Unless the context indicates otherwise, words used in this chapter shall have the meaning given in this section.

"Agency" means any department, office, commission, board, or division of state government; and any county, city, district, or other political subdivision or municipal corporation or any department, office, commission, court, or board or any other state or local government unit, however designated.

"Archival value" means those public records, as determined by state archivist's appraisal, that are worthy of long-term or permanent preservation by the archives due to their historical, legal, fiscal, evidential, or informational value, or are designated such by statute.

"Authentic" means that a public record is accepted by the state archives as genuine, trustworthy, or original.

"Authentication" means the process of verifying that a public record is acceptable as genuine, trustworthy, original, or authentic.

"Chain of custody" means the documentation of the succession of offices or persons who held public records, in a manner that could meet the evidentiary standards of a court of law until their proper disposition according to an approved records retention schedule.

"Confidential record" means any public record series, file, record or database field with restrictions on public access as mandated by federal, state or local laws, or court order.

"Database management system" means a set of software programs that controls the organization, storage and retrieval of data in a database, as well as the security and integrity of the database.

"Digital archives" means the mass storage facility for electronic records located in Cheney, Washington and operated by the Washington state archives. The digital archives is designed to permanently preserve electronic state and local government records with archival value in an environment designed for long-term storage and retrieval.

"Disposition" means the action taken with a record once its required retention period has expired. Disposition actions include but are not limited to transfer to the archives or destruction.

"Elected official" means any person elected at a general or special election to any public office, and any person appointed to fill a vacancy in any such office.

"Electronic record" includes those public records which are stored on machine readable file format.

"Encryption" means the process of rendering plain text unintelligible by converting it to ciphertext so it can be securely transmitted and can only be read by those authorized to decode the plain text from the ciphertext.

"File format" means the type of data file stored on machine readable materials such as hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, flash media cards, USB storage devices, magnetic tape, and any other media designed to store information electronically, as well as the application program necessary to view it.

"Metadata" means data used to describe other data. Metadata describes how, when, and by whom particular content was collected, how the content is formatted, and what the content is. Metadata is designed to provide a high level of categorization to aid in the storage, indexing, and retrieving of electronic records for public use.

"Public record" has the same meaning as in chapters 40.14 and 42.56 RCW.

"Records committees" means the local records committee created in RCW 40.14.070 and the state records committee created in RCW 40.14.050.

"Retention period" means the required minimum amount of time a records series must be retained to meet legal, fiscal, administrative or historical value as listed on an approved records retention schedule or general records retention schedule.

"Records retention schedule" means a legal document approved by the state or local records committee that specifies minimum retention periods for a records series and gives agencies ongoing disposition authority for the records series after the records' approved retention period has been satisfied.

"Spider" means a software program that automatically collects and retrieves online web content and all documents linked to such content. Examples include, but are not limited to: Web spiders, web crawlers, robots, and bots.