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Ask HN: What to do with digital assets of shutdown organization?

5 points by takinola ↗ HN
I am working with a charitable organization that is unfortunately shutting down. They are wondering what to do with their digital assets (eg websites, social media accounts, images, donor and volunteer lists, etc). My instinct is to archive them but I am wondering where to keep the archives (thumbdrive?) and how to handle any PII (email addresses, etc) to ensure it is safe long term. I'm curious if anyone has had to deal with this issue and what steps they took to handle digital assets of dissolved organizations.

3 comments

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collingreen
Open source (public domain ideally) what you can, especially website code and non personal images.
brudgers
This is a question for a lawyer. Because the assets belong to the organization there are likely legal requirements regarding their disposal/liquidation/change of ownership etc.

Or the board at least and get it in writing. Good luck.

fullautomation
It really depends on the country and its legislation. For EU there's GDPR which has very specific deadlines and specs on how to handle data regardless the end of the company. There is a designated DPO who's in charge legally of the fate of these data, so they have to provide a solution on how to ensure the correct transition/maintenance of the data for the authority.