The Washington Post Highlights Soaring Cost for National Archives’ Digital Library

The Washington Post outlined The Government Accountability Office’s recent audits of the National Archives.

The National Archives awarded a $317 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. six years ago to create a modern archive for electronic records.

The article titled “Costs Soaring for Archives’ Digital Library, Auditors Say”, outlines issues with The Archives’ largest and most complex capital project ever.

A copy of the document was obtained ahead of its release by The Post. The GAO wrote in its report, “[The Archives] has not been positioned to identify potential cost and schedule problems early and thus has not been able to take timely actions to correct problems and avoid program schedule delays and cost increases.”

Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero spoke with The Washington Post for the article and he disagreed with auditors’ estimate of the project cost, saying the cost of project management, planning and research should not be included.

PTFS began work on a similar project for The Government Printing Office (GPO), Federal Digital System (FDsys) back in 2006.

GPO’s goal for FDsys is to provide public access and preservation, as technology changes, to all Federal Publications dating back to the birth of our country; an estimated 5 petabytes of information altogether. PTFS provided deliverables to GPO on time and on budget.