this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts::Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years

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[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The answer seems simple. Digitise the wills and any of historical value as identified by an independent body made up of Twitter historians can keep the originals for prosperity and research 😂.

Digitise the lot and start with new wills. I understand the value to historians of keeping old pieces of paper but at some point the costs of that have to be evaluated against the benefits. You can't just say "it's of an unquantifiable amount therefore we need to keep them", that's such a lazy cop out.

In fact I'm increasingly frustrated that all legal documents aren't digitised. Shuffling paper around is so backwards and a nightmare to search and index efficiently.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What can it even cost, at a ceiling? A few hundred thousand a year? I million? Even a hundred million? I expect it's way less, but even if it's half a billion, that is pocket change in the first world. If your government can't afford to write off an expense that miniscule, you live in a failed state.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Are you talking about the cost of digitising? Or the cost of keeping paper records?

Because there's more to this than simply how expensive is the format that we keep them in. There's also how quick and easy it is to produce, to search, to share, to update. These are all positives when information is digitised that can't be done if your will is a piece of paper forgotton underneath your bed.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The cost of keeping paper records. Doing anything but keeping them is crackhead behavior, it's like ripping copper pipes out of your walls and selling them to keep your electricity turned on. A society has failed if it reaches that point. I agree there's more to it than expense, such as having a secured original that's much more difficult to forge.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Doing anything but keeping them is crackhead behavior, it's like ripping copper pipes out of your walls and selling them to keep your electricity turned on. A society has failed if it reaches that point.

I'm sorry but this wildly over simplifying the issue to the point that the copper pipe analogy and hyperbolic language isn't useful. I respectfully hard disagree with this characterisation for the reasons I've explained in my other reply.

Putting a will (or anything other legal documents) on paper must have seemed totally natural hundreds of years ago but at some point we need to accept that we have different needs for these documents and different ways of capturing them.

I totally agree with you about security. That should be a principle in all of this. But that shouldn't constrain us to recording on paper. If security is paramount then design a system whereby you can verify the veracity and authenticity of the digital document and create secured controls around their handling - hint these systems already exist today. Tampering and theft is certainly an issue but realistically so is it if you still had paper. It's not uncommon for paper to burn, I have been told 😉.

Any system is fallible, but that shouldn't mean we remove it from consideration.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But that shouldn't constrain us to recording on paper.

If you're going to argue with me, spend less time on smug pontification and more time making sure you actually know what my point is.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk -1 points 11 months ago

I'm not trying to argue with you 😔. I'm trying to have a conversation with you. There's no need to be like that.

[–] Meowoem@sh.itjust.works -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So you're saying that governments should waste tax payer money on something that has no real benefit just because it can?

I guess you also want to keep them longer than 150 years?;I mean it would be crack head behaviour to throw them out right? Why not convert the whole country to warehouses and store every document ever made?

They're just old legal documents, interesting to have a copy for future generations but in no way worth the huge waste of money storing them would be.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

So you're saying that governments should waste tax payer money

Stopped reading there.

No. I'm saying what was in my comment. The right interpretation for what I say is the one I already gave you.

[–] takeda@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I understand why it is not a good idea to digitize, as tampering might be easier to do without any traces, but why do they store wills for 150 years? One would think that by then they are outdated and no longer needed.

Edit: looks like the concern is about historical artifacts. Feels even more ridiculous than I thought. What's next, taking pictures of historical paintings and destroying originals? Why not digitize and still keep the originals?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Why not digitize and still keep the originals?

That's where I'm at. Why not both? Redundancy is good,

Paper copies are good to have till they're no longer necessary (edit: and apparently these aren't necessary anymore)

Digital copies are also useful for obvious reasons

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Storing a lot of valuable paper is expensive.

[–] RainfallSonata@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Much less expensive than maintaining the digital format they're scanned into over hundreds of years, or upgrading the format each time the technology evolves. Eventually you reach a point where it's better to re-scan into the new format rather try to upgrade for the 50th time. But then you haven't maintained the originals. Under the right conditions, paper can last thousands of years.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wait, hold on. Are you arguing that, in the long run, it's cheaper to pay rent and maintenance on facilities and personnel to caretake reams of paper than to have a bunch of PDFs on Google Drive?

Paper isn't some magical substance that doesn't need any maintenance ever. Silverfish, fire, water, and a million other things need to be actively guarded against to keep these records usable.

On the other hand, PDF has been around since 1992, and it hardly seems to be going anywhere. And even if it does, running a "PDF to NewStandard" converter on the files every 30 years or so seems unlikely to cost as much as 30yrs of rent on a physical building. And that holds true even over the course of 1000yrs. Rent's not cheap, and neither are people who maintain physical records.

Like, I'm not advocating for destroying the physical documents, but the idea that it's even remotely close to being cheaper to keep them as paper vs digitizing is an absolute fantasy.

[–] RainfallSonata@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Not just me. There's plenty of academic research on the subject. Here's the Library of Congress' preferred format for preservation of all types of documents. https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/index.html

I'm totally willing to bet any pdf will be unreadable in 1000 years. Low-acid paper, not only possible, but likely.

[–] Meowoem@sh.itjust.works -1 points 11 months ago

People want the government to provide services efficiently yet the second anyone suggests not doing things the most expensive and outdated way possible everyone loses their minds.

Are you all accelerationists or just the no give only throw dog?