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Tag Archives: NARA
How hard is it to get NARA records about NARA?
Anthony Clark, an independent researcher writing a book on the politics and history of presidential libraries, has written a provocative piece on access to National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) records about administration of Presidential Libraries:
- Why Is It So Hard to Get Documents from the National Archives About the National Archives?, By Anthony Clark, History News Network, July 21, 2008.
Title 44 (Chpt 29) News: Electronic Message Preservation
As we have seen through the conflict and problems of preserving White House e-mail, the law has not kept up with preservation of electronic messages.
A bill (H.R.5811, "The Electronic Message Preservation Act") moving through Congress would address the problems by adding a new Section 2911 to Title 44, Chapter 29. It would require the electronic capture, management, and preservation of electronic records, require that they be readily accessible for retrieval through electronic searches, and would establish mandatory minimum functional requirements for electronic records management systems to ensure compliance with the requirements.
The Bush administration is threatening a veto:
White House Threatens To Veto House E-Mail Storage Bill, By Dan Friedman, CongressDaily, Jul 9, 2008 (subscription required, but freely available here).
The White House and officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) argue that the law gives NARA new responsibility and expands the agency's job from advice to oversight, but the sponsors of the bill say that it only affirms the National Archives' job of advising the White House on record-keeping.
The CongressDaily articles notes that:
A less-discussed but farther-reaching part of the bill updates the Federal Records Act to require federal agencies, also under standards set by the National Archives, to save all e-mail records electronically and create systems to allow electronic searches. According to GAO and a committee report, most agencies now use "print and file" records systems for keeping e-mail, many of them spotty.
(See National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management, United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-08-742 June 13, 2008.)
A comment in the Committee Report (House Report 110-709, "Electronic Message Preservation Act" 110th Congress 2d Session, June 11, 2008) says:
To make federal agencies comply, I believe this legislation should include enforceable repercussion language. Ms. Patricia McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org suggests this is the only way to make federal agencies comply with the Federal Records Act. Ms. McDermott states that she does not "think anyone has ever been prosecuted for destroying, much less failing to preserve federal records." Just ask former Clinton EPA Director Carol Browner. She supposedly oversaw the destruction of her computer files in violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records.Continue reading
Criticism of FBI records retention and destruction
It isn't often you see a discussion FOIA, FBI, NARA, and Records Retention Plan and Disposition Schedules in the popular press. This article describes the frustrations of one researcher when he discovered that records had been destroyed by the FBI.
- The Department of Forgetting: How an obscure FBI rule is ensuring the destruction of irreplaceable historical records, By Alex Heard, Slate, June 24, 2008.
The system's fundamentals make sense, I guess--very complicated sense--but to me the disturbing part comes at the end of the line. At some point 25 years after a case closes, a file that isn't marked "permanent" gets pulled and looked at by one or two people inside the FBI. There are no "knowledgeable representatives of the NARA" monitoring this crucial moment. If it's decided internally that the file isn't important, it's gone. Michael Ravnitzky, an FOIA researcher based in the Washington, D.C., area, is no fan of the Records Retention Plan and likens it to an open-ended manual for strip-mining a priceless public record. "The FBI got a list of exceptional files given to them by historians, and they said, 'We'll keep that,' " he says. "We'll keep large files. Smaller files, we'll keep a sampling. Everything else gets tossed. That's what the plan is." Based on documents Ivan Greenberg obtained from the FBI, he estimates that 250 million pages were destroyed between 1986 and 1995.Continue reading
National Archives Reticent About Broadening Mission
National Archives Reticent About Broadening Mission, by Dan Friedman, CongressDaily, Jun. 2, 2008. [subscription required]. Update: NOW AVAILABLE from NextGov WITHOUT SUBSCRIPTION: http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080602_6498.php The National Archives (NARA) is being put in an awkward position. Viewed as nonpartisan and professional, it is being tasked by Congress with new enforcement duties. Late last year, a new law passed that set up an "Office of Government Information Services" within the NARA to help set federal Freedom of Information Act policy. Another bill that is expected to pass the House would give NARA a new role requiring NARA to monitor White House e-mail archiving. This would change NARA's role from that of passively receiving records to actively monitoring and enforcing rules. National Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfeld said that "NARA traditionally has not viewed itself as an enforcement entity but rather one that focuses upon collegiality and relationships." From the article:
Chafing at Bush administration secrecy, congressional Democrats are handing the National Archives and Records Administration new jobs promoting government transparency. Officials at the records agency appear to be balking at taking on unfunded mandates beyond their traditional role. If Congress wants the Archives to become open-government cops, archivists may prefer to remain librarians. "They have always had a narrow view of their mandate and have never been particularly inclined to seek any expansion," said Patrice McDermott of OpentheGovernment.org, a coalition of groups urging government transparency. "They see their mission as providing access to historical records. They see [overseeing] contemporaneous records as a shift."Continue reading
Digitizing History: NARA’s plans for the future
(cross posted on legalresearchplus.com) Earlier this month the National Archives and Records Administration released their Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016. This is a follow-up to a draft policy released in September of last year. A fair amount of the report discusses the use of partner organizations in the digitization effort. The draft relased in September was open to public comment, and NARA has posted their responses to those comments here. (Thanks to the American Association of Law Libraries Washington Office and their monthly E-Bulletin) Continue reading
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