Until now, digital archives were often created from ‘original’ paper documents by scanning them and using character recognition software (“OCR” or “Reconnaissance optique de caratères” in French).
Their role was rather :
- Providing a copy of paper documents in the event of loss or destruction of the originals (fire, flood, human error, etc.);
- Simplifying the handling and research of information in these archives (computer searches by date or by keyword greatly simplify the retrieval of relevant information from a large quantity of archived documents).
We found that the management of document retention periods, which is so specific to France*, was carried out at the level of paper archives.
Dematerialisation, which means eliminating paper documents completely, simplifies and limits the costs associated with keeping paper archives. But it also brings new challenges for company directors and administrative managers.
In particular because most of us have adopted very bad practices with our digital tools:
- Digital technology is not magic and infallible. We’re used to physically securing our paper archives in armoured, fireproof, and waterproof cabinets. So why not take an interest in the actual security of our digital archives?
- Digital technology is not free and without consequences. The common preconception that digital resources are infinite and that there is no need to ‘clean up’ our digital archives is false. No manager would ever want to build a new building to extend his paper archives just to conserve documents that it is no longer necessary to keep. Instead, he would ask his staff to destroy these useless archives. The problem is the same with digital documents.
If you want your company to make a success of this crucial stage in the dematerialisation of archives (starting with the dematerialisation of invoices imposed by the French Public Finance Department from 2026), you need to consider the constraints linked to :
- Data security and confidentiality, which are vital for preventing intrusions and potential data theft;
- Compatibility and ‘long term’ preservation, which enable data to be restored despite technological changes and to comply with legal preservation periods;
- Regulations, which impose strict requirements on data storage, access, and security.
As it is no longer possible to recover lost digital archives from paper documents, it is essential to validate a few essential points with your archiving partners:
- Resilience of the solution they provide in the event of a major incident (e.g. fire or flood causing the loss of a data centre) and a strong contractual commitment (data availability and security) offset by significant financial penalties;
- Technological capacity to ensure data preservation and recovery over long periods of 6 to 10 years or more*;
- Compliance with European and French regulations (RGPD, tax, etc.) and protection of your data against regulations outside the EU (harmlessness with regard to American or Chinese laws, etc.);
- Easy management of retention periods and simple (even automatic) mechanisms for deleting archives that are no longer required.
*For the record, the legal retention periods for company documents are 2, 3, 5, 6, 10 and 30 years: more information at https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F10029
Choosing the right partners and tools will enable you to successfully dematerialise your archives. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this step will be easy and without any financial or organisational impact on your departments. It could generate significant costs in the years to come.
