At 09:15 PM 3/29/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>PERMANENT Record
>CIO Magazine - Australia
>... "A project for sentencing electronic records will be undertaken this
>year, and in the scope of this project will be the management of
>permanent retention ...
><http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;163610868;fp;4;fpid;21>


For those in Government Agencies, in the US or abroad of those working for
Contractors to Government Agencies, or even those in Private Industry
wrestling with the long-term management of electronic format records and
objects, I'd strongly suggest you read this article to gain the knowledge
of the "lessons learned" by some of those who have been seen as being on
the leading edge thus far and the considerations of what you may want to do
going forward.

And, while these snippets from the article were no surprise, it's good to
see them admitted to in print:

"Once you've gone electronic it's very hard to go back. I've worked in
agencies where electronic record keeping has failed, and I need to feel
confident that these issues can be resolved. So for now, we're going to
stick with the tried and true method."  It may sound anachronistic and more
than a little counterproductive, but the printing of digital records on
paper for long-term archiving remains the de facto method of archiving
across many sectors of government. We have, simply, been dealing with paper
for far too long to give it up now.

That the US government would turn to massive military contractors to
develop their digital record-keeping system reflects both the complexity
and the importance of the initiative. "We have a great deal of interest in
finding ways of making it easy to retain records over long periods of time
and across generations of technology," says Lewis Bellardo, deputy
archivist of the US with NARA, who recently met Todd, NAA representatives
and others in Sydney to review progress on ISO 15489.

"We're not going to force agencies to use this technology; we think it will
be an attractive option and that they'll be interested in it," Bellardo
says. "We have already had some agencies tell us they really can't wait for
us to develop this. We anticipate considerable collaboration, and there are
going to be occasions where we're just going to have to help [departments]
do it by working with them to get control of their data and record types."

Larry

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