More concretely on digital permanence, the House Oversight Committee Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives held a hearing on Wednesday on digital preservation procedures for executive branch materials, HR 5811, or the “Electronic Communications Preservation Act” (as previewed by the American Association of Law Libraries blog).

Patrice McDermott of OpentheGovernment.org joined others from NARA and the GAO in testifying, and advised that the measure be strengthened to ensure that agencies comply with stricter digital records management procedures.

The subcommittee was receptive to the concerns of both NARA and the public access community (as represented by Dr. McDermott), and suggested they’d be willing to work with everyone involved to further shape the legislation.

At issue is whether the enforcement mechanisms are sufficient to the seriousness of the task, which is difficult, given what NARA sees as their limited mandate for enforcement. While NARA stressed guidelines and training over compliance monitoring, the complexity of the digital records challenge, and a recent report from CREW on substandard record-keeping policies both suggested the need for NARA to take a bigger role. The form of records enforcement is in question, however, given separation of powers issues (between both Congress and NARA and the rest of the executive branch).

Despite there being no clear solution to an apparent lack of effective information oversight on the executive branch, HR 5811 and the subcommittee’s seeming receptiveness to the issue are both steps in the right direction. As McDermott said, the cost of doing something about the problem doesn’t just need to be weighed against the benefits, but also against the cost of not doing something about it.

(If you’re looking for more info, be sure to read the testimony from the subcommittee page.)