ERA FAQs
User Questions
These questions and answer appeared in the bi-monthly ERA Electronic Newsletter,"For the e-Record," ERA Program Director Ken Thibodeau addresses specific questions raised by NARA staff about ERA's status and progress. If you have any questions that you would like answered in For the e-Record, please send them to ERA.Program@nara.gov
- Is ERA for electronic records only?
- What are ERA Increments?
- What records go online? What records can be accessed only by coming to an archives facility? What records will be publicly accessible online and which have more restricted levels of access?
- Why are enormous resources going to ERA, while other parts of NARA are feeling painful cuts?
- I'm not in the Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division (NWME). Is ERA going to affect me?
- Will my job be replaced by an IT professional?
- Will you have to sign into ERA? Will it be seamless or do you have to go through the web to access it?
- Does NARA currently accept any type of electronic record? What type of electronic records will ERA accept?
- Will ERA accept any kind of electronic record from the four Increment 1 Federal agencies?
- How will ERA protect all of the information in the system?
- How will ERA preserve today's electronic records far into the future?
Is ERA for electronic records only?
ERA will store only electronic records, but it also manages the lifecycle of all NARA records, including such activities as scheduling and description. Therefore, anyone whose job involves any part of the lifecycle of a record will be touched by ERA.
The ERA system is being designed and implemented in 5 segments, also called "increments," to ensure that its design is flexible and adaptable to future needs and to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies. In September 2005, NARA awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC) to begin the development of the ERA system. This contractual award marked the start of Increment 1, which will run through FY07.
Increments 2-5 will add functions that will improve the ERA system's capabilities, such as searching for records within the system, processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and processing records in the Presidential Libraries.
What records go online? What records can be accessed only by coming to an archives facility? What records will be publicly accessible online and which have more restricted levels of access?
As to what records go online, the answer depends on timing, availability, and from whom those records are received and to whom those records go. In Increment 1, ERA will not be ingesting any classified or sensitive materials, so all that will be ingested will be stored in ERA, and will be available to NARA staff with the appropriate log-ons.
The plan is that people will not have to visit a NARA facility to view records, but this is dependent upon what our crediting authorities will permit us to do when ERA ingests classified and sensitive materials. It may be that for a time, cleared researches with a need to know may be asked to visit a NARA facility to view classified and sensitive records.
During Increment 1, there will be no public access to ERA. Public access will probably take place in Increment 2, at which point ERA will provide access to unclassified, non-sensitive records that NARA deems appropriate for researchers. Our experience with the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) tool has shown that to prepare records for public access is labor intensive, so NARA will have to dedicate resources to this effort.
Why are enormous resources going to ERA, while other parts of NARA are feeling painful cuts?
NARA currently does not have any means for dealing with the volume and complexity of electronic records being created by the Federal Government today. Without ERA, NARA will fail. That is why in 2003, Congress decided to make the ERA Program a separate line item in the budget.
I'm not in the Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division (NWME). Is ERA going to affect me?
Yes. ERA is not only a means of storing and accessing electronic records, it is also a records lifecycle management tool. That means that anyone currently involved in the appraisal, scheduling, accessioning, and description of records will interact with ERA.
Will my job be replaced by an IT professional?
No. ERA is a tool for NARA employees to use to meet their job responsibilities. Creating a power saw didn't put carpenters out of work; it simply permitted them to increase their productivity. However, they had to learn how to operate a saw using power. Similarly, the ability to use the ERA System will mean that archivists, specialists, and technicians will need to have new computer skills. Appropriate training will be provided for staff who do not have these skills or who need to enhance existing IT skills.
Will you have to sign into ERA? Will it be seamless or do you have to go through the web to access it?
Yes, you must log into the ERA system. The ERA system is a web-based application that is accessed via your web browser. Once logged into the ERA application, you will be able to view information and access functionality based on the privileges that you have been assigned.
Does NARA currently accept any type of electronic record? What type of electronic records will ERA accept?
NARA currently accepts a limited number of electronic record formats (e.g., ASCII and EBCDIC) if these records have been scheduled by the creating agency for transfer to the National Archives. As part of the e-Government Electronic Records Management Initiative, NARA worked with Federal agencies to identify priority electronic for-mats for which NARA has developed transfer require-ments and guidance. The formats that NARA currently accepts include e-mail messages with attachments, scanned images of textual records, Portable Document Format (PDF) re-cords, digital photographic records, digital geospatial data re-cords, and web content records.
In ERA Increment 1, NARA will be able to ingest any type of electronic record and preserve it as a bitstream. How-ever, electronic records processing in ERA will only be done for those elec-tronic records formats currently accepted by NARA. NARA?s ability to accept and process records in other elec-tronic formats will depend on system functionality and NARA policy.
Will ERA accept any kind of electronic record from the four Increment 1 Federal agencies?
To maintain consistency with NARA transfer guidance policy, it has been determined that during Increment 1, ERA will perform electronic records processing (verification processing for the records) only for a subset of the seven electronic records formats that NARA currently accepts:
- Flat File Data Bases;
- E-mail messages with attachments;
- Scanned images of textual records;
- Portable Document Format (PDF) records;
- Digital photographic records;
- Digital geospatial data records; and
- Web content records.
Six of these seven formats (flat file data bases have been accepted by NARA for many years) were determined as part of the e-Government Electronic Records Management Initiative. NARA coordinated with other Federal agencies to identify priority electronic formats, for which NARA developed transfer requirements and guidance.
So, while ERA will be capable of taking in a record that is not in one of these formats, based on the transfer guidance, NARA will not be able to perform verification processing (manual or automated) on unsupported records formats.
NARA, through ERA, will provide access to only the original bitstream (that is, the binary, sequence of digits - the 0s and 1s) for any record in Increment 1 and the agency would be on its own to use the appropriate system to "read" and present or process that bitstream. In the future, ERA will accept, process and present records in additional electronic formats.
For more information about the NARA electronic records formats guidelines, go to: http://www.archives.gov/ records-mgmt/initiatives/erm-guidance.html
How will ERA protect all of the information in the system?
ERA is being designed to ensure that the records cannot be corrupted or tampered with while they are stored in the system. ERA will need to protect information in a number of different ways, which means that security will never depend upon a single mechanism. For example, technical security measures provide protections against data corruption, ensure ERA system availability, and provide trusted network connections to external systems. Physical security controls physical access to the ERA equipment and sensitive data.
How will ERA preserve today's elecrtronic records far into the future?
Preservation in ERA will be twofold. The first part of preservation will be preserving the bitstreams of all records that come into ERA. This is done so that if in the future, someone wants to view a record in its original format and is able to emulate the original software with which the record was created, he or she will be able to do so. Bitstream preservation will take place in Release 2 of ERA.
The second part of records preservation within ERA requires building software within the system that will be able to make a record viewable on future formats in its original state. This is known as "digital transformation." Transformations of electronic records will not be available in Increment 1.
ERA Glossary
| Acronym | Definition |
|---|---|
| AAD | Access to Archival Databases |
| AERIC | Archival Electronic Records Inspection and Control |
| APS | Archival Preservation System |
| ARC | Archival Research Catalog |
| CMM | Capability Maturity Model |
| CONOPS | Concept of Operations |
| COTS | Commercial Off-The-Shelf |
| DARPA | Defense Advance Research Projects Agency |
| DOCT | Distributed Object Computation Testbed |
| DOMPF | Digital Official Military Personnel Files Repository |
| e-Gov | Electronic Government |
| ERA | Electronic Records Archives |
| ERM | Electronic Records Management |
| FOC | Full Operating Capability |
| FRC | Federal Records Center |
| IEEE | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers |
| InterPARES | International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems |
| IOC | Initial Operational Capability |
| IT | Information Technology |
| NARA | National Archives and Records Administration |
| NHPRC | National Historical Publications and Records Commission |
| NPACI | National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure |
| OAIS | Open Archival Information Standard |
| OMB | Office of Management and Budget |
| PD | Program Director |
| Portable Document Format | |
| PERPOS | Presidential Electronic Records Pilot System |
| POST | Program Office Support Team |
| PM | Project Manager |
| PMBOK | Project Management Institutes Project Management Body of Knowledge |
| PMO | Program Management Office |
| RCP | Records Center Program |
| RD | Requirements Document |
| RFP | Request For Proposal |
| RMI | Records Management Initiative |
| SDLC | Systems Development Life Cycle |
| SDSC | San Diego Supercomputer Center |
| SEI | Software Engineering Institute |
| Std | Standard |
| UMIACS | University of Maryland Institute For Advanced Computer Studies |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator |
| VAL | Virtual Archives Laboratory |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language |
| XO | Executive Officer |
| WWW | World Wide Web |
