Federal Records: Agencies Face Challenges in Managing E-Mail	 
(23-APR-08, GAO-08-699T).					 
                                                                 
Federal agencies are increasingly using electronic mail (e-mail) 
for essential communication. In doing so, they are potentially	 
creating messages that have the status of federal records, which 
must be managed and preserved in accordance with the Federal	 
Records Act. To carry out the records management responsibilities
established in the act, agencies are to follow implementing	 
regulations that include specific requirements for e-mail	 
records. In view of the importance that e-mail plays in 	 
documenting government activities, GAO was asked to testify on	 
issues relating to the preservation of electronic records,	 
including e-mail. As agreed, GAO's statement discusses challenges
facing agencies when managing their e-mail records, as well as	 
current policies and practices for managing e-mail messages that 
qualify as federal records. This testimony is primarily based on 
preliminary results of ongoing work, in which GAO is examining,  
among other things, e-mail policies at four agencies of 	 
contrasting sizes and structures (the Department of Homeland	 
Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade 
Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development),
as well as the practices of selected senior officials.		 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-08-699T					        
    ACCNO:   A81699						        
  TITLE:     Federal Records: Agencies Face Challenges in Managing    
E-Mail								 
     DATE:   04/23/2008 
  SUBJECT:   Agency proceedings 				 
	     Data transmission					 
	     E-mail						 
	     Electronic records 				 
	     Electronic records management			 
	     Federal agencies					 
	     Federal records management 			 
	     Federal regulations				 
	     Government information				 
	     Information management				 
	     Information resources management			 
	     Information storage and retrieval			 
	     Policy evaluation					 
	     Records						 
	     Records management 				 
	     Reporting requirements				 
	     Policies and procedures				 

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GAO-08-699T

   

     * [1]Results in Brief
     * [2]Background

          * [3]NARA and Federal Agencies Have Responsibilities for Federal

     * [4]Management of E-Mail Records Poses Challenges
     * [5]Agency Policies on Preserving E-Mail Records Are Not Followe

          * [6]Most Agency Policies Generally Complied with NARA Guidance
          * [7]E-Mail Records of Senior Officials Were Not Consistently Pre

     * [8]Recently Proposed Legislation on Electronic Records Manageme
     * [9]Contacts and Acknowledgements
     * [10]Ordering Information.pdf

          * [11]Order by Mail or Phone

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Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and 
National Archives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 

GAO: 

For Release on Delivery Expected at 2 P.M. EDT: 

Wednesday, October 23, 2008: 

Federal Records: 

Agencies Face Challenges in Managing E-mail: 

Statement of Linda Koontz, Director: 

Information Management Issues: 

GAO-08-699T: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-08-699T, a testimony before the Subcommittee on 
Information Policy, Census, and National Archives, Committee on 
Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

Federal agencies are increasingly using electronic mail (e-mail) for 
essential communication. In doing so, they are potentially creating 
messages that have the status of federal records, which must be managed 
and preserved in accordance with the Federal Records Act. To carry out 
the records management responsibilities established in the act, 
agencies are to follow implementing regulations that include specific 
requirements for e-mail records. In view of the importance that e-mail 
plays in documenting government activities, GAO was asked to testify on 
issues relating to the preservation of electronic records, including e-
mail. As agreed, GAOï¿½s statement discusses challenges facing agencies 
when managing their e-mail records, as well as current policies and 
practices for managing e-mail messages that qualify as federal records. 
This testimony is primarily based on preliminary results of ongoing 
work, in which GAO is examining, among other things, e-mail policies at 
four agencies of contrasting sizes and structures (the Department of 
Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal 
Trade Commission, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development), 
as well as the practices of selected senior officials. 

GAO's Preliminary Findings: 

E-mail, because of its nature, presents challenges to records 
management. First, the information contained in e-mail records is not 
uniform: it may concern any subject or function and document various 
types of transactions. As a result, in many cases, decisions on which e-
mail messages are records must be made individually. Second, the 
transmission data associated with an e-mail recordï¿½including 
information about the senders and receivers of messages, the date and 
time the message was sent, and any attachments to the messagesï¿½may be 
crucial to understanding the context of the record.Third, a given 
message may be part of an exchange of messages between two or more 
people within or outside an agency, or even of a string (sometimes 
branching) of many messages sent and received on a given topic. In such 
cases, agency staff need to decide which message or messages should be 
considered records and who is responsible for storing them in a 
recordkeeping system. Finally, the large number of federal e-mail users 
and high volume of e-mails increase the management challenge. 

Preliminary results of GAOï¿½s ongoing review of e-mail records 
management at four agencies show that not all are meeting the 
challenges posed by e-mail records. Although the four agenciesï¿½ e-mail 
records management policies addressed, with a few exceptions, the 
regulatory requirements, these requirements were not always met for the 
senior officials whose e-mail practices were reviewed. Each of the four 
agencies generally followed a print and file process to preserve e-mail 
records in paper-based recordkeeping systems, but for about half of the 
senior officials, e-mail records were not being appropriately 
identified and preserved in such systems. Instead, e-mail messages were 
being retained in e-mail systems that lacked recordkeeping 
capabilities. (Among other things, a recordkeeping system allows 
related records to be grouped into classifications according to their 
business purposes.) Unless they have recordkeeping capabilities, e-mail 
systems may not permit easy and timely retrieval of groupings of 
related records or individual records. Further, keeping large numbers 
of record and nonrecord messages in e-mail systems potentially 
increases the time and effort needed to search for information in 
response to a business need or an outside inquiry, such as a Freedom of 
Information Act request. Factors contributing to this practice were the 
lack of adequate staff support and the volume of e-mail received. In 
addition, agencies had not ensured that officials and their responsible 
staff received training in recordkeeping requirements for e-mail. If 
recordkeeping requirements are not followed, agencies cannot be assured 
that records, including information essential to protecting the rights 
of individuals and the federal government, is being adequately 
identified and preserved. 

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-699T]. For more 
information, contact Linda Koontz at (202) 512-6240 or [email protected]. 

[End of section] 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss critical issues surrounding the 
federal government's management of electronic mail messages. As you are 
aware, federal agencies are increasingly using electronic mail (e-mail) 
for essential communication, and in doing so, they are potentially 
creating messages that have the status of federal records. According to 
the Federal Records Act,[Footnote 1] federal records are information in 
whatever form that documents government functions, activities, 
decisions, and other important transactions, and such records must be 
managed and preserved in accordance with the act.[Footnote 2] As the 
volume of federal e-mail grows, so does the challenge of managing 
electronic records. 

Under the act, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) 
has responsibilities for oversight and guidance of federal records 
management, which includes management of e-mail records. Agencies also 
have records management responsibilities, which as specified by NARA 
include the responsibility to develop e-mail management policies and 
practices that include specific requirements, such as defining staff 
responsibilities for determining whether an e-mail (including any 
associated attachments) is a federal record and, further, requiring 
preservation of record e-mail. 

As requested, my statement will focus on current practices used in 
managing e-mail messages that qualify as federal records. After a brief 
discussion of federal requirements, I will outline some of the 
challenges facing agencies when managing their e-mail records and then 
discuss e-mail records management policies and practices that we are 
reviewing at four agencies. Finally, I will offer brief comments on 
recently drafted legislation in this area. 

In my statement today, my discussion of e-mail records management 
challenges, policies, and practices is based on the preliminary results 
of work we are doing at your and the full committee's request, which we 
expect to publish later this year. For this engagement, we selected 
four federal agencies based on contrasting sizes and structures and on 
the significance of their records to protecting rights and documenting 
accountability: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Trade Commission 
(FTC), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). For 
each agency, we are reviewing the e-mail management practices of four 
senior officials (including the agency head),[Footnote 3] using 
responses to a series of data collection instruments, interviews with 
agency officials, and inspection of a limited number of sample e-mail 
records identified by the agencies to corroborate their statements. 
Also, to develop comments on the legislation, we analyzed the 
provisions of the bill related to our ongoing work. 

The ongoing performance audit on which my comments today are based, 
which began in April 2007, is being conducted in accordance with 
generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 
require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, 
appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence 
obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions 
based on our audit objectives. 

Results in Brief: 

E-mail, because of its nature, presents challenges to records 
management. First, the information contained in e-mail records is not 
uniform: it may concern any subject or function and document various 
types of transactions. As a result, in many cases, decisions on which e-
mail messages are records must be made individually. Second, the 
transmission data associated with an e-mail record--including 
information about the senders and receivers of messages, the date and 
time the message was sent, and any attachments to the messages--may be 
crucial to understanding the context of the record. Third, a given 
message may be part of an exchange of messages between two or more 
people within or outside an agency, or even of a string (sometimes 
branching) of many messages sent and received on a given topic. In such 
cases, agency staff need to decide which message or messages should be 
considered records and who is responsible for storing them in a 
recordkeeping system. Finally, the large number of federal e-mail users 
and high volume of e-mails increase the management challenge. According 
to NARA, the use of e-mail results in more records being created than 
in the past, as it often replaces phone conversations and face-to-face 
meetings that might not have been otherwise recorded. 

Our ongoing review of e-mail records management at four agencies 
provides illustrations of these difficulties. In their e-mail records 
management policies, the four agencies addressed, with a few 
exceptions, the requirements that we identified in NARA's regulations. 
However, for the senior officials whose practices we reviewed, 
recordkeeping requirements for e-mail were not always met. Each of the 
four agencies generally followed a print and file process to preserve e-
mail records in paper-based recordkeeping systems, but for about half 
of the senior officials, e-mail records were not being appropriately 
identified and preserved in such systems. Instead, e-mail messages, 
including records, were generally being retained in e-mail systems that 
lacked recordkeeping capabilities, which is contrary to regulation. 
(Among other things, a recordkeeping system allows related records to 
be grouped into classifications according to their business purposes.) 
Unless they have recordkeeping features, e-mail systems may not permit 
easy and timely retrieval of both groupings of related records as well 
as individual records. Further, keeping large numbers of record and 
nonrecord messages in e-mail systems potentially increases the time and 
effort needed to search for information in response to a business need 
or an outside inquiry, such as a Freedom of Information Act request. 
Factors contributing to this practice were the lack of adequate staff 
support and the volume of e-mail received. In addition, officials and 
their responsible staff had not always received training in the 
recordkeeping requirements for e-mail records. If recordkeeping 
requirements are not followed, agencies cannot be assured that records, 
including information that is essential to protecting the rights of 
individuals and the federal government, is being adequately identified 
and preserved. 

The provisions of a draft bill (the Electronic Communications 
Preservation Act) would mandate the transition to electronic records 
management for e-mail records. Such a transition could help agencies 
improve their recordkeeping practices in this area. As our review 
shows, agencies recognize that devoting significant resources to 
creating paper records from electronic sources is not a viable long- 
term strategy and have accordingly begun to plan or implement such a 
transition. The investment in information technology needed to 
implement electronic recordkeeping will have to be managed 
appropriately to avoid unnecessary cost and performance risks. 
Accordingly, the bill's requirement that NARA develop minimum 
functional requirements should reduce the development risk that could 
result from multiple agencies concurrently developing similar systems. 
Once implemented, however, electronic recordkeeping systems could 
potentially help agencies obtain the efficiencies of automation and 
avoid expenditure of resources on duplicative manual processes and 
storage. 

Background: 

Advances in information technology and the explosion in computer 
interconnectivity have had far-reaching effects, including the 
transformation from a paper-based to an electronic business environment 
and the capability for rapid communication through e-mail. Although 
these developments have led to improvements in speed and productivity, 
they also require the development of ways to manage information that is 
increasingly in electronic rather than paper form. For federal 
agencies, such information includes e-mail messages that may have the 
status of federal records. 

NARA and Federal Agencies Have Responsibilities for Federal Records 
Management: 

Under the Federal Records Act,[Footnote 4] each federal agency is 
required to make and preserve records that (1) document the 
organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential 
transactions of the agency and (2) provide the information necessary to 
protect the legal and financial rights of the government and of persons 
directly affected by the agency's activities.[Footnote 5] These 
records, which include e-mail records, must be effectively managed. If 
they are not, individuals might lose access to benefits for which they 
are entitled, the government could be exposed to unwarranted legal 
liabilities, and historical records of vital interest could be lost 
forever. In addition, agencies with poorly managed records risk 
increased costs when attempting to search their records in response to 
Freedom of Information Act requests or litigation-related discovery 
actions. 

Accordingly, agencies are required to develop records management 
programs to ensure that they have appropriate recordkeeping systems 
with which to manage and preserve their records. Among the activities 
of a records management program are identifying records and sources of 
records and providing records management guidance, including agency- 
specific recordkeeping practices that establish what records need to be 
created in order to conduct agency business. Agencies are also required 
to schedule their records: that is, to identify and inventory records, 
appraise their value, determine whether they are temporary or 
permanent, and determine how long the temporary records should be kept. 

The act also gives the National Archives and Records Administration 
(NARA) responsibilities for oversight and guidance of federal records 
management, which includes management of e-mail records. NARA works 
with agencies to schedule records, and it must approve all records 
schedules. Records schedules may be specific to an agency, or they may 
be general, covering records common to several or all agencies. 
According to NARA, records covered by general records schedules make up 
about a third of all federal records. For the other two thirds, NARA 
and the agencies must agree upon specific records schedules. 

No record may be destroyed unless it has been scheduled. For temporary 
records, the schedule is of critical importance, because it provides 
the authority to dispose of the record after a specified time period. 
(For example, General Records Schedule 1, Civilian Personnel Records, 
provides instructions on retaining case files for merit 
promotions;[Footnote 6] agencies may destroy these records 2 years 
after the personnel action is completed, or after an audit by the 
Office of Personnel Management, whichever is sooner.) Once a schedule 
has been approved, the agency must issue it as a management directive, 
train employees in its use, and apply its provisions to temporary and 
permanent records. 

NARA has issued regulations that specifically address the management of 
e-mail records.[Footnote 7] As with other records, agencies are 
required to establish policies and procedures that provide for 
appropriate retention and disposition of e-mail records. NARA further 
specified that for each e-mail record, agencies must preserve certain 
transmission data--names of sender and addressees and message date. 
Further, except for a limited category of "transitory" e-mail 
records,[Footnote 8] agencies are not permitted to store the 
recordkeeping copy of e-mail records in the e-mail system, unless that 
system has certain features, such as the ability to group records into 
classifications according to their business purposes and to permit easy 
and timely retrieval of both individual records and groupings of 
related records. These recordkeeping features are important to ensure 
that e-mail records remain both accessible and usable during their 
useful lives. For example, it is essential to be able to classify 
records according to their business purpose so that they can be 
retrieved in case of mission need. Further, if records cannot be 
retrieved easily and quickly, or they are not retained in a usable 
format, they do not serve the mission or historical purpose that led to 
their being preserved. If agencies do not keep their e-mail records in 
systems with the required capabilities, records may also be at 
increased risk of loss from inadvertent or automatic deletion. 

If agency e-mail systems do not have the required recordkeeping 
features, either agencies must copy e-mail records to a separate 
electronic recordkeeping system, or they must print e-mail messages 
(including associated transmission information that is needed for 
purposes of context) and file the copies in traditional paper 
recordkeeping files. NARA's regulations allow agencies to use either 
paper or electronic recordkeeping systems for record copies of e-mail 
messages, depending on the agencies' business needs. 

The advantages of using a paper-based system for record copies of e- 
mails are that it takes advantage of the recordkeeping system already 
in place for the agency's paper files and requires little or no 
technological investment. The disadvantages are that a paper-based 
approach depends on manual processes and requires electronic material 
to be converted to paper, potentially losing some features of the 
electronic original; such manual processes may be especially burdensome 
if the volume of e-mail records is large. 

The advantage of using an electronic recordkeeping system, besides 
avoiding the need to manage paper, is that it can be designed to 
capture certain required data (such as transmission data) 
automatically.Electronic recordkeeping systems also make searches for 
records on particular topics much more efficient. In addition, 
electronic systems that are integrated with other applications may have 
features that make it easier for the user to identify records, and 
potentially could provide automatic or partially automatic 
classification functions.[Footnote 9] However, as with other 
information technology investments, acquiring an electronic 
recordkeeping system requires careful planning and analysis of agency 
requirements and business processes; in addition, electronic 
recordkeeping raises the issue of maintaining electronic information in 
an accessible form throughout its useful life.[Footnote 10] 

Management of E-Mail Records Poses Challenges: 

Because of its nature, e-mail can present particular challenges to 
records management. First, the information contained in e-mail records 
is not uniform: it may concern any subject or function and document 
various types of transactions. As a result, in many cases, decisions on 
which e-mail messages are records must be made individually. Second, 
the transmission data associated with an e-mail record--including 
information about the senders and receivers of messages, the date and 
time the message was sent, and any attachments to the messages--may be 
crucial to understanding the context of the record. Third, a given 
message may be part of an exchange of messages between two or more 
people within or outside an agency, or even of a string (sometimes 
branching) of many messages sent and received on a given topic. In such 
cases, agency staff need to decide which message or messages should be 
considered records and who is responsible for storing them in a 
recordkeeping system. Finally, the large number of federal e-mail users 
and high volume of e-mails increase the management challenge. According 
to NARA, the use of e-mail results in more records being created than 
in the past, as it often replaces phone conversations and face-to-face 
meetings that might not have been otherwise recorded. 

These challenges have been recognized by NARA and the records 
management community in numerous studies and articles.[Footnote 11] A 
2001 survey of federal recordkeeping practices conducted by a 
contractor for NARA concluded, among other things, that managing e-mail 
was a major records management problem and that the quality of 
recordkeeping varied considerably across agencies.[Footnote 12] In 
addition, the study concluded that for many federal employees, the 
concept of a "record" and what should be scheduled and preserved was 
not clear. 

A 2005 NARA-sponsored survey of federal agencies' policy and practices 
for electronic records management concluded that procedures for 
managing e-mail were underdeveloped.[Footnote 13] The study, performed 
by the University of Maryland Center for Information Policy, stated 
that most of the surveyed offices had not developed electronic 
recordkeeping systems, but were instead maintaining recordkeeping 
copies of e-mail and other electronic documents in paper format. 
However, all of the offices also maintained electronic records 
(frequently electronic duplicates of paper records). According to the 
study team, the agencies did not establish electronic recordkeeping 
systems due to financial constraints, and implementing such systems was 
a considerable challenge that increased with the size of the agency. As 
a result, organizations were maintaining unsynchronized parallel paper 
and electronic systems, resulting in extra work, confusion regarding 
which is the recordkeeping copy, and retention of many records beyond 
their disposition date. 

Most recently, a NARA study team examined in 2007 the experiences of 
five federal agencies (including itself) with electronic records 
management applications, with a particular emphasis on how these 
organizations used these applications to manage e-mail.[Footnote 14] 
The purpose of the study was to gather information on the strategies 
that organizations are using that may be useful to others. Among the 
major conclusions from the survey was that implementing an electronic 
records management application requires considerable effort in 
planning, testing, and implementation, and that although the 
functionality of the software product itself is important, other 
factors are also crucial, including agency culture, training provided, 
and management and information technology support. With regard to e- 
mail in particular, the survey concluded that e-mail messages can 
constitute the most voluminous type of record that is filed into 
records management applications. 

Agency Policies on Preserving E-Mail Records Are Not Followed 
Consistently: 

Our work on e-mail records management demonstrates that agencies 
continue to face challenges similar to those identified by the prior 
studies. While our results are preliminary and we are not able to 
project them beyond the agencies we reviewed, I believe they help 
illustrate the difficulties agencies can face when applying NARA's 
requirements to today's operating environment. 

Most Agency Policies Generally Complied with NARA Guidance: 

Three of the four agencies we reviewed--FTC, DHS, and EPA--had policies 
in place that generally complied with NARA's guidance on how to 
identify and preserve e-mail records, but each was missing one 
applicable requirement. Specifically, the policies at EPA and FTC did 
not instruct staff on the management and preservation of e-mail records 
sent or received from nongovernmental e-mail systems (such as 
commercial Web-based systems). Both EPA and FTC officials told us that 
these instructions were not provided because the staff were informed 
that use of outside e-mail systems for official business was 
prohibited. However, whenever access to such external systems is 
available at an agency, providing these instructions is still required. 
DHS's policy did not specify that draft documents circulated via e-mail 
may be federal records. DHS officials recognized that their policies 
did not specifically address the need to assess the records status of 
draft documents, and said they planned to address the omission during 
an ongoing effort to revise the policies. 

The policy at one of the four agencies, HUD, was missing three of eight 
applicable requirements.[Footnote 15] One element of the policy was 
inconsistent with NARA's regulation: it required only the sender of an 
e-mail message to review it for potential records status, but the 
regulation states that e-mail records could include both messages sent 
or received. HUD officials acknowledged that its policy omits the 
recipient's responsibility for determining the record status of e-mail 
messages and stated that its e-mail policy fell short of fully 
implementing NARA regulations in this regard because the department's 
practice is not to use e-mail for business matters in which official 
records would need to be created. However, this practice does not 
remove the requirement for agency employees to assess e-mail received 
for its record status, because the agency cannot know that employees 
will not receive e-mail with record status; the determination of record 
status depends on the content of the information, not its medium. 

In addition, two other requirements were missing from HUD's policy: it 
did not state, as required, that recordkeeping copies of e-mail should 
not be stored in e-mail systems and that backup tapes should not be 
used for recordkeeping purposes. HUD officials stated that they 
considered that these requirements were met by a reference in their 
policy to the NARA regulations in which these requirements 
appear.[Footnote 16] However, this reference is not sufficient to make 
clear to staff that e-mail systems and backup tapes are not to be used 
for recordkeeping. 

E-Mail Records of Senior Officials Were Not Consistently Preserved: 

While agency policies were generally compliant with recordkeeping 
regulations, these policies were not applied consistently. 
Specifically, for 8 of the 15 senior officials we reviewed, e-mail 
messages that qualified as records were not being appropriately 
identified and preserved. Instead, the officials generally kept every 
message within their e-mail systems. Each of the four agencies 
generally followed a print and file process to preserve e-mail records 
in paper-based recordkeeping systems because their e-mail systems did 
not have required record-keeping capabilities. Factors contributing to 
this lack of compliance with recordkeeping requirements were the lack 
of adequate staff support and the volume of e-mail received--several of 
these officials had thousands or even tens of thousands of messages in 
their e-mail system accounts. Another reason was that keeping every e- 
mail ensured that no information was lost, which was seen as safe from 
a legal standpoint. However, by keeping every message, they were 
potentially increasing the time and effort that would be needed to 
search through and review all the saved messages in response to an 
outside inquiry, such as a Freedom of Information Act request. In 
addition, by not keeping the e-mail in an appropriate recordkeeping 
system, these officials were making it more difficult for their 
agencies to find information by subject. Appropriately identifying and 
saving record material also allows agencies to avoid expending 
resources on unnecessarily preserving nonrecord material and on keeping 
record material beyond its usefulness (that is, beyond the date when it 
can be disposed of according to the records schedule). 

In contrast, many of the officials whose e-mail records were 
appropriately managed delegated responsibility for this task to one or 
more administrative staff members. These individuals were responsible 
for identifying which e-mail messages qualified as records and ensuring 
that the message and any attachments were preserved according to the 
agency's records management policies. Generally, this required that 
they print the message, including any attachments and transmission 
information (who the message was to and from and when it was sent), and 
place the paper copy in a file. 

Printing and filing copies of e-mail records is acceptable under NARA's 
regulations. However, printing copies of e-mails can lead to an agency 
maintaining multiple copies of the message in both paper and electronic 
formats, which can lead to agencies' expending resources on duplicative 
storage, as well as confusion over which is the recordkeeping copy. 
Further, as with all electronic documents, conversion to paper entails 
the risk of losing some features of the electronic original. 

Awareness of federal records requirements is also an ongoing concern. 
At one department, training for senior officials on their records 
management responsibilities took place only at the beginning of the 
current administration. Officials who joined the department 
subsequently were not trained on records management. Similarly, several 
administrative staff responsible for managing the e-mail of senior 
officials told us that they had not been trained to recognize a record. 

Recently Proposed Legislation on Electronic Records Management: 

A draft bill, the Electronic Communications Preservation Act, would 
mandate agencies to transition to electronic records management by 
requiring the Archivist of the United States to promulgate regulations 
governing agency preservation of electronic communications that are 
federal records. Among other things, the regulations would: 

* require the electronic capture, management, and preservation of these 
records; 

* require that such electronic records are readily accessible for 
retrieval through electronic searches; and: 

* require the Archivist to develop mandatory minimum functional 
requirements for electronic records management applications to meet the 
first two requirements. 

* The legislation would also require agencies to comply with the new 
regulations within 4 years of enactment. 

Requiring a governmentwide transition to electronic recordkeeping 
systems could help federal agencies improve e-mail management. For 
example, storing e-mail records in an electronic repository could make 
them easier to search and potentially speed agency responses to Freedom 
of Information Act requests. As our review shows, agencies recognize 
that devoting significant resources to creating paper records from 
electronic sources is not a viable long-term strategy and have 
accordingly begun to plan or implement such a system. The 4-year 
deadline in the draft bill could help expedite this transition. 

In addition, the development of minimum functional requirements by NARA 
should reduce the development risk that could have resulted from 
multiple agencies concurrently developing similar systems. By providing 
time both for standards to be developed and implemented by agencies, 
these provisions recognize the need for a well-planned process. Like 
any investment in information technology, the development of electronic 
recordkeeping systems will have to be carefully managed to avoid 
unnecessary cost and performance risks. However, once implemented, such 
systems could potentially provide the efficiencies of automation and 
avoid the expenditure of resources on duplicative manual processes and 
storage. 

In summary, the increasing use of e-mail is resulting in records 
management challenges for federal agencies. For example, the large 
number of federal e-mail users and the high volume of e-mails present 
challenges, particularly in the current paper-based environment. While 
agency e-mail policies generally contained required elements, about 
half of the senior officials we reviewed were not following these 
policies and were instead maintaining their e-mail messages within 
their e-mail accounts, where records cannot be efficiently searched, 
are not accessible to others who might need the information in the 
records, and are at increased risk of loss. Several agencies are 
considering developing electronic recordkeeping systems, but until such 
systems are implemented, agencies may have reduced assurance that 
information that is essential to protecting the rights of individuals 
and the federal government is being adequately identified and 
preserved. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony today. I would be happy to 
answer any questions you or other members of the subcommittee may have. 

Contacts and Acknowledgements: 

If you have any questions concerning this testimony, please contact 
Linda Koontz, Director, Information Management Issues, at (202) 512- 
6240, or [email protected]. Other individuals who made key contributions 
to this testimony were Timothy Case, Barbara Collier, Jennifer Stavros- 
Turner, and James Sweetman. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes:  

[1] 44 U.S.C. chapters 21, 29, 31, and 33. 

[2] The definition of a record is given at 44 U.S.C. 3301. 

[3] According to agency officials, the head of DHS did not have an e- 
mail account or use e-mail for agency business; accordingly, we 
reviewed the practices of 15 senior officials. 

[4] 44 U.S.C. chapters 21, 29, 31, and 33. 

[5] 44 U.S.C. 3101. 

[6] That is, records relating to the promotion of an individual that 
document qualification standards, evaluation methods, selection 
procedures, and evaluations of candidates. 

[7] 36 CFR Part 1234.24. 

[8] These are e-mail records with very short-term (180 days or less) 
NARA-approved retention periods (under the authority of General Record 
Schedule 23, Item 7, or a NARA-approved agency records schedule). 
Agencies may elect to manage such records on the e-mail system itself, 
without the need to copy the record to a recordkeeping system, provided 
that (1) users do not delete the messages before the expiration of the 
NARA-approved retention period, and (2) the system's automatic deletion 
rules ensure preservation of the records until the expiration of the 
NARA-approved retention period. 

[9] According to Gartner Research, "What enterprises really need (and 
want), is a mechanism that automatically classifies messages by records 
management type ï¿½ without user intervention." However, such technology 
is "in its infancy," as of August 2007, although the company expected 
it to mature rapidly because of high demand. Gartner Research, Best 
Practices in Records Management: FAQs, G00149526 (Aug. 17, 2007). 

[10] That is, if the hardware, software, or media required to access 
the information become obsolete or deteriorate, the information must be 
migrated to hardware, software, or media that continue to be 
accessible. 

[11] For example, Robert F. Williams and Lori J. Ashley, Cohasset 
Associates Inc., 2005 Electronic Records Management Survey--A Renewed 
Call to Action, Cohasset/ARMA/AIIM White Paper (2005) Giovanna 
Patterson and J. Timothy Sprehe, "Principal Challenges Facing 
Electronic Records Management in Federal Agencies Today," Government 
Information Quarterly, Vol. 19, (2002), pp 307-315; available at 
[hyperlink, http://www.sciencedirect.com]. 

[12] SRA International, Inc., Report on Current Recordkeeping Practices 
within the Federal Government, a report sponsored by NARA (Dec. 10, 
2001), [hyperlink, http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/pdf/report-on-
recordkeeping-practices.pdf]. 

[13] Center for Information Policy/College of Information Studies/ 
University of Maryland, Best Practices in Electronic Records 
Management: A Survey and Report on Federal Government Agency's 
Recordkeeping Policies and Practices, a report sponsored by NARA (Dec. 
19, 2005), [hyperlink, http://www.archives.gov/records-
mgmt/initiatives/umd-survey.html]. 

[14] NARA, A Survey of Federal Agency Records Management Applications 
2007 (Jan. 22, 2008), [hyperlink, http://www.archives.gov/records-
mgmt/resources/rma-study-07.pdf]. 

[15] The requirement to instruct staff on the management and 
preservation of official messages sent or received in non-governmental 
e-mail systems was not applicable at HUD, which has implemented 
technical controls to prevent access to such e-mail systems. 

[16] Under Electronic Mail Database Management, Record Retention 
Responsibilities, the HUD Electronic Mail Policy states that "Records 
created or received on electronic mail systems must be managed in 
accordance with the provisions of 36 CFR 1220, 1222, and 1228." 

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