Article on staggering amount of E-mail to be saved.
So Much E-Mail, So Little Space
The U.S. government is grappling with how to store the White House's millions of electronic epistles. And they're not all from Monica.
By J. MICHAEL KENNEDY, Times Staff Writer
latimes.com
A few clips from the article:
"Besides offering researchers all kinds of titillating possibilities (Monica, Whitewater, Travelgate, etc.), it will also be the biggest digital avalanche ever. A staggering 40 million e-mails will wind up at the National Archives. And that's just the beginning.
The federal repository, sometimes referred to as the nation's attic, also will become the custodian of millions of other electronic documents, such as all presidential correspondence. The total will be more by far than the archives has received in its history. And by law, historically valuable documents have to be saved.
The dilemma facing the suburban Maryland-based National Archives and Records Administration--the archives' formal name-- is that it doesn't yet have the ability to handle the expected volume, or even come close."
"On top of that, what's being produced by White House computers is nothing compared with the traffic spewing from other federal agencies.
"It's just a huge problem," said Ken Thibodeau, the archives' director of electronic programs"
"The archives administration houses and displays such notable documents as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It's also a place where millions of photos, films and maps are stored, not to mention more than 4 billion pieces of paper ranging from U.S. Supreme Court rulings to mind-numbing trade data."
"Archive II is filling rapidly. Professional archivists and historians fear that unless a way is developed to store and preserve the digital mountains of data, a great deal of historical record will be lost."
Peter Smails, an executive with Smart Storage, a commercial archiving business catering to companies with large data storage needs, said a third of all corporate dealings are done via e-mail.
"Businesses run on e-mail," he said. "And storage-growth requirements are growing anywhere from 80% to 150% a year."
"That is true in government as well. In the last eight years of the Clinton administration, electronic communication has gone from being something of an oddity to an absolute necessity."
"Digital Documents a Growing Problem
Meanwhile, the wave of documents continues to mount. The U.S. State Department, for instance, has 25 million electronic diplomatic cables that must find a home in the archives. The Department of Defense is in the process of digitizing its enormous personnel records. The vast majority of the federal bureaucracy is still saving things the old way--by making copies and filing them." |
