About EPA Digitization Centers

EPA records digitization centers enable EPA to avoid significant costs spent storing and manually managing paper records, while making it easier for employees and the public to find EPA information.

In May 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) celebrated the grand opening of the National Digitization Center (NDC) East. This state-of-the-art facility enables EPA to digitize and eventually dispose of temporary and permanent paper records. EPA is one of the first agencies to open a digitization center to meet the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) policies (M-23-07), which require executive agencies to manage all permanent and temporary records in an electronic format and to transfer records to NARA electronically.

EPA has over 26 miles of paper records spread across its facilities and the Federal Records Center storage sites. The agency anticipates avoiding significant costs that currently go to leasing federal and commercial space to store paper records, as well as costs associated with the manual and labor-intensive process of retrieving information from paper records.

EPA developed a custom tool, the Paper Asset Tracking Tool (PATT), to capture required metadata and track the location and status of each record throughout the digitization process. This ensures no information is lost in transit or during digitization. The agency is also investing in sophisticated technology. One of the scanners in the digitization center, the IBML Fusion 8300, was the first of its kind installed in the U.S.