Sharing and preserving ur digital history

I am often at a loss at the approach many schools take with regard to digital portfolios and digital artifacts within the classroom. Whether it is based around some whizz-bang tool to create digital portfolios or as simple as using MS Office, many schools simply don't consider the need to preserve their files in a readable format?
Preserving your files is much more than simply "backing up". You can back up a million copies to your hearts content, but if there is no program to read them when you want to, then whats the point of all this backing up?
The rapid pace of ICT development means that it is perfectly feasible for a student starting High school to create a digital portfolio that can't be accessed by the time they leave!
Those of you using open source software can, of course, ignore most of this, but for those locked in to proprietary formats for their curriculum develpment should consider this issue.
The reason I raise it in this forum, is that there is a newish tool (Xena) available that you may not know about that converts many file formats to openly readable xml wrappers - developed by the National Archives of Australia.
http://xena.sourceforge.net/
I can see schools in the future with massive holes in their digital history because there no longer exists "a supported" or legally licensed program to allow them to open their files. Many of you who may be photographers may have already found this out with proprietary RAW files - and companies that change formats and drop support of the old formats.
This also has ramifications for sharing across schools and platforms. Openly readable formats are far easier to share.
Does your school have a policy to enable all your valuable files to be readable into the future?
Something to consider. ;)