Archivist of the United States, John W. Carlin, has announced the two companies that will lead the way in designing a technological solution to the challenge of preserving electronic information across space and time. These design contracts are valued at $20.1 million. At the end of the one-year design competition, The National Archives will select one of these two contractors to build the Electronic Records Archives, a revolutionary system that will capture electronic information, regardless of its format, save it permanently, and make it accessible on whatever hardware or software is currently in use