Legislative Electronic Records Archive (LERA)

The National Archives’ federal Electronic Records Archive (ERA) lacked defined requirements and technical capability to accept Congressional electronic records, even as constitutionally mandated transfers for senior elected officials faced immovable statutory deadlines—creating significant legal, historical, and operational risk.

As the Congressional electronic records expert at the National Archives, I served as the primary requirements authority and system lead responsible for ensuring Legislative Branch records could be preserved and transferred in compliance with federal law.

• No existing ERA capability to ingest or preserve Legislative Branch electronic records
• Fixed, non-negotiable deadlines tied to the 2008 presidential election and court-mandated transfers
• High political sensitivity involving senior Legislative and Executive Branch offices

I led enterprise-wide requirements discovery across House and Senate Committees, the Clerk of the House, and the Secretary of the Senate to identify the minimum viable requirements for preserving Congressional electronic records. When it became clear that the existing ERA platform could not meet Legislative Branch needs within the required timeframe, I designed and implemented a separate records ingestion and preservation system purpose-built for Legislative electronic records transfers.

• Successfully preserved and transferred electronic records for U.S. Senators Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Biden during the 2008 presidential election cycle
• Executed legally mandated preservation and transfer of electronic records for the Senate Office of Vice President Dick Cheney
• Established the foundational system and requirements that became the Legislative Electronic Records Archive (LERA), a platform still used today to preserve Congressional electronic records

This project demonstrates my ability to deliver legally compliant, mission-critical systems under immovable constitutional deadlines when no viable platform exists.