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Building an Electronic Records Archive at the National Archives and Records Administration Recommendations for a Long-Term Strategy (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix C October 16, 2003, Letter Report to the National Archives and Records Administration
Pages 87-93

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From page 87...
... The comments below elaborate on issues discussed in the committee's first report, Building an Electronic Records Archive at the National Archives and Records Administration: Recommendations for Initial Development (hereafter referred to as the committee's first report) ,5 tying the issues specifically to the DRFP, which was not available in early 2003 when the committee completed its report.
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From page 88...
... This strategy will not reap the full benefits of iterative design, which requires learning early on from prototypes and an ability to evolve requirements and improve subsequent designs as more is learned. For example, a number of important technical details -- e.g., file formats supported, essen tial metadata tags selected, and the data model used to save ingested records -- are likely to require iterative development.
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From page 89...
... In the spirit of seek ing industry ideas, the DRFP should include an express requirement to classify records as to levels of service, so that proposals will include mechanisms to help set, enforce, and revise the service levels associated with records or groups of records. Just as templates may be required to streamline the ingest of common record types, so also a codification of service levels may be an important part of the ERA's structure.
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From page 90...
... Specific instances of the requirements specifying particular implementation approaches rather than input-output behaviors include the following: · Multiple references to "persistent data formats."11 It would be best to omit these references, because whether and how to employ persistent data formats is an internal implementation decision. Instead, NARA can evaluate proposed designs on the basis of how they handle the obsolescence of data types, the degree to which they introduce errors, and so on.
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From page 91...
... Over time, agen cies may come to play a greater role in record ingest, and NARA's role will be to provide the ingest software or specifications, and to provide careful automatic checking of the records that have been ingested, together with associated data (data currently entered in Standard Form 258, metadata tags, file format integrity, authenticity checks, etc.)
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From page 92...
... Sincerely, Robert F Sproull, Chair Committee on Digital Archiving and the National Archives and Records Administration
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From page 93...
... 2. Electronic Records Archives Program Management Office, National Archives and Records Adminis tration (NARA)
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Key Terms

  • national archives
  • record types
  • records administration
  • records archive
  • records archives

  • data types
  • bit stream
  • original bit
  • iterative design
  • distributed operations

  • persistent formats
  • electronic record
  • persistent data
  • particular record
  • record ingest

  • data formats
  • era deployment
  • safe stores
  • metadata tags
  • automated media

  • management office
  • explicit threat
  • deployment concept
  • threat analysis
  • initial development

  • draft request
  • digital archiving
  • nara employees
  • report advocated
  • essen tial


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