ABSTRACT

Planning and development of electronic records for government, courts and

businesses has been an evolving process for more than 50 years. A forerunner iii this

effort is the National Archives. Electronic Records Archives (ERA) that has been

managing electronic records at the federal level since the 1960's. In 1993. the case of

Armstrong v Executive Office of the President. changed the way the electronic mail

of presidential administrations was going to be managed (1F.3d 1274 [DC Cir 1993]).

After several court decisions, the emails of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and

George H. W. Bush were transferred to the National Archives and Records

Administration (NARA) in January l993. These were the first major presidential

electronic records and the largest volume of digital records which were transferred to

the NARA. These records included a variety of media and file formats, many which

had not been seen before at NARA. Some of the records had also deteriorated over

time. The NARA was tasked with storage of an increasingly larger volume of records

due to the volume of presidential records that would be transferred at the end of the

Clinton administration. This led to a change in business process and record storage at

the NARA. Tile impact that this has had on electronic records storage has been

significant (History of the Electronic Records and Era. The U.S. National Archives

and Records Administration) (Walker. 2008).

In the years that followed, the NARA began to build the e-government programs and

ERA Program Management Office. The NARA has been implementing in phases. In

2008-2009 the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) was deployed which established the

basic infrastructure and support of NARA's management of federal records.

Deployment of the various phases has resulted in a system of storage. rapid search

and retrieval, access control and basic case management for special access requests

(Walker. 2008).

Also, the NARA has developed the Online Public Access prototype. The NARA is

directed toward the adoption of the ERA System by all agencies of the Federal

government. Due to these issues, an analogy can be drawn to development of

electronic court records. The Federal Court system has been working toward

integration and access for all federal court records. This process has led to the

development of a system known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records

(PACER). This is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain

individualized case records and docket information from federal appellate. district and

bankruptcy courts (Walker. 2008).