(The Federalist)—On May 20, the Associated Press published an article titled “The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous U.S. president.” As a federal records management consultant with more than 25 years of experience supporting White House and agency records management at all levels of the government, I can assure you nothing in this article is even remotely true.
Let’s begin with the article’s opening claim: “For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected … safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity.” While this may have been true decades ago when almost all government records were maintained on paper, it has not been true in the digital age.
Both the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and the Federal Records Act (FRA) require records born digitally to be managed through each phase of their lifecycle — creation, distribution, use, maintenance, and disposition — in their native electronic formats. These records must be maintained in systems that ensure their integrity, authenticity, and provenance, and apply an archivist of the United States-approved retention schedule that prevents their premature destruction by anyone.
Over the course of my career, I have supported the management of billions of electronic government records. During that time, I have never seen a single White House or agency electronic record managed through its lifecycle in compliance with the PRA or the FRA. Not one. The government claims to be doing it, but they are not.
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