Adobe courts NARA

Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif., is talking with the National Archives and Records Administration about making its portable document format (PDF) the archiving standard for file formats, said Adobe chief executive officer Bruce Chizen during a March 21 FOSE keynote speech.

"Representatives from Adobe have met with staff from the National Archives and [are] in ongoing discussions with them," Adobe public relations manager John Cristofano said, expanding on Chizen's comment. "The National Archives is evaluating the possibility of using PDF as one of many electronic format standards for archiving purposes. They have not made a decision on this topic to date, and we believe it may actually be some time before they do."

The PDF format captures formatting information of documents created from a wide variety of desktop publishing applications in order to display or print those documents on different platforms in their original design, according to PCWebopedia, a online dictionary of computer terms. PDF formatted-files require Adobe's Acrobat Reader software to view.

IT consulting company Input Inc., Chantilly, Va., estimates the federal document management market, which includes electronic records and archive management, may grow to nearly $2 billion annually by 2006, up from slightly more than $1 billion annually in 2001.

Kevin Plexico, vice president of public-sector services for Input, said the records management portion of the overall market could account for 50 percent of that spending.