Hi Don,

Those are good points. Perhaps the new ERA system will address that. 
Certainly, well defined binary formats such as images within a database should 
be accepted.  But the choice I think originated "back in the day", when nearly 
every mainframe or minicomputer file or database was a one-off unique 
creation of a programmer. 

On top of that, many systems had different ways of representing integers, 
floating point, packed and other number formats. Further still, the 
programmers may have moved on before documenting their file formats 
properly. (Many times over the years have we received mainframe files that 
did not fit the documented layouts). Even more of a pain can be these really 
large master records that contain groupings of variable numbers of sub-
records. (Have had to work with state medicaid files along these lines--they 
also had incorrect documentation.)

So... I think the folks at NARA felt that resolving all that should all be the 
burden of the originating agency.  Turning it all into flat or delimited ASCII or 
EBCDIC forces the originators to confront all the issues before transfer, in the 
process creating up to date documentation.

regards,
Chris Muller
www.mullermedia.com
 

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