The Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is a program of the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to preserve electronic records as part of the U.S. government's broader records management process. The program began in 1998 [1] and started to accept records in 2008. [2] As of 2017, NARA was working to overhaul the system in an effort called "ERA 2.0." [3]
Efforts by U.S. government archivists to preserve electronic records date to the 1960s [4] but the task took on heightened importance toward the end of the 20th century, as the volume and variety of government-produced digital records expanded. [5] According to Kenneth Thibodeau when he was the ERA program's director, the idea of an initiative to better manage electronic records took shape in the 1990s as NARA officials looked ahead to the expected end of the Bill Clinton administration in January 2001, when the White House would hand over staff email messages for preservation: "We estimated the transfer of something in the realm of forty million e-mail messages. No system in the agency could handle that volume. Even if we expanded existing systems a hundredfold, we still could not handle the simple workload of copying those files." [6]
In 1998, [1] NARA launched the ERA program, and an office was established in 2000. [5] The agency released a draft request for proposals in August 2003, followed by a final version in 2004. [1] A $308 million, six-year contract to build the system was awarded to Lockheed Martin in September 2005. [7]
In 2008, the ERA system began accepting records from four pilot agencies, and in January 2009 it began to take in George W. Bush administration records. [5] Development of the system ended in 2011 [8] and within a few years it was storing hundreds of terabytes of electronic records. [9]
NARA has described ERA as a "system of systems" with four primary functions: accepting electronic records from government bodies, assigning metadata to document those records, preserving those records, and allowing access to those records. [9] This adapts the traditional work of archival processing to digital records, a form of digital curation.
As of 2012, federal agencies also used ERA to submit proposed record retention schedules, and NARA used the system to review and either approve or reject those schedules. [10] Schedules are used to determine how long records should be retained by the U.S. government before they are destroyed, with only some records deemed worthy of permanent preservation. [11] Only a small fraction of government records, 1% to 3%, are preserved in perpetuity by NARA. [12]
In 2012, NARA decided the ERA system required "extensive modernization and refactoring," which would come in a project called ERA 2.0. [3] Among other things, the project would incorporate cloud computing technology and an Agile software approach. [3] The new system will include a Digital Processing Environment to accept and process digital materials, and a Digital Object Repository to store materials. [9] A pilot program began in 2015 and the production release was scheduled for 2018. [3]
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an "independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also tasked with increasing public access to those documents which make up the National Archive. NARA is officially responsible for maintaining and publishing the legally authentic and authoritative copies of acts of Congress, presidential directives, and federal regulations. NARA also transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress. It also examines Electoral College and Constitutional amendment ratification documents for prima facie legal sufficiency and an authenticating signature.
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properties with various title designations. The U.S. Congress created the agency on August 25, 1916, through the National Park Service Organic Act. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., within the main headquarters of the Department of the Interior.
In the United States, the presidential library system is a nationwide network of 15 libraries administered by the Office of Presidential Libraries, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These are repositories for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections and other historical materials of every president of the United States from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama. In addition to the library services, museum exhibitions concerning the presidency are displayed.
Records management, also known as records and information management, is an organizational function devoted to the management of information in an organization throughout its life cycle, from the time of creation or receipt to its eventual disposition. This includes identifying, classifying, storing, securing, retrieving, tracking and destroying or permanently preserving records. The ISO 15489-1: 2001 standard defines records management as "[the] field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records".
In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and it combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and "born-digital" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time. The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association, defined digital preservation as combination of "policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time." According to the Harrod's Librarian Glossary, digital preservation is the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete.
Enterprise content management (ECM) extends the concept of content management by adding a timeline for each content item and, possibly, enforcing processes for its creation, approval and distribution. Systems using ECM generally provide a secure repository for managed items, analog or digital. They also include one methods for importing content to bring manage new items, and several presentation methods to make items available for use. Although ECM content may be protected by digital rights management (DRM), it is not required. ECM is distinguished from general content management by its cognizance of the processes and procedures of the enterprise for which it is created.
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings and data storage devices.
United States Department of Defense standard 5015.2-STD, the Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications, was implemented in June 2002. This standard defines requirements for the management of records within the Department of Defense, which has become the accepted standard for many state, county, and local governments.
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the United States was an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The program convened several working groups, administered grant projects, and disseminated information about digital preservation issues. The U.S. Congress established the program in 2000, and official activity specific to NDIIPP itself wound down between 2016 and 2018. The Library was chosen because of its role as one of the leading providers of high-quality content on the Internet. The Library of Congress has formed a national network of partners dedicated to preserving specific types of digital content that is at risk of loss.
An Open Archival Information System is an archive, consisting of an organization of people and systems, that has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community. The OAIS model can be applied to various archives, e.g., open access, closed, restricted, “dark”, or proprietary.
The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209, is an Act of the United States Congress governing the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents created or received after January 20, 1981, and mandating the preservation of all presidential records. Enacted November 4, 1978, the PRA changed the legal ownership of the President's official records from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents must manage their records. The PRA was amended in 2014, to include the prohibition of sending electronic records through non-official accounts unless an official account is copied on the transmission, or a copy is forwarded to an official account shortly after creation.
The Brittle Books Program is an initiative carried out by the National Endowment for the Humanities at the request of the United States Congress. The initiative began officially between 1988 and 1989 with the intention to involve the eventual microfilming of over 3 million endangered volumes.
Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) is a document describing the metrics of an OAIS-compliant digital repository that developed from work done by the OCLC/RLG Programs and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) task force initiative.
Digital artifactual value, a preservation term, is the intrinsic value of a digital object, rather than the informational content of the object. Though standards are lacking, born-digital objects and digital representations of physical objects may have a value attributed to them as artifacts.
The Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014 is a United States federal statute which amended the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act. Introduced as H.R. 1233, it was signed into law by President Barack Obama on November 26, 2014.
The Federal Records Act of 1950 is a United States federal law that was enacted in 1950. It provides the legal framework for federal records management, including record creation, maintenance, and disposition.
A machine-readable document is a document whose content can be readily processed by computers. Such documents are distinguished from machine-readable data by virtue of having sufficient structure to provide the necessary context to support the business processes for which they are created.
The International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems is a "major international research initiative in which archival scholars, computer engineering scholars, national archival institutions and private industry representatives are collaborating to develop the theoretical and methodological knowledge required for the permanent preservation of authentic records created in electronic systems." As a global consortia that works to develop preservation strategies, the project focuses on "developing the knowledge essential to the long-term preservation of authentic records created and/or maintained in digital form and providing the basis for standards, policies, strategies and plans of action capable of ensuring the longevity of such material and the ability of its users to trust its authenticity."
Kenneth Francis Thibodeau is an American specialist in electronic records management who worked for many years at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). He was responsible for development of the pioneering DoD 5015.03 standard for electronic records management and for creation of NARA's Electronic Records Archives System (ERA).
