The government may become overwhelmed by the costs of saving and storing computer files, John Carlin, the chief of the National Archives, told Congress this week as his agency battled with historians in court over whether the government must keep and store all of its electronic records.
Carlin testified this week before a House Appropriations subcommittee that the National Archives and Records Administration is faced with a "seemingly impossible electronic records problem." The archivist requested a 12 percent budget increase for fiscal 1999 to cope with the growing number of electronic and paper files the Archives stores.
At the same time, Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called Carlin into court after historians' groups said the Archives had not followed the judge's orders. Last October, Friedman struck down an archives policy that allowed agencies to destroy electronic records as long as paper copies existed. Historians say electronic records are valuable because they contain data on when and who created the records, and because computers make information searches easy.
The Justice Department, defending Carlin and the Archives, said "many government computer applications will grind to a halt, or crash entirely" if agencies are required to archive all electronic records. The Archives, meanwhile, has created an Electronic Records Work Group to develop a policy that balances the costs and difficulties of storing electronic files with the historical value of maintaining records.
Public Citizen, the Washington-based watchdog group that brought the lawsuit against the Archives, charged the agency has ignored Friedman's order by instructing agencies to continue to follow its policy allowing them to destroy electronic records for which paper copies exist.
The Archives has appealed Friedman's decision, but Carlin contends his agency is trying to tackle the electronic records management issue.
"The government needs to develop a better approach to the disposition of records created on word processing and electronic mail applications," Carlin wrote in a letter to agency heads earlier this month.
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