e-records management a cross-boundary effort

Government departments must devote sustained attention and resources towards maintaining electronic records, and electronic records management is a cross-boundary effort.

These are among the key points of a new white paper from the US National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and Council of State Archivists (CoSA) outlining some steps that state officials should take when working toward the preservation of digital archives.

The paper states that in the US, there was a 1693% growth in state and territorial electronic records between 2006 and 2016, and government decisions and policies are increasingly being set and rolled out solely electronically.

But electronic records are more complex to preserve than paper records and, without specific action to ensure that electronic records are adequately maintained, they are subject to being overwritten, lost in migrations or becoming inaccessible due to incompatible legacy systems.

A collaborative effort is key to developing best practices for the long-term preservation of electronic records, and state CIOs should work with federal and state officials from other departments on this goal, the paper notes.

NASCIO and CoSA also recommended that state CIOs communicate their digital record archiving plans and expectations with state agencies, the state legislature and the public, and set policies to ensure that public business is kept on public platforms and that email records are managed appropriately.

Another key consideration is security and risk management, with state CIOs under pressure to ensure both state archives and third-party service providers are properly protecting data.

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