Losing the Government's Digital History

Technology Review has a fascinating article on the huge tidal wave of records the goverment generates -- and loses due to a lack of standardized processes and formats. The article's thrust is from the National Archives and Records Administration's point of view, but it covers quite a bit of ground, even discussing how MIT (MIT!) is "losing its hold on research data--including the early studies and communications that led to the creation of the Internet itself." The government is generating petabytes of information in a vast number of formats. Go figure how you're going to store all that, keep it accessible, and keep up with it as the archives continue to grow. I sure can't.