WIRED Magazine (File This Under Data Overload, January 2006) wrote about the new Electronic Records Archives project, which Lockheed-Martin will build at a cost of $308 million over the next six years.
So ERA will be a modular system, relying as much as possible on technologies (many of them open source) developed elsewhere. For example, one anticipated module will be responsible for determining what kind of software was used to create an incoming document. Another will translate it into a usable format. Others will handle distribution, backup, and searchability. The modules can be replaced or added as technology advances - there would never be a need to reengineer the entire system. Another boon, at least from a bureaucratic standpoint, is that nobody has to define the limits of what the system will actually do.
