FADGI Compliant Records Solutions
In 2007 the federal government agencies began a collaborative effort to articulate “common sustainable set of technical guidelines, methods, and practices for digitized and born digital historical, archival and cultural content.” This effort led to the creation of FADGI (Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) standards—a four-star ranking system for image quality.
Is FADGI compliance required? If the collection will be transferred to the National Archives (NARA) or the Library of Congress, it would be in your best interest to have a solution in place that meets FADGI 3 requirements at a minimum.
in 2019, QAI launched EDGE22™, the most comprehensive readiness approach for NARA M-19-21 and LOC compliance in the industry—backed by a reliable strategic framework and three-phase methodology that set the standard in high-performance quality for:
- Improved transparency and accountability
- Reduced time and expense
- Accelerated speed to compliance
- Optimized performance and efficiencies
- Customization with greater flexibility
Check out the full report on FADGI Guidelines and Compliance at www.qualityassociatesinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/FADGI-whitepaper-2022_Update.pdf
The FADGI Ranking System Explained:
One Star
Records can only be considered informational, in that images are not of a sufficient quality to be useful for optical character recognition or other information processing techniques. One-star imaging is appropriate for applications where the intent is to provide a reference to locate the original, or the intent is textual only with no repurposing of the content.
Two Star
Appropriate where there is no reasonable need or expectation of achieving three or four star performance. These images will have informational value only, and may or may not be suitable for Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
Three Star
A very good professional image capable of serving almost all use cases. This includes being suitable for OCR as well as for reprint on the best commercially available printers. This is the standard for NARA M-19-21 compliant records solutions.
Four Star
Images created to a four-star level represent the state-of-the-art in image capture and are suitable for almost any use.
By: Michael Pitts,
Senior Director