In light of the recent Clinton email dust-up,
last week I posted a call for the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) to move toward creating the capability to house a national governmental email archive.
This proposed email archive would capture and preserve email messages
sent by federal government employees on .gov and .mil addresses as they
do business on the public's behalf.
I got some feedback on those posts along these lines: impractical, unrealistic, politically nonviable, unsustainable, costly, even crazy.
Some objected to the cost, yet I pointed out that there is a
presidential directive that requires all federal email records to be
managed electronically by 2016. So the money must be invested anyway.
Some said, "...this would require a change to the Federal Records Act!"
and I agree. It must be amended at the very least to disallow
sending official federal government business email messages through
personal email accounts. And it must be amended to grant NARA the
authority to capture (in real-time) and preserve email messages across
all federal agencies. Just as I suggested this the Society of American
Archivists came out with this statement:
"SAA
believes that the practice of using unofficial, non-government email
accounts for the conduct of public business fails to meet the level of
transparency that many believe the public should enjoy regarding the
activities of government officials. We are encouraged by the 2014
amendments to the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act
and support further efforts to strengthen this legislation to achieve
the highest level of transparency possible, in keeping with the
standards of an open and democratic government recommending exactly
that. And it should be amended to give NARA the mandate and authority to
capture and preserve email federal email messages across all agencies."
With the announcement last week that NARA has contracted with Unisys to provide a cloud-based email archiving and records management platform, the capability to house a federal email archive will be in place.
Now
it is primarily a matter of policy, planning and execution. The
cloud-based solution can scale up as needed. Now there are no more
excuses for not maintaining an accurate archive of our nation's
business.
I'd love to continue the dialogue and debate. I invite
all federal employees who have an interest in records management issues
to come hear me speak at the D.C. Live Business Process Management & Records Management Conference & Expo on April 21, at the Capitol Hilton. I'll be giving the keynote address regarding these and other timely IG issues.
It
is a FREE event packed with informative sessions. It is open to the
public AND private sector, with breakfast and lunch buffet provided, and
there will be a drawing for free signed copies of my books. Come join
us!
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Robert Smallwood is Managing Director of the Institute for IG at IMERGE Consulting, which can be found at www.IGTraining.com.
He teaches comprehensive courses on IG and E-records management for
corporate and public sector clients. He is the author of 3 leading books
on Information Governance: Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies. and Best Practices (Wiley, 2014); Managing Electronic Records: Methods, Best Practices, and Technologies (Wiley, 2013); and Safeguarding Critical E-Documents (Wiley, 2012).
Follow Robert on Twitter @RobertSmallwood and if we are not connected - please feel free to reach out!