Government Records Digitization in Pennsylvania: A County & Municipal Guide

For a county records manager or municipal clerk in Pennsylvania, digitizing records is not a general office-scanning project — it is a regulated one. The statutes that decide which records you may keep, which you must preserve permanently, and which you may legally destroy also decide what a digital copy must look like to count. This guide walks through the County Records Act, the Municipal Records Act, the PHMC standards that govern preservation, and the Right-to-Know Law clock that makes a searchable digital system a practical compliance tool.

The two statutes that govern PA local-government records

Pennsylvania local-government records sit under two acts, both administered by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC). For counties, the County Records Act — the act of August 14, 1963 (P.L. 839, No. 407), codified at 16 P.S. § 13001 et seq. — created the County Records Committee and authorizes PHMC to assist it in setting retention and disposition schedules for each county office. For municipalities, the Municipal Records Act — enacted January 18, 1968 (P.L. 961, No. 428), codified at 53 P.S. §§ 9001–9010 — created the Local Government Records Committee and designates PHMC as the agency responsible for administering the records-management program for cities of the third class, boroughs, incorporated towns, townships, and municipal authorities.

The practical takeaway: no records-disposition or digitization decision in a Pennsylvania county or municipality is made in a vacuum. It is governed by a schedule the relevant PHMC committee has approved for that specific office.

What a digital copy must meet to count

PHMC does not treat all scanned images the same. County permanent records may be retained in paper, in microfilm created and maintained in conformance with standards approved by the County Records Committee, or in electronic format, with one copy — the Security Preservation File — maintained under the conditions set in PHMC and State Archives policy. The imaging itself is held to defined technical standards: county and municipal records-management standards for microfilm and digital imaging are required to conform to American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) standards and practices.

Format flexibility arrived in 2017. That year the County Records Manual was amended to permit PDF/A format as an alternative to microfilm for storing permanent records — but with a condition: counties must notify PHMC of their intent to use PDF/A for each records series. The standard that ties it all together is the destruction rule: no retention schedule may permit the destruction of county records of permanent value unless those records have been microfilmed, or preserved under an approved equivalent imaging standard, first.

The Right-to-Know clock: why search matters

Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law is Act 3 of 2008, codified at 65 P.S. § 67.101 et seq. It lets the public request records from Commonwealth and local agencies, and it is administered by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which also hears appeals of agency denials. The deadline is the part that strains paper-based offices: under Section 901 of the RTKL (65 P.S. § 67.901), an agency must respond to a request within five business days of the request's receipt by the agency's open records officer, or the request is deemed denied. An extension of up to 30 calendar days is available with notice.

Crucially, the RTKL also allows agencies to satisfy a request by making records available through any publicly accessible electronic means, which makes a searchable digital records system a practical compliance tool for meeting the response window. When responsive records live in a searchable system instead of a basement of boxes, the five-day clock becomes a routine lookup rather than a scramble.

Where the federal standard fits

Counties increasingly take their cue from the federal posture, even though it does not bind them directly. OMB Memorandum M-23-07, 'Update to Transition to Electronic Records' (issued December 2022), requires federal agencies to manage all permanent records in electronic format by June 30, 2024; after that date NARA will not accept transfers of permanent records in paper or other analog formats. M-23-07 updates and extends the earlier M-19-21 directive, establishing a fully digital-government records posture that PA counties and municipalities handling federally adjacent or grant-funded records increasingly mirror. PA local government answers to the PHMC committees — but the direction of travel at every level of government is the same.

How Reynolds digitizes Pennsylvania government records

Reynolds Business Systems is a 55+ year Emmaus-based records partner that states it is 100% PHMC compliant for government records digitization and storage. The implementer point of view is the differentiator: Reynolds digitizes county and municipal records to the exact PHMC County Records Committee standards that govern legal disposition, then pairs PHMC-compliant scanning with Laserfiche ECM so an open records officer can pull a record and meet the RTKL five-business-day clock instead of digging through boxes. Reynolds serves 75+ PA and NJ government agencies.

The toolset spans the full records lifecycle for a county or municipal office:

Procurement is straightforward for PA local governments: Reynolds is a COSTARS member supplier, allowing local governments to procure through cooperative purchasing contracts. Among its government clients, Reynolds names Lehigh, Northampton, Montgomery, York, Lackawanna, Monroe, Carbon, Bucks, Berks, and Schuylkill Counties; the City of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton; the PA State Archives; and the Easton Police Department. The work is backed by a 55+ year track record, 100% client retention, a 14-year average staff tenure, and a same-day reply support guarantee.

Where to go next

If your office is planning a records digitization project under the County or Municipal Records Act, see Reynolds' government records management services for PHMC-compliant scanning, Laserfiche ECM, and archival storage built for Pennsylvania counties and municipalities.

To automate Right-to-Know responses specifically, review Laserfiche ECM for Right-to-Know automation, or request a facility assessment to map your records to an approved retention schedule.