What's Happening?
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is grappling with significant challenges in managing its legacy systems and accurately tracking associated costs. An audit conducted by NARA's inspector general in 2018 (report 18-AUD-06) revealed
that the agency 'does not know the true cost of all its systems' and 'has not documented the age of their systems.' This issue extends to license data, mirroring a broader problem identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2014, where none of 24 major agencies had fully implemented tracking and maintaining a license inventory. NARA's Electronic Records Archives (ERA) program, intended to absorb older systems, faced setbacks when OMB ended its development prematurely. This resulted in NARA spending approximately $33 million on operations and maintenance for eight legacy systems through fiscal 2017, with an additional $12 million for a new system, DAS. Continuing costs were estimated at about $5 million annually until remaining systems were integrated.
Why It's Important?
The inability of NARA to accurately track the costs and age of its systems has significant implications for government efficiency and taxpayer money. Without a clear understanding of these factors, NARA cannot effectively rationalize its application portfolio, leading to continued expenditure on outdated or redundant systems. The premature termination of the ERA development, as highlighted by the inspector general, forced NARA to maintain legacy systems that should have been retired, incurring substantial ongoing operational and maintenance costs. This situation underscores a broader federal challenge in application portfolio management, where agencies struggle to inventory, assess, and retire applications efficiently. The lack of comprehensive data on system costs and age hinders strategic decision-making, potentially diverting resources from modernization efforts and increasing the risk of security vulnerabilities associated with unsupported legacy software.
What's Next?
To address these issues, NARA, like other federal agencies, needs to implement robust application portfolio rationalization methods. This involves a systematic approach to inventorying applications, scoring their business fit and technical condition, and making clear decisions to 'tolerate, invest, migrate, or eliminate' each system. The GAO's 2025 review of federal legacy systems (GAO-25-107795) emphasizes the need for modernization plans that include milestones, work descriptions, and details on legacy system disposition. For NARA, this means prioritizing the retirement of costly and outdated systems, ensuring that data is properly migrated or archived according to retention requirements, and meticulously tracking all associated costs and savings. Future efforts will likely focus on improving financial transparency and accountability in IT spending, as well as ensuring that new systems are fully integrated before legacy ones are decommissioned.
Beyond the Headlines
The challenges faced by NARA extend beyond mere financial and technical issues, touching upon the fundamental responsibility of preserving national records. The continued reliance on aging, poorly documented systems poses risks to the long-term accessibility and integrity of vital historical and governmental information. The ethical implication lies in the potential loss or inaccessibility of critical data if these systems fail or become unmanageable. Furthermore, the lack of clear cost data can obscure accountability, making it difficult to assess the true value and efficiency of government IT investments. This situation highlights a systemic problem across federal agencies in managing their digital assets, emphasizing the need for a cultural shift towards proactive and transparent application lifecycle management to safeguard public resources and historical records.
