Regma (UK) Ltd has added a set of software routines to its Document Image Processor workstation, and claims that it represents a breakthrough in the legal admissability of electronic images of documents. Regma has been working with The British Standards Institution which recently published a draft working paper on the admissability of electronic documents in court, and made a number of recommendations. These include procedures for scanning and indexing, procedures for quality control, instructions about storage and retrieval, and procedures for destroying and recording the destruction of documents. The Institution says that the method of certification should be an automatic function of the processor program, based on a tamper-proof time clock locked together with system certification instruction. Recommendations also state that certification should be an overprint on the document. It should give the following information: the date and time of request; the date and time of file creation; document scanning time and date; document identity number; the number of documents in a file; and text compression size at time of scanning. The operator should not have any knowledge of the above, and must not have any way to enter and alter security information. As regards indexing, the system is to be totally reliant on a method by which no information on the disk may be altered without being shown on the index, and a full audit trail must be shown on request. The Institution added that documents must be scanned direct to the disk, that the index must be contained on the disk, and that the disk must be able to be transferred to a similar drive and reproduce documents identically. The Institute has also said that procedures should be established to prevent corruption of the image while it is being input. Regma claims that its Black Box principle, modelled on that used in aeroplanes, ensures that the system is tamper-proof and sealed against physical or electronic entry. New facilities include automatic recording of the time and date of document entry, and other optional features are operator identity code, document position number and last file update. A full audit trail can be either viewed or printed out. The entry level document image processor, priced at UKP20,000, consists of a scanner, a 286-based processor, a 5.25 optical disk from Toshiba, a standard Winchester drive, and a customised Canon printer. The printer is modified to provide video dump facilities so that anything seen on the screen is instantly printed. Regma says that the product is about to go on trial as the Inland Revenue will soon mount a case for the presentation of evidence in court using its system.
