For a federal agency, historical records aren't just paper. They’re a critical source of institutional knowledge, operational history, and evidence of the government’s work. But when those records span decades, include fragile originals and visual media, and have to meet federal records requirements, simply scanning them isn’t enough.
The Southeastern Power Administration (SEPA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, faced this exact challenge. SEPA maintained physical records dating back to the 1940s, spread across different formats and storage locations. The agency didn't just need digital copies; it needed a structured, searchable digital records system built to meet federal standards for long-term preservation and transfer to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
To get there, SEPA partnered with Ripcord to execute a comprehensive records modernization initiative.
SEPA's situation is common among federal agencies with a long history: aging physical documents, records scattered across formats and locations, and a requirement to preserve records permanently while transferring the right ones to the National Archives on schedule. The deadline wasn't optional – NARA’s M-19-21 digital-first mandate and the requirements of 36 CFR 1236 set a firm compliance timeline SEPA had to meet.
A scanner alone can't solve that. It takes a process that can sort records at scale, apply the correct retention and transfer rules, and organize everything in a structure NARA will actually accept.
Most records digitization initiatives run into the same wall: a person feeding pages into a scanner one at a time. That's slow even with a normal amount of records. With an old, fragile collection this size, it’s simply not viable.
Ripcord's robotic digitization solved that problem. Our proprietary robots moved and scanned paper and visual media far faster than a manual process could, and handled fragile material that standard high-speed scanners can't. These capabilities made a nearly 500,000-page project possible on SEPA's timeline.
From there, AI-assisted classification sorted the records, optical character recognition (OCR) made the text searchable, and a digital preservation process kept everything usable and compliant over time – including a "digital twin" of SEPA's archive that preserved the exact relationships between individual documents, folders, and boxes. But the robotics are what got SEPA past the volume and condition problem that stalls most records modernization projects before they get anywhere near a compliance question.
By shifting from basic scanning to intelligent document processing, SEPA achieved measurable compliance and operational wins:
100% NARA compliance
Nearly 500,000 pages and visual media assets digitized
Project completed months ahead of schedule
A second batch of records completed within the original budget
NARA commended SEPA’s submission as ranking among the top 1% of metadata and quality packages it has received from a federal agency
SEPA's project demonstrates what's possible when an agency treats legacy records digitization as a comprehensive records modernization effort, not just a scanning job.
Digitization, classification, OCR, and preservation aren't separate boxes to check. Put together, they’re what gets an agency to a compliant, accessible records environment, not just a digitized one.
For agencies sitting on decades of historical records, that’s the difference between a stack of PDFs and a system NARA will sign off on.
The case study goes deeper into how the robotic digitization, classification, and preservation pieces worked together, and what it actually took to get an eight-decade record set to NARA compliance.
If your agency is sitting on a similar backlog, it's worth a look before you scope your own project.