A computer-based system for the storage, cataloguing, and retrieval of documents. It is central to the success of a comprehensive office automation system in that it provides the basic object management required to create, manipulate, and delete ‘office objects’, which may be letters, complex reports, charts, graphs, or any other information that may be stored in a computer system.

A comprehensive electronic filing system should give a high degree of security for the objects entrusted to it, both against computer failure and against unauthorized access, together with flexible methods of organizing these objects. It should also provide shared access to community items while preserving privacy for confidential items. Objects in an electronic filing system are stored on magnetic disk or tape (or more recently, in the cloud). See also cloud computing.