While the storage and management of paper records in the federal government is highly regulated, digital preservation calls for new approaches to managing and accessing information. The current state of public-sector electronic records management, however, is not living up to promise of accessible, usable information.

According to a former electronic records director at the National Archives and Records Administration, government entities creating and storing electronic records are disconnected from those that are utilizing the records. As such, agencies and departments rarely make a clear business case for using records, he said.

"If you're focusing on repositories you've got, at best, half the picture. You're constraining yourself to a supply-side approach," said Kenneth Thibodeau, who is currently a guest scientist at the National Institute of Science and Technology, while speaking at AIIM/info 360.

"The government--starting under the Bush administration and with complete continuity in the Obama administration--is pushing the idea that we need to look at reusing and even repurposing digital data that is being created today," said Thibodeau, citing the example of using aggregate electronic health record data for research purposes.

However, said Thibodeau, what information assets are most useful to the data consumer is rarely considered in a data preservation strategy. "If we want to develop a robust and useful preservation infrastructure, it really needs to look at the consumer side, as well as the producers side and the repository side," he said.

An ISO/IEC working group is now focused on creating a digital preservation interoperability framework to address such issues. But when it comes to setting best practices and guidance for data preservation and use, one size does not fit all. Thibodeau said the group, which he contributes to, is tackling interoperability issues for multimedia content and healthcare content.

Social media content is not yet being considered by the group, however. While the digital preservation of social media is a personal interest of Thibodeau's, it hasn't been brought into the digital preservation interoperability framework yet. First, he said, they have to identify other international players dealing with the issue--it can't just be NIST and NARA taking the reins.

NARA's Archivist David Ferriero recently said that the information technology and records management communities don't communicate much, and more generally, it would be "very nice to have presidential support for such an initiative around electronic records."

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