State Electronic Records Initiative

MoVE-IT (Modeling Viable Electronic Information Transfers)

State archives reported exponential growth (1693%) of electronic records during the decade between 2006-2016. Fewer than half of state agencies participating in a 2019 CoSA/Preservica survey reported having permanent state electronic government records in their custody. This underscores the risk that government electronic records appraised for transfer from agencies may never reach the state archives for preservation. Additional gaps revealed in Toward a Common Understanding, the report about the survey, highlighted a lack of consensus about where permanent electronic state records are stored and which protocols are available for transfer.

The Council of State Archivists is committed to aiding its membership developing efficient and effective protocols for the identification and transfer of permanent electronic records to designated repositories for permanent preservation. To this end, and with the generous support and collaboration of Preservica, Inc. and AVP, Inc. this research project seeks to find the best examples of electronic records transfers nationwide and to determine what success factors those exemplars have, with the goal of developing a body of best practices for electronic records transfers. Additionally, those best practices will inform the creation of tools (such as guidance documents, templates, and more) that CoSA’s membership can implement to enhance their own practices.

View Project Scope

Project Methodology

In order to accomplish this, CoSA will engage a focus group of expert digital archivists to identify, describe, and analyze these exemplar transfers.

This group will analyze examples that cover transfers of common record types (e.g., reports, election results, executive orders, licenses) from specific agencies (e.g., Governor’s Office, State Engineer, DOJ), and from widely used systems (such as Office365, GIS, CJIS). The project will produce case studies about the exemplar transfer projects, an analysis of the common success factors, and recommendations for how to execute a successful transfer project, with the goal of promoting good practices.

CoSA expects this project to take the bulk of 2020 to achieve, with the majority of the data gathering and analysis to occur over the summer.