Electronic Records Management Standards

Standard Naming Conventions for Electronic Files, Folders and Records

Overview

Just like paper files, electronic files need to be well-organized and labeled correctly so that they are identifiable and accessible by all employees. This is especially important for government offices in order to comply with legal requirements to ensure the availability, integrity, accessibility, and, if appropriate, the confidentiality of public records.

Efficient management of electronic records begins with accurate file-naming. The following file naming convention incorporates best practices in electronic records management and information technology. This document explores the general characteristics of records, how records are used and referenced, and the file-naming rules that should be applied to all electronic records.

An electronic record is machine-readable, meaning that it requires hardware and software to be accessed and read. Organization is especially important so that these records can be found and retrieved. Electronic records include documents, spreadsheets, databases, images, video, and audio. If not managed, a computer assigns a unique name for these files when saved, but these names do not provide a context for the file, nor are they logical. For example, the default file name for a Microsoft Word document consists of the first few words written on the first page. Images are frequently labeled with sequential numbers. These types of file names do not promote accessibility and ease of identification. For ease of explanation, the examples in these guidelines will focus primarily on documents; however, the standards outlined below apply to all file formats. In addition, this document will frequently use "record" and "file" interchangeably, as the records discussed here are electronic records and, therefore, generally files on a computer.

Keep in mind that this document is intended to be used primarily by individuals creating records on a daily basis. The rules discussed below are best practices and therefore highly recommended; however, every rule may not be relevant to every office. Regardless, this document should provide a foundation for developing a consistent and easy to use file-naming standard to be implemented in any office.

When other individuals access a record, they may be using different operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX), different versions of the system (e.g. Windows Vista, Windows XP), or different software (e.g. Microsoft Word, OpenOffice.org Writer, Notepad); therefore, it is important to follow rules that will allow a file to be recognized in as many different environments as possible.

Characters

Not only do different operating systems (e.g. Linux, OS X, Windows) have different file name requirements, these requirements can even vary by what version of the operating system is being used, such as different characters that they do not recognize in file names. The use of these characters can cause problems. Even if your operating system allows you to save the file you may encounter difficulties if you try to transport the file to another operating system. For example, the file may not be recognized, or if you send it to someone else they may not be able to open it. It is therefore recommended that you avoid the use of non-alphanumeric characters in file names.

The following are reserved characters in Windows, Linux, UNIX, as well as most other operating systems, and should never be used:

< (Less than)
> (Greater than)
: (Colon)
" (Double quote)
/ (Forward slash)
\ (Backslash)
| (Vertical bar or pipe)
? (Question mark)
* (Asterisk or star)
% (Percent)
. (Period or dot)
~ (Tilde)
# (Number sign)
& (Ampersand)
+ (Plus sign)
{ } (Braces)

Additionally, the following are also reserved characters on servers running Linux and UNIX:

• ' (single quote)
•   (blank space)

In short, it is best to restrict names to the following characters to ensure against issues and to maintain portability:

• Uppercase or lowercase letters
• Digits (Numbers 0-9)
• Special characters, such as:
• - (hyphen)
• _ (underscore)

Also on the subject of characters, do not assume case sensitivity. For example, consider the names OSCAR, Oscar, and oscar to be the same, even though some file systems may consider them as different. This will save much heart ache in the future.

And now that we have brought up character case, you should avoid using all uppercase letters. This can make reading the name very difficult for many people and it is not Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant.

Basic file or document titling/naming

The conventions provided in this document offer practical advice on how to title documents. How the general rules given here are applied across your organization will depend on how your organization is set up, what it does, and its goals. It is advised that specific rules be created by both the organization and by each department to reflect working practice. In general, a title should be:

• descriptive — it says what the document is about
• helpful — it distinguishes the document from others on the same/similar topic
• consistent — it follows the convention described in this document

Documents should always contain one or more of the following elements listed below:

• date
• subject
• document type
• version or status
• short — generally should be limited to 20-30 characters

The sequence of the elements will vary depending on the document being named. Each element should be separated by a hyphen (-).

Eg. Date-Subject
20070402-InformationManagementStrategy

The Date in a name

The best way to list the date is based on an international standard — ISO 8601. ISO 8601 specifies numeric representations of date and time to be used in electronic format. The international standard date notation is:

YYYY_MM_DD or YYYYMMDD

YYYY is the year, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31. For example, January 5, 2008 is written as 2008_01_05 or 20080105.

This format allows ease of sorting and comparing files by date and prevents confusion with other date formats (especially in other formats that use just two digits for the year). This is also the date format used by all database.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR) compliance

Access for all, or the lack of, is a big deal. In order to reduce compliance issues with file names you should avoid using all uppercase letters and it should be limited to 20-30 characters.

Document Properties

Use of the Document Properties is always recommended. These can be read by any system that can use the documents format/protocols and are in all the major ones such as MS Word, MS Excel, and Adobe Acrobat to name a few. And can be used to help keep your files/documents name as short as possible.

A few of the more common and useful properties are:

Title
Tags
Comments
Status
Categories
Subject
Company
Manager
Author

A Final Note

When naming a file and/or folder keep in mind that every folder, subfolder, and file name make up the directory route. In Microsoft Windows, the length of this can not exceed 260 characters. However, no individual file or folder can have a name longer than 255 characters. In some other systems, this is less.

The full path in most systems includes the drive letter and all. For example C:\Users\guest\documents\work\20080105\draft\test.docx is 54 characters long.