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Building an Electronic Records Archive at the National Archives and Records Administration Recommendations for Initial Development (2003) / Chapter Skim
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6 Strengthening Information Technology Expertise
Pages 58-61

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From page 58...
... Recognizing the need for additional IT expertise in the ERA program office, NARA has supplemented the office with a small cadre of contractor technical staff who are working on ERA design and technical management issues. The documents and briefings received by the committee to date show some in progress identifying desired features of the ERA and some of its associated technical and organizational challenges.
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From page 59...
... Chapter 7 recommends an iterative development approach for the ERA designed to reduce technical risk by exposing unforeseen problems and overlooked requirements earlier in the software development process and by providing flexibility in reacting to them. However, because this added flexibility requires an active procurement process and an active management stvie, it also demands particular management skills.
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From page 60...
... Skilled people will be needed to solve problems posed by old and incomplete digital data transferred from agencies: extracting useful data, checking its integrity, figuring out in what forms it should be archived, and so forth. Automating robust procedures for processing large numbers of records or record series that are received on a recurring basis will also require skilled IT people to develop the necessary tools and procedures.
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From page 61...
... A critical aspect of NARA's new culture will be that IT must be recognized as a "core competence" that must thrive to support digital preservation. NARA management will have to overcome the tendency to look at electronic records as a special problem that can be shunted to an isolated office where only specialists will handle them.
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Key Terms

  • era program
  • records archiving
  • significant technical
  • paper records
  • iterative development

  • nara staff
  • frequent comparison
  • management challenge
  • automating robust
  • technical sophistication

  • incomplete digital
  • desired features
  • development approach
  • critical mass
  • frequent testing

  • digital preservation
  • requirements earlier
  • highly skilled
  • basic architecture
  • underlying technologies

  • hire permanent
  • negotiate changes
  • iterative design
  • useful data
  • providing flexibility

  • assure success
  • technical understanding
  • appropriate expertise
  • overall architecture
  • human resource


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