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An e-Archiving Service is an architectural building block of the EIRA Technical view - infrastructure supporting the Technical interoperability layer of the European Interoperability Framework.
It is included in the Enabler grouping Infrastructure Data Source Enablers.

e-Archiving Service is a specialisation of Application Service. It shares the functionality of enabling the permanent or long-term storage of selected (by an authority) electronic documents or information for preservation purposes like their enduring research value and memory aid.

The EIRA(c) differentiates between document management, record management and e-archiving as follows:

• Document management is primarily about day-to-day use of electronic documents (create/update/delete/versioning) within the operational environment;
• Record management is primarily about ensuring that information (e.g. in form of an electronic document or database record) is available for business and legal purposes (e.g. to proof and track the handling of contracts). If an electronic document or information is becoming a record (an authority declares it as a record) that electronic document or information needs to be handled by the record management service (based on specific business or legal reasons (e.g. contract negotiation)).
• e-Archiving is primarily about storing records which have been selected (by an authority) for permanent or long-term preservation due to their enduring research value and as a memory aid. An electronic document or information which a) is managed by the document management service or the record management service and b) is no longer needed for business or legal purposes or day-to-day activities, and c) still has value for research purposes or as a memory aid, the electronic document should be managed by the e-archiving service.

The e-Archiving Service ABB  is salient for technical interoperability because it provides and shares the functionality for the long-term or permanent preservation of records and information in electronic form in order to ensure their temporal egibility, reliability and integrity as stated in the EIF principle #eif11p - Preservation of information: "Legislation requires that decisions and data are stored and can be accessed for a specified time. This means that records and information in electronic form held by public administrations for the purpose of documenting procedures and decisions must be preserved and be converted, where necessary, to new media when old media become obsolete. The goal is to ensure that records and other forms of information keep their legibility, reliability and integrity and can be accessed as long as needed subject to security and privacy provisions."

Example
CEF eArchiving
CEF eArchiving provides the core specifications, software, training and knowledge to tackle the challenge of short, medium and long-term data management and reuse in a sustainable, authentic, cost-efficient, manageable and interoperable way.

The latest release of the EIRA© is available on Joinup.

Source: European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA version 3) (url) (with information on the 3^rd release at the website of the ISA² - Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens).