The Continuous Oversight Act: Regulatory Architecture for Preserving Constitutional Memory and Institutional Integrity

This artifact is model legislation designed to preserve the continuity, integrity, and retrievability of federal records so that public action remains reviewable, accountable, and capable of lawful oversight. The model Act has not been enacted by Congress or any state legislature and is not legal advice. A professional lawyer, legislative counsel, or policy office would need to adapt, verify, format, and reconcile this model with existing federal records law, agency-specific retention rules, appropriations law, inspector-general statutes, criminal law, administrative procedure, and constitutional requirements before introduction or enactment. The Act establishes a public-records preservation architecture built around automated retention, tamper-evident audit logs, continuity standards, preservation defaults, emergency preservation orders, an independent federal records continuity inspectorate, agency records continuity officers, administrative consequences, congressional review, and protected-record safeguards. The Act treats federal records as the public trace of official action. Without that trace, oversight weakens. Courts cannot reconstruct what happened. Congress cannot see systemic failure clearly. Inspectors cannot audit continuity. Agencies cannot learn from their own conduct. The public cannot know whether public power acted lawfully. The practical claim is that a constitutional system cannot remain accountable if it cannot remember what it did. Preservation and disclosure remain distinct. Records may be classified, privileged, privacy-protected, law-enforcement-sensitive, or otherwise restricted, but protected records still need to remain preserved, auditable, and lawfully retrievable.