Conformance and Certification

Conformance and certification is how an organization proves that its records management system, process, or product actually satisfies a recognized standard rather than merely claiming to. Conformance is the underlying state of meeting a standard’s stated requirements; certification is the formal recognition of that conformance, typically issued after structured testing, audit, or assessment against a published checklist of criteria. This matters in recordkeeping because trustworthy records depend on reliable capture, retention, disposition, and metadata controls, and certification gives agencies, courts, and auditors objective assurance that those controls work as designed. A useful distinction: a system may be self-declared “compliant,” but certification means an independent body verified it against the standard. In the U.S. electronic records space, the landscape shifted when NARA revoked its endorsement of the DoD 5015.2 certification program in 2022, redirecting agencies toward the Universal Electronic Records Management Requirements developed through the Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative, which emphasizes functional requirements over a single pass/fail certification regime.