Archives Collaborating and Cooperating with External Strategic Stakeholders (ACCESS) is a project of the State Electronic Records Initiative (SERI) of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) that has been funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through its National Leadership Grant program. This grant is helping CoSA to deepen engagement with stakeholder organizations and to enhance awareness and ongoing stewardship of electronic records.
The grant, which began in October 2017, allows CoSA to develop and share best practices and guidance materials to improve the creation, management, preservation, and use of permanent state government digital records and information. Collaborating with groups that have intersecting concerns, similar activities, or overlapping audiences such as the National Governors Association (NGA), the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), as well as content creators in state government and users of government data, will help CoSA to promote preservation and proper management of permanent state government electronic records. CoSA’s goal is to make active advocates out of these stakeholder organizations and to work with the organizations and their members to ensure that important records needed by researchers, citizens, and residents are safely preserved by state governments.
In order to achieve this goal, CoSA is collaborating on materials development with partner organizations. For instance, CoSA is developing a series of management briefs with the NGA to provide high level archival and records management advice to gubernatorial offices. These documents provide instruction on how to manage significant issues such as managing public records, properly using public accounts, managing social media records, handling email, and other topics. CoSA is also collaborating on materials with NASCIO focused on working with incoming state CIOs about records responsibilities and the ways in which proper records management can streamline state storage needs, increase security, and reduce risk for state agencies. CoSA is identifying topics of interest to NASS and working on documents that promote the importance of digital government recordkeeping. In addition, CoSA is undertaking co-branded digital repository case studies with COSLA.
These products will help CoSA get the message out about the importance of state electronic records and their appropriate management and preservation throughout their lifecycle. Additional documents, webinars, and case studies are in process and engagement with additional partners is planned as the ACCESS grant continues.
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