“[T]echnology is not within national boundaries but on a global scale” — Dr. Patrick Gallagher, 14th Director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
This week, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is celebrating World Standards Week (October 24-28). ANSI bridges the gap between standards developers and governmental agencies that create legislation affecting the standards community. In addition, since the passage of The National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (P.L. 104-113) (NTTAA) as well as the issuance of The Office of Management and Budget Circular A-119, ANSI facilitates government agencies’ use of voluntary consensus standards created by the private sector as an alternative to agency-developed standards.
Federal agencies create records with wide-ranging variability. The different file formats, metadata, and agency recordkeeping practices pose challenges to NARA’s ability to ingest, describe, and provide access to records that belong to or will come to the National Archives of the United States. Voluntary consensus standards in NARA’s regulations and guidance helps agencies adopt widely-recognized approaches, system capabilities, record types, formats, and metadata across the Federal government. The more standardized Federal records management practices become, the better we will be able to accomplish our mission to preserve and make available the permanently valuable records of the federal government.
For more information about the use of standards in government, see “Incorporation by Reference, Reasonable Availability, and the U.S. Standardization System” ANSI has also posted a schedule of events for World Standards Week 2016.
Stay tuned for future posts about standards and metadata work happening in our office.