Each year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) releases its Federal Agency Records Management (FARM) report. The 2017 version was released in August 2018 and it shows that agencies are mostly on track for meeting upcoming records management deadlines that will shift the government towards a more modernized, digitally inclusive state. This interesting news came to us from GCN in their article, “The challenges of analog records management.”
The key word here is mostly. Agencies still have room for improvement. NARA has a goal to be paperless by 2022 with a focus on having a plan for their analog records.
The majority of agencies are aware that they should be coordinating with NARA when storing permanent records. However, if agencies are already struggling to transfer permanent records in any format today, what will happen when they can only submit records to NARA in electronic formats?
Agencies must implement their own strategies for managing those analog records in the most efficient way possible, both financially and operationally.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
