Wade-Hahn Chan reported in Federal Computer Week this week that the first part of the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) will make its debut in September. ERA is the system that the National Archives is designing to preserve the federal government's electronic records.

The first release, according to NARA CIO Martha Morphy, will allow federal agencies to transfer their electronic records directly to the ERA. Four agencies currently submit their records to NARA for archiving; in addition, NARA's Electronic Records Management Initiative has provided all agencies with information on how to handle the formating of electronic documents.

The White House has requested a $12 million increase in the budget for ERA for FY2008. Speaking of the Bush administration, a second version of ERA will be developed for the George W. Bush Presidential Library to archive the administration's electronic records. The FY2008 budget requests $38 million to archive these documents.

You can learn a bit more about ERA in a video [WMV] linked to on the project's website. I found the FCW article at the eGovernment Resource Centre.