Aspects of legal regulation for the management of official electronic documents and their formats in Lithuania

Abstract

In 2006, the Regulations for Electronic Document Management came into force in Lithuania and started to be applied in the public sector. These regulations define the concept of electronic documents and provide a model for their management. Shortly afterwards, the description of requirements for specifications with regard to electronically signed documents was adopted, and both the first electronic document (equalled to manuscripts) specification, ADOC-V-1, and the electronic document (read by computer) specification MDOC-V-1 were published. Public institutions in Lithuania started implementing document management systems and faced challenges in relation to the application of electronic signatures.
The year 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the application of regulations for electronic document management. This article examines the legal regulation of official electronic document management in Lithuania, including the set of formats for such documents. The relationship between official electronic documents and electronically produced ones is also defined. The terms “an electronic document” and “a document in electronic form” are used in Lithuanian legal acts. However, the content of these terms is different, and this raises certain issues with regard to the interpretation and application of legal provisions.
The exchange of electronic documents plays an important role in the development of the uniform practice of electronic document management in state and municipal institutions, and in other agencies and enterprises. The specifications for official electronic documents ensure coordination at the level of documents (in terms of their formats). However, in the Lithuanian legal system, the coordination of electronic document forms and the exchange of different formats for official electronic documents is not ensured. This article therefore suggests introducing appropriate changes to legal regulation.
Electronic documents enhance the interdisciplinary and inter-institutional nature of archives. There is a need to evaluate the management of these documents by employing theoretical and methodological provisions pertaining to various scientific fields. Electronic documents are to be investigated from the perspective of legal theory, information technologies, and archival science, which includes document management. Aside from paper documents, and video and audio recordings, the national archives started accumulating digital documents – those born digitally and digitalised ones, including information from Internet websites. The aim is to enable the Lithuanian archives to accept storage not only of documents (irrespective of the way they were produced), but also information systems data with a persistent (archival) value. The paper suggests that Lithuanian state archives, as well as the whole area of document and archive management, should be oriented towards a broader activity discourse.