, and not an exhaustive list:
- Companies Act 1985 (requirement to keep company records)
- VAT Act 1994 (requirement to keep VAT records)
- Limitations Act 1980 (limits how long legal action can be taken)
- Sarbanes-Oxley (USA, relates to financial organisations)
- Basel II (EU, framework for international financial regulation)
- MiFID (EU (to be published) Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (or the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002) was fully implemented on the 1st January 2005. It was implemented as part of the 'Open Government' initiative, and requires public bodies to respond positively to requests for information from individuals. The Act specifies the maximum time that the public body has to respond to a request (typically 20 working days), and also sets out a charging mechanism.
Based on the Australian Standard AS 4390, Records Management, this International Standard was developed to standardise international best practice in records management. It provides guidance on managing records of originating organisations, public or private, for internal and external clients.
This International Standard defines records and records management as follows:
Records - information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.
Records management - field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.
