Nara Records Management Weaknesses That Emphasized

The organization in charge of all the federal records is the National Archives and Records Administration or NARA. It is clear from the results of NARA records management division survey that the record archiving methods used by most federal departments are ineffective putting them at mid to high risk of not having properly retained records. The survey conducted to assess the efficiency of records management policies of federal departments covered around 270 agencies and response was received from 93% of them.

According the NARA records management division, of the 93% that responded, some were at a high risk of lacking proper data archiving methods. The department of Education, Agriculture, Transportation and Justice scored the lowest as far as record keeping efficiency was concerned. In addition, 90% of the responders scored below 90 on the survey, which means they are at moderate risk of not keeping adequate records.

Electronic data was the most compromised aspect of recordkeeping. Federal departments either completely lack a compliant system for retaining electronic data or email messages are not captured because of their incompatibility with the system. These agencies are printing out emails for their records, but NARA believes that this is "inadequate preservation" and that these records must be electronic. Most federal agencies are under the impression that having a backup of electronic data on hard drive is same as having archival software for providing NARA and other regulating agencies access to their records.

The involvement of record management personnel in data retention planning process is important, but this is not the case in most departments. The record management personnel do not have the power to take a call on the software to be used for archiving, record saving process and the best method of going about it. These decisions are made higher up and by people who do not have anything to do with records management, leading to an inefficient system that is just not working. According to the survey results, involvement of data management staff in the decision making process was occasional in 16% of the cases and regular in further 19%.

This signifies that the involvement of data management department in decision making process is nil in more about 65% agencies. The record programs at many agencies being inadequate, they do not ensure complete compliance with NARA regulations. Additionally, training data management personnel is important to build up their skills and to enable them to use the newest technologies for documents and electronic data retention.