Archiving exams

Subject to the regulations of the circular letter of the Staatsministerium für Unterricht, Kultus, Wissenschaft und Kunst from December 12, 1993 as well as the internal circular letter of the Zentralabteilung 1 from November 11, 1998, written exams as well as final theses must generally be archived for 5 years. This regulation is also confirmed by the guidelines for archiving documents in accordance to data protection [PDF] of the Department for Informatics (TUM) from May 25, 2018.

The period for safekeeping starts at the end of the calender year in which the student received the respective examination result (RaPO §12(1) Satz 2).

According to the Study Service Center (Central Examination Office, Team Leadership Campus Garching) are archiving discs created by TUMexam that contain scans of exams or digital originals created during online correction using TUMexam sufficient if properly stored. The paper-based originals can be

properly destroyed at the end of an examination period, i.e., after the results have been published to students. Archiving discs must be stored at a place such that authorized persons have access to the digital documents at any time.

As permanent storage of personal data is prohibited by the DSGVO and Bay-DSG-neu since May 25, 2018, archiving discs created by TUMexam have to be destroyed properly in a document shredder after the safekeeping period ends. Archiving discs must not be simply disposed in waste bins.

TUMexam archiving from WiSe 2021 onwards

Upon shutdown of instances for a given term (commonly about 1 month after the central grading deadline), the data will be kept on cold storage and access protected by the operator of TUMexam. The data will be securely deleted after the official retention period. Data for individual examination results can be requested within the official retention period solely by the respective examiner. In order to do so, please send an email to support@tumexam.de that include your instance name, the exam name, and the matriculation number of the respective student. The retention period is defined by the legal retention period and TUM internal decisions. The delivery of data takes either place electronically (if compatible with data protection rules) or by USB stick sent via registered mail addressed to the respective examiner.

For the period of transition between WiSe 2020 and SoSe 2021, we will create the well-known archive disks upon explicit request. Independent on whether or not you request an archive disk for those terms, your data will be archived centrally, i.e., you do not have to act in order to comply with official archiving rules.

TUMexam archiving discs up to SoSe 2021

For WiSe 2020 and SoSe 2021 we only create archive disks upon explicit request. Independent on whether or not you request an archive disk for those terms, your data will be archived centrally, i.e., you do not have to act in order to comply with official archiving rules. To request an archive disk for these terms, please send an email to support@tumexam.de that contains the name of your instance, e.g. 2021ss-IN-GRNVS.

Depending on the amount of data, we use particularly durable M-DISCs with 4.7GB, 25GB or 100GB capacity. The small discs can be read in arbitrary DVD drivers while larger versions require BluRay drives.

Archiving discs are designed to be read even after years by anyone with physical access to the discs and an appropriate optical drive. This is guaranteed by the particularly durable M-DISCs in combination with the backward compatibility of optical disc drives — modern BluRay drivers still read conventional CDs from 1981. In addition, these discs are WORM media, i.e., they can be written once but read many times: we seek for a solution for long-term archiving without possibility to tamper with archived documents.

Which drives are compatible?

Archiving discs can be read in usual DVD or BluRay drives. The 100GB discs of course require a BluRay drive supporting multi-layer discs. There are no further requirements on the drives.

The TUMexam scan stations have a compatible drive built-in. Such a scan station is available in the print office of the Departments of Mathematics and Informatics as well the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

If you plan to buy a drive for your organizational unit, we recommend the LG Electronics BU40N with a compatible USB chassis, e.g. Delock 42595. The costs are around 100 EUR.