The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) along with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memorandum on June 28, 2019 that requires federal agencies to operate primarily with electronic records by December 31, 2022.

NARA is all in on the push to electronic records. In addition to the M-19-21 guidance, in October of 2020, NARA published an exploratory technology paper, “Cognitive Techologies White Paper” that considered several of the latest technological areas (e.g., Internet of Things, Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence) and their potential applications to federal records management.

Thus, agencies would help themselves greatly by following suit and infusing more technology to assist with their push to electronic records. Starting the lift toward M-19-21 compliance sooner than latter affords agencies the opportunity to fully consider a “solution” instead of minimally complying.

Haven’t started? Consider our simplified strategic approach to get your agency moving….

1. Stop the bleeding—focus first on ensuring no additional pa- per records come into the organization. Implement a small digitization process to intercept all paper records and digitize them upon entry;

2. Study the file plan—ensur all records with a disposition date on or before 12/31/2022 receive priority for digitization;

3. Request the NARA waiver now—even if you anticipate making the deadline, submit a request to maximize the time and use it, at minimum to perform change management;

4. Leverage technology for sustainment —in the longterm consider new technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate the tagging, routing and management of e-records.

Call us to learn more or to discuss your M-19-21 Strategy.