The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently announced Initial Operational Capability (IOC) of the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) system, built for the agency by Lockheed Martin . This milestone sets the foundation for a permanent archival system to take in, preserve, manage, and provide access to electronic records created by the federal government.

"With this milestone, the National Archives and Records Administration now has an operational system with electronic archiving functionality that is truly unique, literally not available or in use anywhere else in the world," said Sean Murphy, Lockheed Martin's ERA program director.

A major initiative to enable the successful move to government-wide electronic records preservation, the ERA system will capture electronic information -- regardless of format -- save it permanently, and make it accessible on future generations of hardware and software.

"Our customer is taking a true leadership position in meeting the digital preservation challenge, setting the standard for authenticity, persistence and service," said Andy Patrichuk, Lockheed Martin's vice president of Civil Mission Solutions.

This first increment of the new system will help archivists manage the process of determining how long federal records -- whether they are in paper, film, electronic, or other media formats -- should be kept by agencies and if those records should then be preserved in the National Archives.

In July, the National Archives will start moving approximately three and a half million historically valuable computer files into ERA system, ranging from databases about World War II soldiers to the State Department's central files on foreign affairs.

The Lockheed Martin team delivered the initial operating capability through three pilot phases, which gave the NARA technical and user communities the opportunity to try out the system and provide feedback. The team has already developed and demonstrated a large portion of the system's capabilities for the next phase of the program which will provide the National Archives with the capability to accept the massive quantities of Presidential electronic files from the Bush Administration in January 2009.

As the prime contractor for the ERA project, Lockheed Martin is leading a team of companies with archiving and data management expertise. The team includes BearingPoint Inc., McLean VA; Fenestra Technologies Corp., Germantown, MD; History Associates Inc., Rockville, MD; EDS Corp., Plano, TX; Metier Ltd., Washington, DC; and Tessella Inc., Newton, MA.

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services.

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SOURCE: Lockheed Martin