The challenges
facing NARA with electronic records include scope, variety, complexity,
volume and obsolescence.
For Scope, NARA
has the responsibility for accepting records from all the Federal agencies as
well as Congress and the courts.The
variety of records that we anticipate include office automation,(email), image, video and audio
formats.Complexity such as decision
support systems or GIS, applets and interactive World Wide Web pages, volume
in both files and bytes, with current examples of Clinton email files, State
Department diplomatic cables, office military personnel files, which are
images files, and the 2000 Census.
And then there is
obsolescence, the rapidly changing natures of systems used to create records