About the Digital Preservation Program
Digital Preservation at NARA
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) identifies, preserves, and provides access to the U.S. Government's vast holdings of archival records. We preserve these records to protect citizens’ rights, ensure government accountability, and document the national experience. The electronic records in NARA’s custody include textual materials, email, data files, maps, aerial and still photographs, as well as motion picture, sound, and video recordings. These records belong to the public and our mission is to drive openness, cultivate public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy through public access to high-value government records.
Learn more about how NARA’s Digital Preservation Program supports the agency’s continued and ongoing commitment to issues of access, authenticity, preservation, security, and usability of the electronic records in its archival holdings.
NARA Digital Preservation Strategy
NARA’s stewardship of digital materials encompasses born-digital and digitized records, including those generated by NARA digitization activities for access and preservation reformatting. The 2022-2026 Digital Preservation Strategy formalizes the agency's approach and guides its internal operations, serving as a key resource for staff engaged with this work. It provides an overview of digital preservation activities at NARA, outlines guiding tenets that drive decision-making, and identifies specific strategies that NARA will use in its digital preservation efforts.
Past versions of the Strategy: 2017
Electronic Records Archives (ERA)
ERA 2.0 provides federal agency personnel with the tools to perform essential records management activities, such as scheduling records and transferring permanent records to NARA and serves as NARA’s preservation repository.
- NARA's Designated Community Statement defines the community of users Electronic Records Archives (ERA 2.0) supports.
ERA 2.0 is part of the systems that comprise NARA’s Electronic Records Archives (ERA) program to take in and store several categories of electronic records, including those from the White House, Congress, and agencies across the federal government.
Resources and Guidance
- Digital Preservation Framework, a comprehensive resource that describes how NARA identifies risks to digital files and prioritizes them for action, as well as how NARA plans for their long-term preservation. The Framework consists of the NARA Risk Matrix, File Format Preservation Action Plans, and Record Category Preservation Action Plans.
- Federal Records Management