Creating Records in an Electronic Format

Any records required to be kept by a government official in Tennessee may be maintained on a computer, removable computer storage media, or in any appropriate electronic medium, instead of bound books or paper records.^[1]  But in order to do so, the following standards must be met:

1. The information must be available for public inspection, unless it is required by law to be a confidential record;
2. Due care must be taken to maintain any information that is a public record for the entire time it is required by law to be retained;
3. All daily data generated and stored within the computer system must be copied to computer storage media daily, and the computer storage media that is more than one week old must be stored off-site (at a location other than where the original is maintained); and
4. The official with custody of the information must be able to provide a paper copy of the information to a member of the public requesting a copy.^[2]

These standards, however, do not require the government official to sell or provide the computer media upon which the information is stored or maintained.