over 4Mcubic feet
Federal hard-copy records held in NARA records centers
Source · NARA, 2023
Holdings already transferred to NARA, separate from the active records agencies still hold.
Records on paper
Paper records, held to the same standard.
Most agencies have electronic recordkeeping under control. The paper that remains (classified holdings, active intake, digitization backlogs) carries the same NARA UERM obligations as everything else. RMA iQ manages paper, media, and microform to that standard: one catalog, one retention schedule, one audit trail, on a defensible timeline.
8 / 8 NARA UERM criteriaPaper has had few; RMA iQ delivers all eight
1 Audit trailSpans paper, digital, and the move between them
3 Substrates, one standardPaper, media, and microform, governed like your digital records
IL-5 / 6 Deployment posturesFedRAMP cloud, agency cloud, or on-prem at IL-6
The gap
What UERM requires, and what paper has historically had.
Most agencies have made real progress on electronic recordkeeping. The paper that remains carries the same NARA UERM obligations, and the tooling to deliver them at audit-grade reliability is usually what's missing. Paper is where the eight UERM criteria are hardest to meet, and where Feith closes the gap.
nearly 1Mcubic feet
Analog records agencies transferred in the year before the June 2024 deadline
Source · NARA briefing, July 2024
One year of paper movement, not the size of remaining agency holdings.
29%of agencies
Did not meet the July 2024 deadline for permanent electronic management
Source · NARA self-reported, FY2024
Roughly half sought formal exceptions to stay on paper; NARA granted exceptions including to FBI and DHS components.
Microsoft Purview and Google Vault each give their platforms a real records baseline. Paper has none built in. RMA iQ supplies the missing evidence stream, the same comparison the M365 and Google pages apply, here against physical custody.
Record identification
A unique, persistent identifier linked to the record's metadata.
What paper has had
A folder label, often handwritten, with no enforced link to metadata.
What RMA iQ adds
Barcode generation, a persistent catalog, scannable IDs.
Custody and access
Identity-bound check-in and check-out, role-scoped and time-stamped.
What paper has had
A paper checkout card, signed by hand and kept locally.
What RMA iQ adds
RMA iQ check-in / check-out, SSO, role-scoped permissions.
Location tracking
An authoritative current location with the full move history.
What paper has had
Institutional knowledge held by file-room staff, occasionally a spreadsheet.
What RMA iQ adds
A hierarchical location model with scan-driven move history.
Retention enforcement
A schedule applied per record, event-triggered where required.
What paper has had
A calendar reminder or a quarterly review by the records officer.
What RMA iQ adds
Retention Manager, event triggers, automatic holds.
Disposition execution
An approval workflow, witnessed destruction, and a signed certificate.
What paper has had
An approval signed and filed; destruction performed by a vendor.
What RMA iQ adds
Disposition Wizard, signed certificate, vendor integration.
Audit trail
Who did what, when, why, and where, tamper-evident and query-ready.
What paper has had
The checkout card, if it was retained, plus the disposition paperwork.
What RMA iQ adds
A UERM-compliant audit log covering every event.
Search and retrieval
Findable by content, metadata, physical address, or context.
What paper has had
The records officer or file-room staff, working from memory and finding aids.
What RMA iQ adds
Indexed metadata, OCR on digitized copies, federated search across substrates.
Disposition reporting
On-demand, audit-ready exports.
What paper has had
A logbook, summarized at the end of the fiscal year.
What RMA iQ adds
RMA iQ reporting, scheduled and ad hoc.
RMA iQ supplies the missing evidence stream.
The same catalog, retention engine, and audit log that govern your digital records, applied to paper, media, and microform.
See what it looks like in practiceContinuity
When paper becomes digital, the record keeps going.
Permanent records were expected to be managed electronically by mid-2024, with formal exceptions for agencies still digitizing critical paper. The direction is consistent even when the calendar moves, and RMA iQ handles both ends of the journey on one platform.
Paper
Intake
box · folder · media
Paper
Under management
managed on paper terms
Paper → digital
Digitized & linked
scan · OCR · link
Digital
Under management
managed on digital terms
One UERM audit trail · continuous across every state
Paper is managed on paper terms (barcode, location, checkout, retention) until it's digitized, then linked to its digital twin without resetting the record's identity, retention schedule, or audit history. The audit trail spans both states, and disposition rules apply to whichever copy is the official record when disposition fires.
For agencies operating under active NARA exceptions, RMA iQ supports continued paper custody on a defensible timeline and produces the audit evidence the exception requires.
Capability
What this looks like in practice.
Six capabilities, all on the platform that already manages your electronic records.
Catalog and barcode
Every box, folder, and item gets a unique scannable ID generated by RMA iQ and printed on standard label stock. The catalog tracks what the ID points to, where it lives, who can reach it, and how long it stays.
Check in, check out
When a record leaves its location, RMA iQ raises a work order, records the requester, time-stamps the move, and routes it to the responsible custodian. Returns scan back the same way. The history is part of the record's audit trail, permanently.
Location custody
Locations are modeled as a hierarchy (facility, room, shelf, container, position) that mirrors how records live in the building. A barcode scan updates a record's location instantly. Movement reports show the full custody chain for any record, container, or window of time.
Retention and disposition
Paper runs on the same retention schedules as electronic records. Retention Manager attaches a schedule on intake; the Disposition Wizard initiates approvals, records the destruction event, and produces the signed certificate. Vendor destruction services integrate to close the chain.
Digitization on the way in
High-speed scanning, batch ingestion, OCR, and metadata extraction run on the same platform that manages the paper. The digitized copy links to the original record's identity, retention, and audit history rather than starting a new record, and the official-copy designation can move from paper to digital as policy allows.
Audit trail across substrates
Every read, write, move, scan, check-out, and disposition decision is logged to the UERM-compliant audit store. The trail is identical in shape whether a record lived as paper, as digital, or crossed between the two. Exports are query-ready for FOIA, OIG, GAO, and NARA inspections.
Architecture
How paper records flow through the platform.
Paper flows through dedicated capture endpoints on the physical floor, terminates in the same catalog and retention machinery that manages electronic records, and surfaces through applications built for the records officer's day and the custodian's floor work.
One platform · one UERM audit trail
Physical floorRecords facility
Records on the shelfHigh-speed scannerHandheld & mobile scannersBarcode label printerCustodian terminal
Capture · barcode scan-driven events
Platform layerCapture & management
Paper capture serviceBarcode serviceRMA iQ catalogRetention engineAudit logDisposition workflow
Electronic sources M365GoogleFile sharesServiceNow
Surfaced through role-scoped access
SurfacesApplications
Records officer consoleCustodian mobile appAudit & reporting
Unified UERM audit trail Floor events · management events · application events · one tamper-evident store
Posture
Deployment, hardware, and compliance posture.
Run it where your accreditation lives, on the peripherals paper records management depends on.
On-premises
Standard for facilities with classified holdings or operational requirements that preclude cloud storage. Runs on customer-managed infrastructure.
Agency cloud
The agency's own GovCloud or Azure Government tenant. RMA iQ deploys into your existing accreditation boundary.
Feith FedRAMP cloud
FedRAMP-authorized SaaS, fully managed by Feith. The fastest path to production for agencies without existing cloud accreditation.
Compliance posture
- NARA UERM
- Current
- FedRAMP
- Moderate authorization · High in process
- DoD IL
- IL-5 capable · IL-6 in customer-managed classified deployments
- Section 508
- Current
- NIST SP 800-53
- Moderate baseline, applied
- PKI / CAC
- Supported
- SSO
- LDAP · Active Directory · SAML · OIDC
- NAID
- Destruction-vendor integration supports the NAID AAA certification chain
RMA iQ drives the peripheral set paper records management depends on. Production scanners (Fujitsu fi, Kodak Alaris i and S, Canon DR) for batch ingestion at facility scale. Desk-grade and industrial label printers (Zebra ZD and ZT, Brother QL, SATO CL) driven from the catalog on standard label stock. Handheld and Bluetooth scanners (Zebra TC, Honeywell CT) for floor custodians. The custodian mobile app keeps working without network connectivity for intermittent or air-gapped facilities, syncing on reconnection. NAID AAA Certified destruction vendors integrate to close the disposition loop with certificates of destruction.
Scenarios
Where this actually applies.
Paper records management is never one job, but the discipline underneath stays the same.
It looks different in a civilian digitization push, a classified vault, a county clerk's office, and a nuclear operator's archive.
Records staff working active holdings: bound ledgers, lateral files, barcoded containers. This is the substrate RMA iQ brings under one catalog, one retention schedule, and one audit trail.
Federal agency with an active digitization mandate
The situation
A records officer has nine months left on a NARA exception and 12,000 cubic feet of legacy paper still to digitize. The exception requires monthly progress reporting and a tamper-evident audit trail on every record while it stays on paper. Today that runs on a spreadsheet and a borrowed label printer.
What RMA iQ does
RMA iQ catalogs the legacy holdings against the same retention schedule the digitized records will inherit. The custodian mobile app drives the daily floor work. The audit and reporting console produces NARA's monthly numbers without manual compilation. As records digitize, they link to their physical originals and the chain of custody persists across the conversion.
catalogbarcodecustodydigitizationaudit reporting
Defense organization with classified holdings
The situation
A defense component holds paper that cannot leave the facility and, in some cases, cannot be digitized at all. The compartment requirements are tighter than its standard records system supports. An IG inspection is 90 days out and wants a clean accounting of every record's custody chain over the prior year.
What RMA iQ does
RMA iQ deploys on-premises behind the component's accreditation boundary at IL-6. The custody chain is reconstructable per record, per container, per location, and per individual over any time window. The IG receives audit exports that demonstrate compliance without exposing record content.
on-premclassified posturecustody historyaudit export
State or county records office
The situation
A county clerk holds 70 years of land records, marriage records, court filings, and certified documents. Public records requests arrive daily and the state preservation board wants demonstrable retention compliance. The current system is a 1990s electronic index over the physical files, with no enforced retention and no audit trail.
What RMA iQ does
RMA iQ replaces the old index with a current catalog, applies the state-mandated retention schedules per record type, and produces FOIA-equivalent responses that draw from paper and digital holdings together. The board receives current-year compliance reports without the clerk's office building them by hand.
catalog modernizationretention schedulesmulti-substrate responsecompliance reporting
Energy operator under nuclear records retention
The situation
A nuclear operator maintains plant records, signed procedures, and operating logs with retention measured in plant-life-plus-X years. NRC inspections run on a regular cadence. Some records exist only on paper because the operator's qualification process for digital equivalents is itself a multi-year program.
What RMA iQ does
RMA iQ catalogs the long-retention paper holdings under NRC-aligned schedules, supports tamper-evident audit logging at the level the regulator expects, and provides a digitization path that respects the operator's procedural qualification timeline rather than forcing it.
long retentionregulated industrytamper-evident auditoptional digitization
Positioning
Where this fits next to the vendors you already know.
Most agencies already work with a physical records vendor. The question is what gets managed where, and which system holds the records discipline.
Versus paper storage and logistics vendors
Iron Mountain, Access, Crown, GRM and others store the boxes, handle the moves, and execute destruction: an operational backbone many agencies need.
RMA iQ doesn't replace that backbone; it supplies the records discipline that sits over it. The vendor stays the physical custodian; RMA iQ stays the system of record for what each item is, what schedule it runs on, who has accessed it, and what the audit trail says. Their pickup and destruction work integrates into RMA iQ's check-out and disposition flows.
Coexists · integratesVersus barcode-only tracking software
A category of vendors sells barcode-based file-room tracking with limited records management on top. They do well on inventory and find-it-on-the-shelf workflows and thin out at retention, disposition, audit, and integration.
RMA iQ covers the inventory and tracking those products do, and the full UERM lifecycle besides, on the same platform that manages your electronic records. The records officer's evidence stream comes out of one system.
SupersedesVersus the agency's own homegrown system
Many agencies built their own paper tracking on databases and spreadsheets that have run for ten or twenty years. They tend to work for the staff who built them and degrade as that staff retires.
RMA iQ migrates the catalog data out, runs the same operational patterns the agency already understands, and provides the documented audit trail and vendor support the homegrown system never had. The model becomes supportable without asking anyone to relearn it.
Migrates · supportsRMA iQ is the records-discipline layer.
The vendor and the homegrown system stay where they are, or migrate as the agency chooses.
Get started
Bring your paper into the same records architecture as everything else.
A 30-minute scoping call covers your current paper inventory, your digitization plan if you have one, your retention schedule, and what a phased rollout looks like. A working conversation with a records architect.
Available through
GSA MAS · SEWP V · CIO-SP3 · State and local cooperative vehicles · Direct procurement
FedRAMP Moderate Authorized · NARA UERM · DoDM 8180.01 · Section 508 · IL-5 capable · Made in America · Fort Washington, PA
A records architect will respond within one business day.
We'll come in with questions about your current inventory, your retention schedule, and where the paper hurts first. Look for an email from a Feith records architect, a real person on the records team.
Related: RMA iQ overview · Records in M365 · Records in Google · Integrations & Capture