Many federal government agencies are failing to manage their business information properly. Our research shows that the U.S. federal government has this in common with other national governments around the world. As the amount of electronic information has exploded, governments and businesses have lost control of it. Proper management of business information or governmental records requires aggressive culling.

People inside and outside government believe that the truth is out there in the electronic record. That is misguided. The sheer volume of what is being kept prevents federal agencies from finding what they need for routine business, let alone what investigators or litigants think they might discover about how decisions were made in any given instance. A more rational approach, grounded in the disciplines of archival and RM practice is needed. Otherwise, we will not only lose what is completely irrelevant (most e-mail) but we will also lose some of what we really need. After intellectual and policy decisions are made, solutions must be automated.

This advice is targeted at federal agency heads, government policymakers, legislators, lawyers and judges who have the will and the vision to shape policy and practice. On the implementation level, it is targeted at records managers, information managers and CIOs who now have the burden of managing this task.