Glossary — Archive trustee
What is an archive trustee?
Independent actor, designated by contract, who takes over the digital estate of a company that is winding down in order to preserve it, arbitrate at the contract's end, and where applicable assume its transfer. They are distinct from a hosting provider (technical capacity) and from a backup company (preservation of ongoing activity).
What it is
The archive trustee is a fiduciary tradition applied to digital material. Like a notary or a bailiff, they intervene because they are external to the parties: they guarantee a state of fact that former directors or successors could not demonstrate alone.
Three characteristics define them. Independence: they take no part in the company's activity, and have no interest in preserving or deleting a particular asset. Traceability: every operation (deposit, access, vote, restitution, transfer) is logged and enforceable. Durability: their obligations survive the disappearance of the company that mandated them — and that is precisely why they are mandated.
Why it matters
Many organisations imagine that a family safe, a disk at the lawyer's, or a cloud account in a personal name will do. Reality is harsher: those tools are not built to execute transmission or arbitration, they do not log operations, and their accessibility depends on a person or institution whose rules can change. The archive trustee meets that exact need: operating preservation and transmission, not just hosting them.
How Archivum approaches it
Archivum claims the archive-trustee trade without anchoring it in certifying qualifications (NF Z42-013, eIDAS qualified). Our framework is general French contract law and GDPR. The value of an archive trustee rests on operational rigour and contractual clarity: we document both, without hiding behind a label.