Records now are managed primarily on an agency-by-agency basis with little cooperation. The memorandum directs agency chiefs to appoint a senior official within 30 days to lead the reviews.
About 95 percent of agencies fail to meet statutory requirements for maintaining their records, according to a NARA estimate based on agency self-assessments.
In some cases, that means agencies aren't saving the proper records. In other cases, they are storing records electronically but not taking steps to ensure they can be read or retrieved years down the road.
Agencies aren't required to turn over most records to NARA until 30 years after they were created, making it unlikely older documents will be stored in a file format contemporary computers will be adept at or even capable of reading.
Archivist of the United States David Ferriero has suggested reducing that lag time to a president's full term in office of either four or eight years.
Changing the 30-year window likely will be necessary to make a governmentwide electronic record management system feasible, Anne Weismann, chief counsel of the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Nextgov. CREW has filed numerous lawsuits aimed at preserving federal records. The deadline for saving documents could possibly be modified through executive orders or other policy statements rather than through legislation, she said.
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