Under federal law, federal agencies must “notify [the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)] of any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency (see 36 CFR Part 1230 for the full statute). Upon such notification, NARA creates an “unauthorized [...]

Is electronic records management worth the effort? Advocates argue that digital records make electronics records management faster and most cost-efficient while facilitating increased productivity. But are those claims smoke-and-mirrors, or are they grounded in evidence and fact? Let’s look at some hard numbers. The number of documents and records in the U.S. alone is staggering [...]

Electronic records management can undeniably generate huge benefits for organizations. They make it easier to find records, improve productivity by as much as 30%, and yield cost savings by managing information “as an asset, rather than a liability,” as we have previously described here. But technology has its own pitfalls. The speed with which records [...]

The reports are in! Records management officials at federal agencies throughout the U.S. government have submitted their annual Senior Agency Official for Records Management (SAORM) reports to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Though NARA is still processing and assessing these reports, they already shed light on a pressing question: how prepared are [...]

Is electronic records management truly more cost-effective than its analog alternatives? That’s an argument we’ve made before, and it’s one that’s substantial enough that it’s worth unpacking further. A white paper from the Federal Records Management Council (FRMC) on the cost benefits of digitization details the myriad areas of potential cost savings, writing that even [...]

Most U.S. federal agencies have now submitted their annual Senior Agency Official for Records Management (SAORM) reports for 2020 to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This year’s questionnaire included a new and pointed question: “Has the COVID-19 pandemic changed any policies or practices related to records management at your agency?” These reports [...]

The ongoing digitization effort throughout the U.S. government poses many challenges for government agencies and the organizations that work with them. These organizations must acquire the right tools, find enough budget to meet an unfunded mandate, update their records management policies and schedules appropriately, and more. But the single biggest challenge is the living, breathing [...]

Digitizing is difficult even under the best circumstances. Federal records managers may be facing an even steeper challenge. They’re also having to comply with the aggressive schedule set by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the Office of Management and Budget in memorandum M-19-21 in an environment that is notorious for scheduling and [...]

“There never are enough resources,” says one federal records management specialist of the drive to convert to electronic records management. Federal agencies are under the gun: they are facing an ambitious (and unfunded) mandate to make an almost complete transition to electronic records management by the end of 2022, with limited resources for the effort [...]

Failures related to records management can be very serious. When records are not managed properly, agencies and other organizations can fall out of compliance with federal or state laws, make themselves vulnerable to legal action or some form of oversight like an audit, and may even incur penalties or find themselves subject to legal fees. [...]