The National Archives and Records Administration is coming under intense fire for not backing up federal data online. Up until recently the agency had a long standing policy of taking a digital snapshot of the online records at each administration’s end. By discontinuing this practice people are concerned that we will be loosing valuable historical data that we won’t be able to recover.

The reason that the agency gives for not recording the data any longer is that the recording of one finally day every four years does not offer a complete record of a Presidency. Most beg to differ, arguing that the commentary and reporting that occurs on the final day of a Presidency often encapsulates the entire four years, plus the public opinion of he President. It serves the purpose of acting like a documentary of how each Presidency went, and what was happening in the news at the time.

The National Archives and Records have already proven how useful their service is, preserving several now-defunct web sites for all posterity from past Presidencies. The organization claims that their service is not needed because other organizations can also record the web, such as the now famous Wayback Machine. That may be, but they aren’t storing it securely, nor are they sorting it by relevance to the Presidency.

John Wonderlich, a blogger with the Sunlight Foundation, also argued that NARA should continue supporting the Web Harvest program: “Our national government has a responsibility to protect and document its history. They are uniquely positioned to do so; no one else has both the reliable public mandate and the public accountability necessary for protecting historical documents.”

Do you think the service provided by the NARA is necessary or relevant, or do you think we can handle it some other way?

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Entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 4:51 pm under Internet.

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