1.1 This guide covers desired approaches to be considered and followed in planning, developing, and operating specific ADMS for the archiving and retrieval of ITS-generated data. The scope of this guide anticipates incremental or modular implementation of an ADMS, which over time and with a series of investment of resources will approach or exceed desired practice. However, it is recognized that programmatic constraints of time and budget resources do not always allow practitioners to follow a more desirable course of action and that during interim periods the ability to implement a particular fully functioning system may be less than desired.

1.2 The desired approaches described in this guide are foundational and are not intended to be all-inclusive. Users of this guide are allowed, and indeed encouraged, to exceed the desired practices in one or more of several ways. An example of one way is that to address and satisfy the particular needs and requirements of some of the intended users and stakeholders for a particular implementation may necessitate exceeding the desired practice. Another example is that some implementations may want to foster innovations and research into new methods and procedures related to the overall implementation of a particular ITS activity. Part of that may be the recognition that specialized archiving or retrieval processes, or both, would facilitate such innovations or research, or both. A third example is that some organizations may simply have more resources to invest in activities such as archiving and retrieval systems and may choose to have more quantities or higher quality of data and information available to their planning or operations units to use in their day-to-day activities.