Transfer of electronic documents to state archives means not only the physical transfer of an electronic document from one institution to another, but also the transfer of responsibility for the storage, supervision, and use of the documents.
After the Law Amending and Supplementing the Law on Documents and Archives of the Republic of Lithuania came into effect in 2012, public institutions transferring electronic documents to state archives in the procedure set by the legislation must transfer not only permanently stored documents, but also the electronic documents stored for long periods of time (from 26 to 100 years). The procedures of transfer are set forth in Regulations of Transfer of Electronic Documents of the Activities of State and Municipal Authorities, Institutions, and Enterprises to State Archives of 2012, which establish the requirements for transfer of electronic documents of public institutions stored permanently and for long periods for further storage to state archives. These Regulations establish the structure of the transfer package, the procedures and actions of coordination of transfer, the transfer and acceptance of electronic documents in state archives, and the means of transferring electronic documents to state archives.
Electronic documents must be transferred to state archives within 5 years from the year of completion of electronic files and must meet the requirements of the specifications approved by or coordinated with the Chief Archivist of Lithuania (currently, the electronic documents compliant with the specifications ADOC-V1.0 and EGS V1.0 may be transferred to EAIS). Transferred electronic documents must be signed by electronic signature of XAdES-X-L format or higher, which means that an institution must ensure that the electronic signature bears two time marks.
Electronic documents are transferred in packages, which consist of metadata of the package, metadata or transferred and lost units of account and constituent documents, and electronic documents compliant with the Specification, each created as an individual file. Electronic documents may be transferred by the following means: via the user interface of Electronic Archive Information System, via electronic document management system of the institution, which is interoperable with the information system, or by recording in single-use optic storage media (e.g., CD-R, DVD-R). If electronic documents are transferred to state archives in optic storage media, the responsible employee of the state archive transfers the packages to EAIS.
Accepted electronic documents and the files comprising their content are checked by antivirus software, the quantitative verification of accepted electronic documents is performed, their authenticity is verified, and the content is transformed to long-term storage format PDF/A-1; the content is transformed to online viewing format PNG (except for JPEG files); archival verification of original electronic documents and copies of the documents transformed to long-term storage format PDF/A-1 is performed by adding archival time marks to valid electronic signatures of XAdES-X-L electronic signature format and creating an archive electronic signature format XAdES-A; the copies of the original document and its transformed content are entered into electronic document storage as well as the received original electronic document packages, which are saved in WORM storage media.
After the state archives saves the electronic documents in the storage, a certificate of transfer of electronic documents is signed and the electronic documents are stored in EAIS for the time period set by the legislation.
