The present invention provides a method, system, and program product for managing data decay. Specifically, under the present invention, usage information describing how data should be accessed is obtained. Thereafter, resource information describing resources available for accessing the data is obtained. Then, a data decay potential of the data is computed based on the usage information and the resource information. When the data decay potential exceeds a predetermined threshold, an indicator such as a report, an alarm, an error message, or an event and be communicated, and a remediation action such as a format transformation, a software archiving, or an environment archiving can be initiated.