RACO and The Archivist Achievement Awards

I enjoyed speaking with federal records managers on Wednesday at the National Archives’ Records Administration Conference (RACO).  The records managers’ role in government is an essential part of our mission of preserving the records of the past and the present for study and use in the future.

When I spoke to this same group last year, I talked about the challenges that we face in records management. Thanks to their hard work, we have started to respond to those challenges. And we have made progress in improving the ability of the Federal government to manage its information.

Our progress includes:

National Archives panel discussion
Panel Discussion with (Left to Right) Tom Mills, David Weinberg, William Bosanko, and Paul Wester of the National Archives.

The Archivist Achievement Award:

At last year’s conference, I challenged agencies to be more collaborative and to use technology in innovative ways to solve the records management challenges.  A number of the nominees responded to that call, and I was pleased to provide The Archivist Achievement Award to two agencies this year:

  • The Risk Management Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, has deployed a Sharepoint electronic recordkeeping solution to more than 500 users in 27 locations around the country.

Department of Agriculture receives the Archivst Achievement Award
David Ferriero (right) presents The Archivist Achievement Award to Erin Tecce (left), agency records officer for the Risk Management Agency of the Department of Agriculture.

  • The National Mediation Board has a mature electronic recordkeeping solution designed for a paperless office called the Corporate Memory System (CMS). For the past six years, all records have been created and maintained in the CMS, no new paper records have been created.

National Mediation Board accepts the Archivist Achievement Award
David Ferriero (right) presents The Archivist Achievement Award to (Left to Right) Daniel Rainey, Ken Megill, and Deb Marshall of the National Mediation Board.

Both of these agencies have implemented innovative technological solutions to managing electronic records.  I’m pleased to see their success and hope that it encourages all Federal agencies to continue their work. Who knows? Maybe next year we can recognize your agency’s work with an Archives Achievement Award.

More about the 2011 RACO conference is available at: http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/training/raco/2011/