In 1991-1992 the Environmental Protection Agency awarded a series of contracts to develop a digital imaging system for the Superfund records program. The design specifications arose through regular nationwide conference calls between Federal information managers and records managers. The pilot went to EPA's Region 9 office in San Francisco. The prototype is now being modified and used at the EPA Region 6 office in Dallas. The EPA's ten Regional offices, and numerous satellites, reflect the distributed nature of the Agency.
Environmental problems differ according to geographical and other local factors.
Consequently, the Regional offices tend to operate with national oversight, but great independence from other Regions. Perhaps more by evolution than design, or maybe in an attempt to respond to many voices with differing concerns, the SDMS is designed with a great deal of capacity. Each Region will have to adapt it to their needs, or else face changing their records management to meet the system's design. The Superfund Records program in San Francisco uses a bar code method of identifying and tracking individual documents, and has no rigorous file structure. SDMS was not designed to manage hierarchical relationships between documents.