In the E-Government age, the ability of federal agencies to create and appropriately manage electronic records has become increasingly important. Documenting citizen-government interactions, decisions for which government officials are accountable, and the government’s role in our nation’s history is a statutory mandate as well as a necessity for maintaining public confidence in E-Government transactions. Unfortunately, agencies have largely developed individual solutions to fit their immediate electronic records management needs, and have focused less on long-term records management issues and interagency sharing of records information that could increase government efficiency. The E-Records initiative will help agencies to better manage their electronic records, so that records information can be effectively used to support timely and effective decision making, enhance service delivery, and ensure accountability. Recognizing that electronic records management solutions lie in policies and experiences, as well as hardware and software, it will provide a variety of tools to address immediate and longer-term agency needs. Initiative components include:

• Providing correspondence management models to enable agencies to use modern techniques for cross-agency decision making and correspondence.
  
• Developing revised Baseline Functional Requirements for Records Management Applications for government-wide use.
  
• Developing guidance to assist agencies in effectively implementing enterprise-wide electronic records management systems.
  
• Giving agencies tools for transferring permanent electronic records to the National Archives in a variety of data types and formats so that records may be preserved for future government and citizen use.