Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Documents at risk at the National Archives

I opened up Yahoo to this great bit of news. Not that this is anything new or unexpected really but now the Government Accountability Office has released an audit showing that records and documents at the National Archives are at risk. The highest risk factors are theft (big shock since money is involved), deterioration (estimates show that up to 65% of holdings need some form of preservation care with many already being unreadable), and ignorance of the law (some federal documents and electronic media are destroyed illegally by agencies before proper permissions are granted).

Say what you will about federal spending but based upon everything that NARA is supposed to take care of and with the explosion of electronic records I'm not sure that the $470 million budget quoted in this article is enough.

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