The Army today accepted an offer from the Northern Virginia Technology Council to assess information technology challenges to Arlington National Cemetery.

After reports surfaced of lost and misplaced remains of soldiers and continued use of vulnerable paper records at the national landmark, Senator Warner reached out to the NVTC, which is the membership and trade association for the technology community in Northern Virginia. Senator Warner then brokered the offer of assistance, which the council has offered to perform at no cost to the Army or taxpayers.

“We are one rainstorm or fire or potentially one spilled coffee cup away from destroying these records,” Warner said. “I appreciate Army Secretary John McHugh’s willingness to partner with NVTC on this novel approach, and I especially appreciate the overwhelming response from Northern Virginias strong I-T community. This is corporate citizenship at its best.”

As the largest technology council in the nation, NVTC is uniquely capable of quickly and effectively determining the scope of the cemetery’s recordkeeping problems and the best way to fix them.

Next week 15 of NVTC’s members will begin working on the assessment on a proposed plan to digitize the paper records and maps to protect these fragile records from damage or loss.

Once this important first step is taken, Senator Warner said, we’ll finally be able to move forward in fixing Arlington National Cemetery.