Interestingly, of the total number of federal records, less than 3 percent are designated permanent. But it's these records NARA needs to preserve. Although the National Archives is probably best known as a MacGuffin for spotlighting Nicolas Cage's action-hero skills, NARA is also well known for preserving the original, physical copies of Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

But what most people don't know is that NARA has a very important investigative role. It is the primary agency responsible for conducting inspections and surveys of the records management programs in the various federal agencies.

For all intents and purposes, NARA is the record management check-and-balance for the federal government. If a federal agency doesn't properly implement records management, no one will know unless NARA catches them in the act. But if NARA has abdicated its investigative mandate, then records management becomes a complete anarchy, with no oversight.

And let's face it. Records management is a resource-intensive, glory-bereft activity. If you're an agency administrator, the only reason you keep good records is because the Federal Records Act requires you to. But if you've done anything wrong, even silly, dumb things, you don't want to keep records. And if there's no oversight -- and you know there's no oversight -- you're not going to implement proper records management.

Without proper records management, America won't have critical records of the operation of our government.

According to the GAO report, "NARA has conducted no inspections of agency records management programs since 2000." That's not just email. That's everything. Further:

NARA has not consistently reported details on records management problems or recommended practices that were discovered as a result of its studies.

And to make things worse, apparently NARA decided to change its policy from active investigation (as required by law) to waiting until agencies asked for help.

That's like waiting for a crackhead to call the police 'cause he's in a little over his head. Can you imagine Donald Rumsfeld calling up the National Archives because the Department of Defense was having some trouble keeping track of its records? Can you imagine Condi Rice calling in the National Archives because the Department of State didn't follow paper-flow protocol? Can you imagine Alberto Gonzales or Micheal Mukasey calling in the National Archives because, well, they were concerned about a few email records?

Nah, I didn't think so.

And while oversight is a key activity in governance that addresses whether organizations are carrying out their responsibilities and serves to detect other shortcomings, NARA hasn't performed this task since 2000.

It's not like NARA doesn't have an explanation for this.

An additional factor, according to officials, was the challenge of developing memorandums of understanding with agencies (on each project's requirements and the resources that the agency and NARA would undertake to apply to it), because NARA generally worked with agency records officers, who often did not have the authority to sign such agreements.

According to NARA, in 2006, it eased this requirement so that instead of a signed memorandum of understanding, it would suffice that a project have some form of documentation (such as an e-mail) indicating that both sides agreed to the project goals, requirements, and resources.