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UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts

Ministry of Justice plan to destroy historical wills is ‘insane’, say experts

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/18/ministry-of-justice-plan-to-destroy-historical-wills-is-insane-say-experts

Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years

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

57 comments

takeda

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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 One would think that by then they are outdated and no longer needed.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

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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

Lmaydev

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They aren't necessary, that's the point.

They want to preserve them as historical documents and the government is trying to cut storage costs.

otter

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Well in that case I'm a lot more meh about this. Thanks!

Lmaydev

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Yeah I'm not a historian so I'm not sure the value of keeping the originals.

XTL

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Storing a lot of valuable paper is expensive.

RainfallSonata

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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

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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.

YoorWeb

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Adobe Flash entered the chat.

testfactor

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Ah, yes, flash. A program that only lasted 15 years and was a platform that could execute arbitrary applications, most of which were silly video games.

A total apples to apples comparison with an open standard format for rendering static documents with hundreds of different reader implementations that's been around for a third of a century and is used by every major world government as the core standard for electronic documents. :P

RainfallSonata

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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.

testfactor

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I don't think you've read your own source right. As far as I can tell that doesn't say paper is preferred anywhere. That document seems to just be saying, "if you use paper, use this, if digital, use this" for each type of data you want to store.

And while I agree they're not recommending to shred all their paper documents and scan them into PDF, they're also not recommending to print off all your electronic documents and put them into filing cabinets either. Both are acceptable formats for different things, in their opinion.

And while I agree that low acid paper isn't likely to break down over 1000 years if left alone, the odds of the building they are in burning down or getting a silverfish infestation is actually pretty decent over a 1000yr period, so I don't think the odds of them surviving is nearly as good as you think.

And also, while I agree that PDF will likely be replaced a few dozen times in the next millennium, it's also really just a glorified markdown format. Every new standard will have converters to move from the previous standard to the new. Is that work? Certainly. Is it more work than actively maintaining physical archives? No. Especially since, as PDF is the defacto standard for electronic documents for every world government, any major shift in that standard will have well support paths forward for upgrading.

And most importantly, none of your points actually addressed my core point, which was, regardless of which one is "easier" to maintain, it's clear and obvious which one is cheaper. The cost associated with maintaining large physical archives is astronomical. Buying up some cloud storage is minimal.

Meowoem

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It's not like we don't also store the file details of the storage mechanism, we're not going to forget how to decode the exact version of pdf used to store them in a world where we're able to safely store thousands of tons of pointless old legal documents.

And the cost of converting all these old legal documents onto low acid paper and storing them is going to be huge, I really don't think anyone actually wants to do that.

jj4211

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My hard copy birth certificate isn't doing too well even after much shorter time.

If that PDF represents a part of a curated collection, then I'd be willing to bet the data will be readable in a perfectly preserved way in a thousand years. I have been casually copying files and have nearly accidentally preserved all sorts of data that would have been tossed out decades ago if it were paper based.

The key word is curated, and applies to both paper and digital works. If neglected, either one has a risk of being lost or destroyed.

We have survivorship bias about paper records. We see a famous preserved work from a thousand years ago and declare "wow, paper lasts forever, but I lost a burned cd from not even 20 years ago, paper is obviously better". However that paper was ordered by royalty of the day and put under the curation of a Treasury as a highly valuable artifact from the moment it was created.

Far more paper records have been lost or destroyed than we even know to have existed.

ElBarto

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Redundancy is good

It works for Klingons!

ElderWendigo

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This is an idea straight out of science fiction that was meant to be a warning, not a guide. From "Rainbow's End" by Vernor Vinge.

Tiny flecks of white floated and swirled in the column of light. Snowflakes? But one landed on his hand: a fleck of paper. And now the ripping buzz of the saw was still louder, and there was also the sound of a giant vacuum cleaner...

Brrrap! A tree shredder!

Ahead of him, everything was empty bookcases, skeletons. Robert went to the end of the aisle and walked toward the noise. The air was a fog of floating paper dust. In the fourth aisle, the space between the bookcases was filled with a pulsing fabric tube. The monster worm was brightly lit from within. At the other end, almost twenty feet away, was the worm's maw - the source of the noise... The raging maw was a "Navicloud custom debinder." The fabric tunnel that stretched out behind it was a "camera tunnel..." The shredded fragments of books and magazines flew down the tunnel like leaves in a tornado, twisting and tumbling. The inside of the fabric was stiched with thousands of tiny cameras. The shreds were being photographed again and again, from every angle and orientation, till finally the torn leaves dropped into a bin just in front of Robert.

NickwithaC

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Digitising wills: ok, cool.

Destroying paper originals: Oh god no, why?!

kerrigan778

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Presumably because they're confidential and therefore need to be disposed of properly and storing them costs money?

Meowoem

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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?

LotrOrc

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This isn't about efficiency - if they were just digitizing it that would be fine. Getting rid of the originals in addition is a recipe for disaster

jj4211

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Maintaining and keeping 500 million paper documents is expensive. If they just let them sit neglected for cheaper, then they may risk confidentiality. So they have to either properly actively maintain and secure them, or destroy them for risk of some breach of confidentiality.

Further, I don't understand what this "disaster" would look like.

chitak166

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"maintaining" paper documents is a new one to me.

It's my understanding, the less you disturb them, the longer they last.

jj4211

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You have to maintain a rather large facility to care for 500 million paper documents, while keeping them organized and accessible.

You have to maintain low humidity, prevent pests like insects and rodents, and maintain vigilance against things like fire, roof leaks, and break ins.

Maggoty

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Something like this. But seriously, this is how GilBates1!!1 becomes the newest billionaire.

jj4211

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For archival, I think things are less controversial. No one is going to modify a will executed 100 years ago and the world will say "goly gee, we missed that, we will now take from the proper heirs and give to you".

For one, it's a closed matter even if they legitimately failed to execute on the old will.

For another, if it somehow did matter, they'd probably validate the authenticity of the digital copy at least against some air gapped signature, if not going to restore the actual document from offline.

For the voting example, I think people think too highly of the paper system. Corrupt voting infrastructure can have stuffed ballots ready to go and enough non voting registered voters to back up their ballots beyond the reasonable extent an audit would ever go. Paper votes have often been corrupted. Most we ever do is recount, and if the ballots were stuffed, this would do nothing.

onlinepersona

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I present to you, somebody who hasn't read the article.

Womble

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Personally I'd rather just not cut government funding to the bone and force them to to do things like this and sacrificing long term archiving on the altar of efficiency.

unreasonabro

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It's not insane, it's malicious. Done with ill intent. How many times do we have to see shit like this before we stop giving obvious evil the benefit of the doubt?

Meowoem

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Saving money for the tax payer by doing things a better way is evil?

RegalPotoo

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They have good form in spectacularly fucking this up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal

ElBarto

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Man some hackers gonna be raking in the inheritance of their extremely large family.

rockandsock

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Isn't 4.5 million pounds just the tea and biscuit budget for parliament?

They want to destroy historical documents to save a rounding error in the government budget?

Let one of big wealthy universities look after the historically significant ones. That should save a bunch of money right there.

mannycalavera

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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.

tabular

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If I care about data never being altered without permission then paper wins over digital, no contest. Paper is not immune to forgery but you can't automate breaking into millions of physical buildings to target certain individuals or mass destroy the documents.

That is why countries using electronic voting machines over paper should be considered an act of the poor, ignorance or corruption.

kittyjynx

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"Hanging chads" on paper ballots helped Bush swing/steal the election from Gore. Paper ballots have a lot of problems too. At least in California every vote on an electronic voting machine generates a paper ballot.

tabular

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Paper systems have problems and years of experience solving them. Multiple parties with different interests watch to verify the input and counting process. Electronic is not watchable, tye result is unverifable - it's not fit for purpose.

jj4211

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A government curated paper copy is hardly any more impervious to tampering than a digital copy.

If a government were so inclined, they could produce a paper resembling the original easily, just as they could a digital copy.

Now you could make an argument for digital records to require an air gapped archive as well, if you fear a fully online copy could be compromised by a non government or foreign government entity, but that's not paper v. Digital, that's online versus offline storage.

Note I was recently dealing with the estate of someone who died, and we had what we thought was the most canonical hard copy of the will, but the court rejected it as a duplicate and said the will was invalid unless we found a true original. Fortunately the will was within what we could legally do without the will (but with more work), but suffice to say a government digital record of the will would have worked better than any hard copy that we actually had.

tabular

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I don't know anything about tamping paper documents, only that it's difficult in an election when everyone is watching and that we can't watch computer bits.

Offline is certainly more secure than online but software is almost guaranteed to have bugs. An attack is potentially as simple as plugging in an USB stick into the right device anywhere in the chain of creating, storing and fetching the data to view the contents.

The convenience of a digital will may be overall more worthwhile than any security advantages paper has. I fear governments may require users to submit the will using their own proprietary 'black-box' software.

pimento64

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

khannie

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That money can be put to better use though, no?

pimento64

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Why? Better in what sense? Better for whom? I think spending the money on ensuring that paper records are preserved is worth it solely because it monkeywrenches tampering and fraud, so diverting that money would always be worse no matter what it goes to. Money spent on maintaining public parks would be better spent on curing cancer, does that mean we defund parks? Money spent on a necessity is not a waste just because there are other necessities.

Also, even assuming you're right, who cares? I just spent $1.50 on a cup of coffee. That money could have been put to better use, but it wasn't, and it doesn't matter, because it's $1.50. This was my original point, functional states don't have to even think about this cost, they can literally afford to forget it.

khannie

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Yeah, I hear you and I'm not averse to spending money on things that don't bring "direct" value. I fully believe that historical documents are important.

What I'm weighing it against is this: Governments have a fixed annual budget. It's costing 4.5M a year to keep those documents. As the number of historical wills increases over time, so will the cost so there has to be some kind of cutoff point. Given that fixed budget (for example) how many homeless people could be housed versus the downside of having the documents stored in digital format (and it is a downside compared to having the original). I'm only talking about ones for people long since dead btw.

When you have a fixed budget, every penny you spend has an opportunity cost.

And of course I acknowledge that the budget could be increased in ways that allow for the originals to be saved while taxing the ultra rich more to pay for it. The current UK government is unfortunately not going to do that.

RainfallSonata

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Academics have already run those numbers. It's already a decided issue among those who will actually do the preservation what the preferred method is, for which purposes. And no one is saying you can't have multiple purposes or preserve multiple formats, (in fact, that, too, is preferred) except those arguing cost, who, like they do with climate change, want to ignore established science as well as what those actual costs will be.

pimento64

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It's costing 4.5M a year to keep those documents

I cannot stress this enough, that is nothing. You're hand-wringing over an amount of money that falls under the scope of a rounding error in any first-world country's budget. If you want to talk about proper use of resources, a properly-functioning legislative body shouldn't even be able to afford to think about it, let alone discuss it, they should be dealing with a full session's-worth of projects that cost 100—100,000 times as much. If you want to talk about proper use of the taxpayers' money, it doesn't involve elected officials derelicting their actual duties to hem and haw over something that costs under $50 million on the national scale. For a government to have taken any action on this at all is a greater wastage than any potential savings. Seriously, imagine being paid by the public to ensure things are run properly, and then spending your time on the clock discussing whether or not the government should save $4.5M per year by switching brands of floor wax in all of the public schools. People have been tarred and feathered for less.

Meowoem

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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

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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.

RainfallSonata

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It's far easier and cheaper to maintain old paper than it is to maintain the technology that stores the digitized paper, especially over a hundred or more years. Every time technology evolves you've got to reformat your digital file, and that gets harder the further it evolves. Eventually you reach a point where you just need to re-scan into a new format, but you can't if you've destroyed your original.

mannycalavera

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But the counter to this is that when it is digitised it becomes far easier to search, to share, and learn from. So there's that too.

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

But Tom Holland, the classical and medieval historian and co-host of The Rest is History podcast, said the proposal to empty shelves at the Birmingham archive was “obviously insane”.

Ministers believe digitisation will speed up access to the papers, but the proposal has provoked a backlash among historians and archivists who took to X to decry it as “bananas” and “a seriously bad idea”.

The proposal comes amid growing concern at the fragility of digital archives, after a cyber-attack on the British Library left the online catalogue and digitised documents unavailable to users since late October.

He said the idea that officials can choose which wills to keep because, in the words of the MoJ, they “belong to notable individuals or have significant historical interest”, is “the typical arrogance of bureaucracy”.

He cited the example of Mary Seacole, the Jamiacan nurse who helped British soldiers during the Crimean war in the 1850s, whose story has been revived in recent years.

Digitalisation allows us to move with the times and save the taxpayer valuable money, while preserving paper copies of noteworthy wills which hold historical importance.”

The original article contains 883 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

onlinepersona

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What the article doesn't reveal is how they want to digitise this stuff and where it'll be stored. Will it be on IPFS? On a blockchain? A public cloud like AWS where the bill might jump unexpectly to more than 4.5M pounds a year?

It might be an OK idea, but it feels like this will be horribly bungled.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

topinambour_rex

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You don't store stuff on a blockchain...

onlinepersona

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If you mean it's not technically possible, then you're wrong How to Store Data in Blockchain?.

If you mean it shouldn't be done, then I don't really have an opinion on that.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

TotalFat

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Did they learn nothing from Doctor Who?

linearchaos

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I mean you could do it with a otc tape library, a SAN, and a relatively inexpensive offsite tape agreement. You'd spend a couple mil setting it up. But tape, disk and support wouldn't be unreasonable moving forward.