E-Records Remain an Archiving Challenge

February 7th, 2009

Posted by: admin

Today I listened with frustration and a lack of surprise to a piece on NPR’s On the Media about the lack of capacity in the National Archives to archive digital records.  For those who’d prefer a read, you can check out Fred Kaplan’s (interviewed by NPR) recent Slate article on the same subject for the details.  The big point – the National Archives, and because they follow its lead, other government agencies, are way behind the technology curve when it comes to archiving emails (especially with attachments), .pdf files, presentation software like PowerPoint, and other digital information.

As most business of the government has migrated from paper, the loss is for both history and transparency.  Like Kaplan, I do hope that the current administration’s efforts to make more information available online can be accompanied by increased archival capacity.  The challenge of making archiving practices uniform and consistent within government agencies is hard enough without adequate resources to maintain the fidelity of that information once it goes to the nation’s attic.

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