Document management and ownership

I'm the Board Secretary for our HOA community and would like to get some opinions on document storage.

Since transfer of control from the developer (4 years ago), the Board Secretary has maintained an archive of all Master Association documents. I took over this archive when I became the second appointed Secretary and have been doing this for 3 years now. I consolidated the array of thumb drives, drop box accounts and files and set up a shared one-drive account for all current (and future) Board members to access, search, and view documents. Our documents specifically state that the Board Secretary shall keep all the records of the Master Association but offers little clarification as to how.

The flaw I have recognized in this is that I am the account holder on record of the one-drive and I realize that I should transfer this account to the Master Association, so they officially own the documents when I move on. I proposed we task our property manager with selecting a cloud-based storage application that meets our requirements, recommend it to the Board, and then I would facilitate the transfer of all records to that application. The intent then would be to have property management be responsible (with Board direction on what needs to be uploaded) for updating the document repository with all future documents that should be stored and available to current and future Board members.

Other Board members want our property management company to store everything in their proprietary application, AppFolio. It's a great application, does many things wonderfully, but when it comes to document management it really is just a data vault and a transfer station. While there is a folder structure, nothing is searchable, and it is displayed only by file name and date. AppFolio is and should be used to notify Board members when a new document is uploaded that should be shared for a specific purpose, rather than a historical archive.

Technology aside, I am uncomfortable having our Master documents stored only in software owned solely by a property management company. We switched property management companies about a year ago, and the document transfer and process was not seamless at all. Same for accounting records, but that is another story. I'm sure it's in the management contract to turn over all documents, files, and such, but the reality is it's not always performed as expected. Only one current Board member was active when the property management transition occurred, so most do not understand the issues incurred.

My primary question is whether forum members believe that the Master Association or the property management company should own/possess the documents? I'm absolutely fine with property management managing the system, with full access to the Board. I'm actually looking forward to the time and storage cost savings I will see from whichever direction we proceed.

Thanks in advance for your opinions. I'm in Florida if anyone knows of anything in the statutes that might assist in our decision making, Statute 720.303 on official records details everything that is an official record and must be maintained but is silent on how.

Steve

All our governing documents are also on our website. This is about the working documents used by the board at meetings to make decisions. Proposals, lake management reports, compliance reports, photos, resident letters to the board, maintenance reports, etc.

Cathy makes some great points, especially on the cloud storage. Why not talk to some document storage companies about this and get some estimates? You might continue to keep a few years worth of records with the property manager, but older documents could be stored elsewhere.

I also hope you're working with the association attorney and master insurance on establishing a record storage and retention policy. Sone records you keep forever, some fir a year, some as long as you have a contract, etc., so you'll need a destruction schedule. You'll also have to address stuff like faxes text messages, emails, etc.