So, basically, the National Archives and Records Administration's excuse for abandoning America's historical record is that no one wanted to play with them.

And lest you think some agencies did call for help, here's a statistic that's not particularly surprising. The National Archives and Records Administration's use of their "targeted assistance" program has declined significantly over the past 5 years. NARA reported that in 2002, 77 projects were opened and 76 completed; in contrast, four were opened and none completed in 2007.

What the heck? Let's ride this beast a little more:

The [NARA] officials also agreed that their work with agencies on scheduling records does not fulfill the Archivist's responsibility under the Federal Records Act to conduct inspections or surveys of agency records and records management programs and practices

The Federal Records Act provides NARA with a tool for holding agencies accountable, a key aspect of oversight. However, NARA has been reluctant to use this tool, limiting its ability to determine whether federal agencies are carrying out their records management responsibilities.

And all that leads us to the GAO conclusion:

As a result, there is reduced assurance that records are adequately managed and that important records are not being lost.

Yep, your tax dollars at work.

Agencies investigated by the GAO
As part of their extensive investigation, the GAO took a look at the email record-keeping practices of four government agencies:

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

These agencies all generally preserved email records on paper. Of the four, only the EPA is actively working towards an electronic records-keeping system for email.

Now, you and I might cringe at such a 19th century approach to record-keeping, but it's perfectly legal -- as long as a particular record can be produced on demand. Of course, no corporate CIO could get away with that. Can you imagine a corporate CIO trying to tell a judge that it'll take two years to sift through hundreds of file boxes, through thousands of folders, and through millions of individual pieces of paper, to dig up a printout of one old email message?

Nah, I didn't think so.

One thing that's very interesting is that the law doesn't define each email message as a "record" subject to the Federal Records Act. In fact, only certain records apply. According to the Federal Records Act:

As used in this chapter, "records" includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of data in them.

Library and museum material made or acquired and preserved solely for reference or exhibition purposes, extra copies of documents preserved only for convenience of reference, and stocks of publications and of processed documents are not included.