You wouldn't know it's the 21st century by the way the federal government handles electronic record-keeping. It's abysmal.

CREW documents the state of affairs in our new report, Record Chaos: The Deplorable State of Electronic Record Keeping in the Federal Government, concluding that the federal government is severely mismanaging its electronic records. "Record Chaos" is based on months of research and the results of an on-line survey. Released today, the full report and its findings and recommendations are available here.

Also today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will release proposed legislation amending federal record keeping laws to require agencies and the president to address this government-wide problem. Unfortunately, the proposal is anemic and fails to make the substantial changes necessary to bring the federal government into the 21st century. CREW has prepared a comprehensive analysis of the legislation available in pdf here

Any solution must extend be far beyond the congressional proposal.  Despite the ready availability of off-the-shelf products that would allow federal agencies to manage their records electronically, agencies continue to cling to outdated, inefficient and ineffective paper record keeping systems. The federal government has fallen woefully behind its private sector counterparts and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has failed to affirmatively assist agencies in developing and implementing records management policies as the Federal Records Act requires.

Record Chaos is based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to a variety of agencies for their record keeping guidance, follow-up FOIA requests to test agencies’ ability to locate and produce email, and an on-line survey CREW, with the assistance of OpenTheGovernment.org, submitted to 400 agency records managers.

Upon release of "Record Chaos," Melanie Sloan, said:

The law requires the government to preserve federal records, which ultimately belong not to any single administration, but to the American people. These records, which often document serious policy matters, are being lost to future generations who might learn from them. In addition, those like CREW, who seek records from the government under the Freedom of Information Act or other statutes clearly are being deprived of those records, not necessarily due to malice, but rather incompetence.