NARA: a sneak preview.

AuthorMarcus, Richard W.
PositionNational Archives and Records Administration's records management - Brief Article

For almost 30 years, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been involved with managing electronic records. It accessions data files and other electronic records of archival value from federal agencies and makes them available to researchers. NARA also provides guidance to agencies on how to manage their electronic records. One solution NARA currently recommends is the implementation of a records management application (RMA) to manage office automation records, including e-mail. Yet many of NARA's staff involved with electronic records never had the opportunity to actually use a RMA to manage their own records. NARA's own records management program does not have the capability to manage electronic records electronically; agency staff are required to "print and file."

To correct these two conditions, the NARA records management team (RMT) joined forces with the NARA Modern Records Program two years ago to install and test an RMA. Planning began in the winter of 2000; the contract was awarded in September of the same year. Live system testing began in April 2001 and ended six months later. The contractor delivered final reports in December.

NARA's RMA project, dubbed RMA2000, was meant to be a learning experience. The Modern Records Program would acquire expertise and knowledge that it could incorporate into future electronic recordkeeping training with agencies. The RMT wanted to gain hands-on experience with installing and using a RMA so it could make educated decisions in the future about deploying the technology agency-wide. The RMT also wanted to know what actions were necessary to connect the system to NARA's IT infrastructure and which of the agency's records management procedures and disposition standards might require revision to accommodate the RMA. Moreover, the RMT wanted to test the usefulness and accuracy of autoclassification technology that had begun to appear on the market.

Since this effort was considered a learning experience, the project team limited the number of participants to 30 -- enough to be statistically significant but not so many as to complicate the implementation. End users included clerical staff, staff archivists, and the General Counsel to the Deputy Archivist of the United States. TrueArc's Foremost, a commercial, off-the-shelf RMA application, was selected because it was the only RMA then available that fully integrated autoclassification via a product called AutoRecords. Foremost also...

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