For years, the federal government has been pushing an electronic approach to agency records management. During the Obama administration and continuing under President Donald Trump, the National Archives and Records Administration has been issuing policy requirements to get agencies to preserve and store electronic records in their original format, shift to electronic-only email record management and get away from the print-and-file approach. Last August, in its draft strategic plan, NARA announced it planned to set a hard deadline of Dec. 31, 2022, after which it would only accept records transfers in electronic format with appropriate metadata.
In order to help this process along, NARA is playing a new role, helping to connect agencies with vendors that supply electronic records management tools that can overlay existing agency software and productivity tools to automate much of the agency archival function.
