Adam Jansen was the Digital Archivist for the State of Washington until December 2007. He managed the Washington State Digital Archives, a first of its kind Digital Archives for both State and Local Government.Jansen is a published author and accomplished international speaker on the topic of Emerging technologies and Electronic records management issues. Before taking over the Digital Archives, he worked for several fortune 500 companies. Jansen also has an extensive background in records management and archival strategies. He became a Deputy Archivist in 2007, and worked directly under Jerry Handfield, the state archivist.Jansen has received the following certifications and recognitions: Certified Records Manager, Microsoft Certified Professional, Master of Information Technology, and Certified Document Imaging Architect. He also served on the board of directors for the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators.One of Jansen's tasks was integrating the Digital Archives with existing state agencies not allocated funds for the new means of digital records management. According to Jansen, "We need to have as minimal an impact on state agencies’ and local governments’ main operation as we possibly can. They are not mandated, they aren’t funded, they do not have the staff resources to deal with this." The record archiving process and its supporting technology had to accommodate the enormous diversity in data systems and formats existing in the counties and state agencies.Jansen worked closely with Microsoft to design the process of data archiving from the ingestion of the data, storage of the data, and presentation of the data. They developed a highly dynamic record processing system that allowed the Digital Archives to adapt to the various types and formats of incoming records while at the same time recording metadata to facilitate document searches. "We went to the agencies and told them we don’t care how you give us the data, but give it to us consistently. We will build everything around what you send us and take it all in." This approach, according to Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell, had the counties "singing our praises" and quite willing to participate in the project.
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