Agency Records May Rot on Disks, Archivist Says

A current law that gives federal agencies 30 years to turn over all the records that must be permanently retained by the National Archives is a recipe for lost documents and a spotty historical record, the government's chief archivist told lawmakers. That 30-year window may have been appropriate in a paper era when the only danger to documents came from floods and fires. But in an electronic age, any method of record storage is likely to be obsolete by the time the National Archives gets hold of the records stored on it, Archivist David Ferriero told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Ferreiro said only about half a dozen agencies now voluntarily turn over their records early. He recommended a president's time in office, either a single or a double term, as a reasonable lag time for records to be turned over.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) stressed that he remains concerned that White House officials’ personal emails, text messages, Facebook posts and tweets are not being archived in the spirit of federal law. Chairman Issa stressed that the law does not sufficiently address official correspondence sent through private digital channels — including employees’ personal email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Chairman Issa grilled Brook Colangelo, chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, on the fact the White House necessarily "wouldn't be able to catch" a staffer who was "communicating freely" using his or her private email account over the AT&T or Verizon network. Messages sent over those two services, for example, are not automatically logged by the administration.