Usability
Usability is the quality of a record that lets you locate, retrieve, present, and interpret it whenever needed, ensuring it remains findable and meaningful for as long as it must be kept.
Usability is one of the core characteristics of a trustworthy record, alongside authenticity, reliability, and integrity. A usable record is one you can find, open, render, and understand within the recordkeeping system across its full retention period. This depends on persistent links between the record and the metadata, context, and any related records needed to make sense of it.
Usability matters because a record that cannot be retrieved or interpreted offers no evidentiary or operational value, no matter how authentic it is. In digital environments, usability is fragile: file formats become obsolete, software is retired, and storage media degrade, so sustaining usability often requires format migration, normalization to durable formats, and ongoing metadata management.
For example, an email preserved without its sender, date, and attachment links may technically survive but be effectively unusable as evidence. Modern electronic recordkeeping guidance—reflected in NARA’s shift away from its former DoD 5015.2 endorsement toward the Universal ERM Requirements and FERMI—treats sustained usability as a functional outcome rather than a single product certification.