RFI Responses Available to Federal Agencies

In September, we reported on the industry event to support automated solutions for electronic records management: Managing Government Records Directive: A Grand Challenge for Industry.  You may remember that we issued a request for information (RFI) shortly after industry day in which we asked vendors to tell the Federal information management community how their solutions or services could help automate electronic records management.  We requested responses by October 4 because of our need to start analyzing current vendor capabilities.  However, NARA continues to accept – and receive – new ones.

We have received 46 capability statements in response to the RFI so far.  That’s a great response, and an indication of the level of interest in the vendor community in providing the services we need.  Vendors described a wide range of offerings, including records management services available for installation at your site or in the cloud, integration services, and information management consulting.

The statements answer a series of questions developed by the Electronic Records Management Automation Working Group.  For this reason, the vendor responses address key questions related to agency implementation of the Managing Government Records Directive and Directive goal A3.1.

NARA issued the RFI on behalf of the Federal records and information management community. The vendor statements are a resource to help the whole Federal government transition to electronic records management and reduce the burden of managing records on end users (staff whose job is not records management). Specifically, these statements will help agencies explore automation in their plans to meet the Directive’s 2016 and 2019 goals.

Because sharing this information was the whole point, NARA and the ERM Automation Working Group have made the papers available to staff of all Federal agencies. Any Federal employee can access the vendor responses through the OMB MAX wiki of the Electronic Records Management Automation Working Group.  Simply request an account on OMB MAX and go to the following link:  https://max.omb.gov/community/x/yYCHJw

You can use the papers without getting involved in the ERM Automation Working Group, but you are always welcome to participate in the ERM Automation Working Group, too.  Perhaps your colleagues on the working group can help you take the next step in implementing automation after researching vendor capabilities on the wiki – or you can share your lessons learned with others.