Remarks, NARA Press Conference,
September 8, 2005
L. Reynolds Cahoon, Assistant Archivist for Human Resources and Information Services and CIO
Good morning. My name is Reynolds Cahoon.
I am the Assistant Archivist for Human Resources and Information Services and Chief Information Officer of the National Archives and Records Administration.
On behalf of the Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, I welcome each of you to this important announcement about the future of our nation's electronic information and about the archives of the future that will preserve and provide access to it.
I am pleased to welcome members of the administration, Congressional staff, as well as members of our new Advisory Committee on the Electronic Records Archives, executives representing our partners and information technology leaders from across the country, and of course, many committed NARA staff.
I thank each of you for joining us.
Today we will announce the contract award for development of the Electronic Records Archives, or ERA for short.
ERA is an Archives for the future. It will be an electronic capability to:
Authentically preserve any type of electronic record, created by any entity in the Federal Government.
And provide this electronic information anytime and anyplace to anyone with an interest and legal right to access it.
The award we announce today will result in development of the ERA system--the physical construction of the computer system whose analysis and design contract we announced at this podium just over a year ago.
For a moment I'd like to share some context about the distance we've traveled in our journey to preserve the Federal government's digital heritage.
It began more than seven years ago.
Responding to the evolving nature of the digital age and to the public's growing use of electronic technology to interact with their government-NARA had to find a way to preserve essential electronic records.
In 1998, NARA invested seed money to engage government and private research partners to determine if preservation of electronic records was possible.
This research created new techniques that led to the first proof-of-concept in 1999 and demonstrated that electronic records preservation was a possibility.
So we turned our attention to building a system to do it.
An endeavor this ambitious had to begin by creating the institutional capability to build something that had never been created before and that was still subject to computer science research. We created an ERA Program Management Office and staffed it with extraordinary people.
In 2002, we developed ERA system requirements with critical input from Federal, State, and Local Governments, Professional Organizations, scientific communities, and private sector stakeholders.
In 2003, we released a Request-For-Proposal for ERA System Design and Prototypes.
And last year, NARA selected two world-class IT contractors, Harris Corporation and Lockheed Martin, Inc., to design limited prototypes for the ERA system.
2005 has been a year of challenge and achievement.
It has been an extraordinary experience to work alongside world class contractors, our partners in the White House, in Congress, and our key stakeholders.
Which brings us to this day.
We know this now, and are reminded every day of its truth-that this great country runs on digital information, and ensuring its authenticity, accessibility, and its usability now and over time is the challenge of our generation and we will meet it.
ERA is the realization of the vision of all those dedicated NARA staff who, for more than a generation, have balanced the knowledge that digital information must be preserved for our nation's future with the reality that the technology to do it simply did not exist.
We stand here ready to begin building the system to fulfill this vision, and this future.
And now, it is a privilege to introduce to you, the Director of the Electronic Records Archives Program, Dr. Kenneth Thibodeau.
