Gov't Wants Archivist For Social Media
NextGov's Gautham Nagesh reports that the Obama administration issued a solicitation in August for a contractor to archive the increasing amount of information published online that qualifies as presidential records. The White House wants an automated process to capture, extract and store information posted by employees in the Executive Office of the President on publicly accessible Web sites, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to the solicitation posted on FedBizOps and dated Aug. 21. The contractor will be responsible for archiving comments on pages the White House creates and messages sent to the office on those sites.
The notice specified the contract applies to offices subject to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve the president's records and communications. It notes that the White House already is capturing and restoring communications on several social networking sites, including MySpace and Vimeo. The system must be easy to organize and search captured information, and the contractor would be responsible for ensuring the records are transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration in an acceptable format. NARA did not respond to a request for comment by the time this story was posted. Read the full story here.
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