Remarks by Reynolds Cahoon
Assistant Archivist for Human Resources and Information Services and
Chief Information Officer of the
National Archives and Records Administration
August 3, 2004
Just as 8-track tapes, 80 column punch cards, beta max videos, and 5 & 1/4 inch floppy disks have become obsolete and the information on them inaccessible, so too will the information on your zip drives, thumb drives and DVDs in just a few short years. For individuals, Government agencies and private businesses in this country and around the world, the fact is that much of the electronic information of the late 20th and 21st century will be lost or unusable if the problems of saving electronic information over time aren't solved.
Good morning. I am Reynolds Cahoon, Assistant Archivist for Human Resources and Information Services and the Chief Information Officer of the National Archives and Records Administration. On behalf of the Archivist of the United States, John Carlin, I welcome each of you to this important announcement about the future of our nation's electronic information and about the archives of the future that will preserve and provide access to it.
I am pleased to welcome members of the Administration, as well as executives representing our partners, and information technology leaders. Thank you all for joining us today.
Today we will announce the award of the contracts for the next step in construction design of the Electronic Records Archives, or ERA for short.
ERA is the archives of the future. It will not look like the building we stand in today, but will instead be an electronic capability to:
- Authentically preserve any type of electronic record, created by any entity in the Federal Government.
- And provide this electronic information anytime and anyplace to anyone with an interest and legal right to access it.
The award we announce today will result in systems analysis and design, of ERA, the blueprint from which physical construction can begin. Dr. Ken Thibodeau, ERA's program director will speak more about our plans in just a moment.
Before he does however, I'd like to explain a bit about the electronic records challenge our nation, rather, our entire digital world faces.
The National Archives and Records Administration is responsible for records management Government-wide. At one time this meant paper records, but now our Government operates primarily on records created electronically.
However, we do not currently have the tools and systems to preserve electronic records and to provide access to them over time. This problem affects all of us. Let me give you just a few examples of what I mean:
- Without access to useable electronic records, young Americans serving in Iraq today may not be able to get their veterans benefits or access to their digital health records.
- Without access to useable electronic records, citizens might not be able to document their government entitlements such as social security benefits.
- The safety and efficacy of our nuclear stockpile also depends on access to complex, critical useable electronic records.
- And much of the information used to secure our borders and our citizens is digital and will be needed long after the computers that created them are obsolete. Access to vital electronic records will be critical in times of disruption or emergency to provide much needed government services.
Let me briefly describe the six key electronic records challenges.
- Authenticity - Trustworthy records are at the heart of our democracy. Ensuring authenticity and security in a digital world is the core mission of the National Archives and Records Administration. Electronic materials are by their nature vulnerable to change and loss.
- Obsolescence -The technology that creates electronic records is constantly improving and is constantly at the same time becoming obsolete. Obsolescence is a detriment to preserving records whose information will be needed and over time.
- Complexity of electronic records - Electronic records are increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to manage. Examples include documents with images, graphs, sound and video, geographic information systems and virtual reality models that are necessary to document some types of patent applications. The more complex the materials, the more difficult they are to preserve.
- Variety - There are over 16,000 formats of information that need to be stored on electronic media. These formats range from e-mail and text documents to complex aircraft design drawings to seismic data to sophisticated high energy physics simulations.
- Volume - There are billions of electronic records being created by the Federal Government, and a large portion of those records will need to be preserved. An example of these records include one billion images of Digital Official Military Personnel Files and 600-800 million 2000 census images.
- User expectations - The technology that was used in the '50s and '60s to manage and access information is no longer acceptable to us today. The same will be true in the near future in regard to our current technology.
The Electronic Records Archives Program you will hear about this morning is focused on dealing in a comprehensive way with each of these challenges.
The truth is that vital digital materials are being lost every day, and the costs of these losses are both unknown and unknowable. For example, many of the weapons systems vital to our nation's defense have digital design drawings. Losing this information could cost millions of dollars and countless time to duplicate. We do know this -- America runs on digital information, and ensuring its accessibility and usability now and over time is the challenge of our generation and we must meet it.
Finally, our ancestors left for us a rich record of themselves and they worked hard to preserve those records for us. With ERA we will be able to leave our great, great grandchildren the vital information they deserve about our turn on the planet. Without ERA, we may leave only a void of records forever lost to technology. Our descendants deserve more.
Now, I would like to introduce Dr. Ken Thibodeau, Director of the ERA program, to explain in more depth our plans for building ERA and our progress so far. Following Ken's remarks John Carlin, Archivist of the United States, will announce the contract awards.
