Dubya Fully Digitized Later This Month
The National Archives is well on its way to loading the electronic records of President George W. Bush into its digitized collection, the agency charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records said Wednesday. To date, more than 85 percent of the total volume has been ingested. The incorporation of Bush administration records is the second stage of five increments planned for the electronic records archives. The Presidential Records Act gives the Archives legal custody of the records and the task of responding to special access requirements at the end of an administration.
On Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the Archives received the Bush records -- and in an unprecedented move, the data was delivered directly to ERA's facilities on storage area network hardware. The transfer was made possible by a partnership between the Archives, ERA contractor Lockheed Martin, and White House IT personnel. In the following months, Archives IT specialists began loading about 77 terabytes of data into the ERA system (roughly 35 times the amount of data received from the Clinton administration).
The project should be complete by late September, officials said in a press release. Use of the system is limited to Presidential Libraries employees who are processing records and responding to special access requests as needed. Presidential records become subject to Freedom of Information Act requests five years after the end of an administration. "Given the volume of electronic records we received from the Bush administration, our ability to have most of our prioritized sets of records available for staff access is a significant achievement," Assistant Archivist Sharon Fawcett said.
Join the Discussion
The National Journal Group has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.
Comments powered by Disqus