Usage in various sectors

The long-term archiving of electronic documents is a task that is high on the priority list in many sectors, even when the main focuses vary. A few examples from selected sectors and their requirements are listed below. This list is by no means complete, but certainly offers an insight into how PDF/A can be beneficial and meaningful for the long-term archiving in your own sector.

Banks and Insurances
Credit and insurance files often have a lifetime of fifty years or more. Electronic archiving based on PDF/A is drawing more and more attention - not only for newly archived files but also for existing documents. The standardized PDF/A format offers valuable benefits for both reproducibility and searching.

PDF/A is already practically the standard in the areas of incoming post and electronic dossiers, because the advantages over older formats like TIFF and JPEG are so convincing. And if files are being migrated, a direct conversion to PDF/A should be taken into serious consideration.

Industry
The engineering sector is especially suited as a candidate for long-term archiving. Engineering drawings for bridges, airplanes or machines for example must be archived by law for up to 99 years. It may also be necessary to archive numerous versions of the documents.

Publishers
PDF/X has established itself in the past years as the standard document exchange format for prepress and print production processes. A PDF/X file can at the same time be saved as a PDF/A file. This becomes a practical combination when publications are stored in a long-term archive after their production.

Public Sector and Government
The use of PDF/A here is highly dependent on the type of public or government agency. PDF/A can be meaningfully applied in agencies when digital or digitized records have to be retained. Typical examples are proposals, construction records and legal notifications.

Archives and Libraries
For archives and libraries, “long-term archiving” can virtually mean “for ever”! Special measure are required for both hardware and software, and PDF/A can fulfil many of the requirements for software and file formats. Archives are typically receivers of documents, and from their point of view it would be optimal when the files they receive are already in PDF/A format. This can be achieved through proper communication and organisation with the suppliers. There are many PDF/A scanning solutions that can applied when existing documents in an archive are to be converted into electronic format. For files that are delivered in other electronic formats, numerous tools are offered for converting to PDF/A. It may also be desired to archive both the original format (e.g. Microsoft Word) as well as a PDF/A version of the document.

Health Care
The normal retention period in health care is 30 years. In addition to classical documents, other objects like x-rays must often also be archived. And for reasons of legal security, electronic signatures play an important role. In the area of digital patient files, scanning to PDF/A is a viable option, where coloured images and full-text search are amongst the main benefits. The required electronic signatures can then be embedded in PDF/A format.

© PDF/A Competence Center 2009