Time for a little heresy.



Bill Manago maintained that the "First Gulf War, prompted Congress to force the DoD to move from paper-based records management to electronic.  Birthed the DoD 5015.2 Standard and the electronic recordkeeping industry" and was a positive impact on records management. The reality is much messier. What actually happened is that the U.S. military replaced a well thought out, proven record keeping system based on the regular creation and routine management of physical records with one that utilized electronic documents but was poorly developed with unclear lines of responsibility. The result is a record keeping mess which should be named FUBAR.



The September 2014 issue of The American Archivist pretty well describes the result in “Documenting the American Military Experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars” and confirms my son’s personal observations. In past modern wars, there was a clear line of responsibility as to what should be reported to whom and which level of command was to retain the records. In Afghanistan and Iraq, reporting was done electronically, but much data was lost when equipment was wiped when redeployed or transferred to the other units or to allies. “While many high-level directives were issued about preserving records (Chief Historian of the U.S. Army Center of Military History Richard W.) Stewart claimed that these directives were not integrated with detailed procedures, training, and enforcement components….” (p. 187)



Steve Whitaker may hate paper, but he should be grateful that ours service in Vietnam was documented by the paper-based system of the era rather than the electronic bases system that replaced it.



Paul R. Scott, CA, CRM
Records Management Officer
Harris County, TX
713 274-7740

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