The LPAA and OTS will put out guidance on this shortly. The LPAA does not want any of these small “electronic media assets” (EMA) such as thumb drives, DVDs, CDs, etc to be sent to them, or to be tagged. Agencies will have to sanitize the EMAs according to the policy issued by OTS, but would not be required to track them with the LPAA.

The OTS is working on a new policy with the LPAA, and will be putting up some FAQs on their website regarding this topic. OTS explained that small items like thumb drives and DVDs and CDs would be taken out of the definition of EMAs, thus would not be tagged or tracked with the LPAA.

However, they would have to be sanitized according to OTS policy, which includes sanitization methods, creating an internal policy regarding sanitization, and keeping records via a log certifying the sanitization. Agencies could use either the log schedule in the LPAA policy, or the information in the OTS policy.

The new policy should be put out by the end of March 2015.