Government Still Confused How To Manage E-Documents As Records

Government Still Confused How To Manage E-Documents As Records: "

(From Friday)

Agencies' practice of printing out electronic documents to archive, weak oversight and unclear guidance as to which e-mail messages should be saved have increased the likelihood that federal managers have destroyed important government information that should be stored for historical purposes, federal managers and records experts told lawmakers on Thursday.

Until recently, federal agencies typically printed digital documents to file as official records rather than use electronic archiving systems that save the files in their original form, professional archivists and federal IT executives told members of the House Oversight Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee. As e-mail use in government expanded during the past years, agencies have deleted or lost potentially important digital records, they said.

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