Digitizing Government Agency Records
Your Strategy Guide for Digital Transformation
Digitization is a rewarding process—but also a daunting one...
By the end of 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will manage and retain permanent and temporary federal agency records only in digital form. To be in compliance with Presidential and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued mandates (M-19-21) for digital transformation, government agencies must optimize their records retention, storage, and digitization policies and procedures.
Developed in collaboration between HAI (History Associates Incorporated) and Preservica, this guide offers a phased, strategic approach to this challenge. We hope you will find it helpful. Digitization is a daunting undertaking, but employing this thoughtful, methodical process will ensure a more efficient, organized, and cost-effective solution.
A Strategic Roadmap for Records Digitization
You'll learn how a 4-step strategic roadmap can serve as the framework that provides tactical phases and activities for implementing your digitization initiative. Your organization's roadmap breaks what can be a very large initiative and complex process into small steps for more digestible planning and implementation. It helps align specific project goals with the resource realities within your organization by presenting a reasonable approach to the overall initiative.
Use Cases for this Guide
When creating this guide, we had Federal electronic records mandates in the forefront of our minds. However, there are other use cases in which this guide might help:
- You are required to digitize analog records before transferring them to the archives.
- You want to create access copies for internal use by your organization’s team.
- You need to convert fragile, historic documents into digital format for safe use.
- You want to create digital content for special projects that will engage external audiences.
