As part of the capital planning and systems development life cycle processes, agencies must ensure:

(a) That records management controls (see §1236.10) are planned and implemented in the system;

(b) That all records in the system will be retrievable and usable for as long as needed to conduct agency business (i.e., for their NARA-approved retention period). Where the records will need to be retained beyond the planned life of the system, agencies must plan and budget for the migration of records and their associated metadata to new storage media or formats in order to avoid loss due to media decay or technology obsolescence. (See §1236.14.)

(c) The transfer of permanent records to NARA in accordance with part 1235 of this subchapter.

(d) Provision of a standard interchange format (e.g., ASCII or XML) when needed to permit the exchange of electronic documents between offices using different software or operating systems.