Web Records
The U.S. federal government has signaled how important web content is to the public documentation and experience of government. According to U.S. government website tracking data, every 90 days there are over 5 billion visits to government websites. Enabling long-term preservation of government website content is critical to public understanding of the government and its history.
Starting in 2006, NARA began capturing and archiving Congressional websites at the end of every Congress. The Center for Legislative Archives provides public access at webharvest.gov. Starting with the Clinton administration, NARA began preserving Presidential websites after the end of each Administration.
In 2022, NARA chartered a Web Records Archiving Project (WRAP) working group to identify policy needs and create recommendations for capture, processing, preservation, and access to federal government web records as part of the National Archives. The group consists of staff from across the organization, representing experts from all parts of the records lifecycle. The working group serves in both an advisory and functional capacity to ensure NARA's proposed federal web archiving activities meet NARA's mission.
The working group engaged with other national archives and libraries, U.S. state government archives, the International Internet Preservation Consortium, and federal government agencies with existing web archiving programs. It was extraordinarily helpful to understand the different collecting scopes, funding and staffing levels, technical approaches, and processes used by the varied institutions, which allowed us to identify potential requirements and best practices for a NARA federal web archiving program.
The working group has completed its first phase of work to conduct benchmarking, evaluate potential approaches, and develop recommendations for NARA to implement a web archiving program. In October 2023, the working group began a new 18-month phase, in which we will develop proposed guidance, consider different public access approaches, and identify metadata requirements and a feasible technical strategy needed to implement a web archiving program.
Agencies should continue to follow current guidance on the scheduling and transfer of permanent web records.
Contact web-records@nara.gov with any questions about this page.