Digital Continuity

Digital continuity means that a digital record stays complete, findable, openable, and meaningful throughout its full retention period, no matter how the surrounding technology changes. It links four things that must stay aligned: the information itself, the metadata and context that make it understandable, the file formats it lives in, and the systems and software needed to use it. When any of these breaks, continuity is lost even if the bits survive.

This matters because organizations routinely migrate platforms, retire applications, and adopt new formats, and a record that can no longer be opened or interpreted cannot satisfy retention, legal, or accountability obligations. Continuity planning ties recordkeeping to disposition: you maintain usability only for as long as the schedule requires, then dispose.

For example, a spreadsheet stored in an abandoned proprietary format with no software to render it has failed digital continuity, even though the file is intact. Modern electronic records guidance, including NARA’s shift toward the Universal ERM Requirements and the federal FERMI program after it revoked its DoD 5015.2 endorsement in 2022, treats sustained usability as a core requirement.