Open Government Plan 2016 - 2018

Open Government Plan 2016 - 2018

Welcome to the Open Government Plan for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for 2016-2018. Start out by viewing the Message from the Archivist and the Executive Summary, which will provide an overview of the plan and open government commitments the agency has made for the next two years.  

We want to hear from you! This is NARA’s fourth Open Government Plan and we see this as a living document that will have updates over time as feedback is received. You can provide feedback through the following methods:

• Discuss on Github: We have published this plan on Github so that you can easily provide comments through the “Discuss” feature located on the upper right or bottom left of each page. Select “Discuss” and then “New issue” or comment on existing issues. You will need to create a Github Account to create an issue.

• Edit on Github: We have published this plan on Github so that you can also provide suggested edits by submitting a pull request with the specific language changes. Select the “Edit” function on the upper right or bottom left of any page to make a suggested language edit to that page. You will need to create a Github Account to submit a suggested edit through a pull request.

• By email: If you prefer to email your comments and feedback, please email opengov@nara.gov. We will post all comments received by email on to the “issues” on Github. If you do not wish us to share your feedback, please state so in your email.

• On History Hub: You can also post your comments on the Open Government Space on the History Hub platform. You will need to create a History Hub account to login.

• On Blogs: You can provide feedback through comments on the AOTUS Blog and on the NARAtions Blog. You will not need to create an account to post your feedback.

• On other platforms: You can tweet us @USNatArchives or share your feedback on the US National Archives Facebook page.

Message from the Archivist

Since 2010, we have embraced the Open Government Directive, which set forth requirements for agencies to adopt the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration and develop open government plans. In our previous open government plans, we worked to implement more than 140 commitments in the areas of records management, declassification, the Freedom of Information Act, and in innovative ways of providing access to the records of the National Archives.

This plan, our fourth, will see us through a Presidential transition and contains more than 50 specific commitments to strengthen open government at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and across government from 2016 to 2018. While one could anticipate the enthusiasm for open government winding down during the end of a second term of the administration, we have seen the opposite. During the development of this plan we saw an increase in momentum and greater engagement from the public and staff in open government initiatives. We held more than 20 internal brainstorming sessions and briefings, including our first Open Government Town Hall, which was webcast for staff members in our locations across the country. We also held our first Open Government Webinar for our external stakeholders with nearly 100 participants. Our engagement efforts brought in more than 180 ideas, comments, and suggestions that we considered for inclusion in this plan.

With the collaboration of more than 40 staff members, our fourth plan reflects how much open government drives the work of this agency. Our public engagement efforts will include launching a social media campaign to collect stories about people’s own personal artifacts and documents from the Vietnam War to enrich the experience of visiting our new exhibit on the Vietnam War. The Office of Research Services will explore how to incorporate digital tools, like social media and our History Hub pilot, to make it easier for the public to find the records that interest them, and will provide more customer service training for staff members so that we can better serve the public. Our efforts to improve employee engagement and to foster collaboration continue to be a robust part of our open government efforts, which have included the launch of six Employee Affinity Groups, focused on LGBT, veterans, Hispanic and Latino employees, individual with disabilities, African American employees, and women.

The flagship of our Open Government Plan includes 10 initiatives to increase access to the records of the National Archives through innovation. The initiatives include our work within the Innovation Hub to develop new ways of working, expanding the History Hub and Citizen Archivist programs, and developing a solution for user-generated finding aids about our records that dynamically update as information changes.

In addition to strengthening transparency, participation and collaboration at NARA, our plan leverages our interactions with other federal agencies to increase open government. The Office of the Chief Records Officer will provide greater transparency and expanded reporting to better evaluate records management risk in agencies, and promote accountability of government officials to the public. We are developing a special systematic declassification review program for records that were accessioned prior to the creation of the National Declassification Center in 2010. In addition to our work implementing aspects of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, the Office of Government Information Services will develop tools to teach students about the power of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to hold the government accountable and work with the Department of Justice to develop standards for agency FOIA webpages. The Information Security Oversight Office will continue to monitor and report on the state of classification and declassification in government and will also provide guidance and report on agency adherence to the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review.

As we look forward to the next two years, I am confident that we will continue to strengthen and build momentum for our efforts to provide transparency, and foster greater participation and collaboration in our work so that we can better serve the public.

David S. Ferriero

Archivist of the United States

Executive Summary

The Open Government Plan of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) serves as a public roadmap that shows how we incorporated the principles of open government—transparency, participation, and collaboration—into the agency’s core mission and how open government is fundamental to our work. Our leadership in open government is clear in our mission: We drive openness, cultivate public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy through public access to high-value government records. You will find evidence of our embrace of transparency, participation, and collaboration throughout our current Strategic Plan, our past open government plans, and in the work we do every day. With our fourth Open Government Plan, we intend to build on existing efforts and push for further innovation over the next two years. We welcome your input and help in shaping these open government initiatives.

Strengthen the Culture of Open Government
At the National Archives and Records Administration we strengthen the culture of open government through robust public engagement and employee engagement. Our efforts to engage the public include events, education, and exhibits drawing on our holdings and our unique role in the government. In October 2017 we will open an exhibit on the Vietnam War and launch a related social media campaign to collect stories about people’s own personal artifacts and documents from the war. We engage on social media, including participation in international Twitter campaigns and with staff participation on the @ThisIsArchives Twitter account. We engage the public through crowdsourcing projects in our Citizen Archivist Dashboard. Additionally, we engage the public through our traditional publications and through consultation webinars organized by the agency’s external affairs liaison. 

The Office of Research Services will carry out a comprehensive review of our services at 15 locations to identify any ways that holdings can be made more accessible to researchers with disabilities. Research Services will also seek to expand participation in NARA’s History Hub online platform and how this initiative might be best incorporated into the reference process. We will introduce staff reference colloquia that will provide a platform for promoting the sharing of records content knowledge among all NARA staff.  We will create a “Records Expert” program to preserve and develop advanced knowledge of key holdings among reference staff.  Additionally, we will work to begin posting a list of new holdings on Archives.gov each quarter and an annual list of all new holdings that were covered by the Privacy Act. We will also process and post documents on Archives.gov from the JFK Assassination Records Collection materials in compliance with the JFK Assassination Act Records Collection Act of 1992. The Office of Research Services will also provide training and development for staff members to foster customer service skills. 

Presidential libraries will continue to expand cooperative digitization projects to increase online access to the records. The William J. Clinton Library is in its second year of collaboration with the Office of Innovation on a pilot project to scan selected FOIA-responsive records. This project results in the scanning of textual records and the creation of necessary metadata so that these records can be made available through the National Archives Catalog. Pending funding, the agency is planning to expand this into similar projects at other Presidential libraries.

NARA’s efforts to improve employee engagement are continued in the agency’s fourth Open Government Plan. We describe our efforts at improving and streamlining employee communication and fostering collaboration, as well as building a cadre of managers and supervisors.  We continue to address employee satisfaction through project/action plans at the office levels.  NARA’s 311 service continues to improve employee access to internal services like the IT Help Desk, the Human Capital Office, Facilities, and other services. NARA also continues to promote training opportunities for employees and continues its work to document career paths within the agency. We are continuing our efforts to improve equal employment opportunities through the Special Emphasis Program, and the agency has also launched six Employee Affinity Groups, including groups focused on LGBT, veterans, Hispanic and Latino employees, individuals with disabilities, African American employees, and women. We will also continue to provide increased transparency to NARA’s budget and encourage greater staff engagement with reporting and performance measurements.  

Flagship Initiatives: Make Access Happen through Innovation
NARA sets 10 initiatives to increase access to the records of the National Archives through Innovation.

• Initiative 1: Innovation Hub
  NARA’s Innovation Hub will explore developing pilots that leverage technology to significantly improve access to records as we scale to hundreds of millions of records online. Through the Innovation Hub, NARA will continue to expand outreach and streamline processes in citizen scanning activities and will continue outreach efforts to work with high school and college students as well as retirees on scanning and transcription projects. NARA will hire the first Innovation Hub director to lead these efforts.

• Initiative 2: History Hub
  We will seek to expand the History Hub pilot, incorporating the platform into the agency’s reference workflow, marketing to a wider audience, and collaborating with other institutions.

• Initiative 3: Social Media Strategy
  We will work to implement the Social Media Strategy and provide examples of specific actions that have been completed.

• Initiative 4: Citizen Archivist
  We will seek to expand our Citizen Archivist crowdsourcing efforts and hire two community managers to help us develop engaged communities around our records. We will also continue to expand our collaboration with Wikipedia.

• Initiative 5: User-Generated Finding Aids
  We will work to develop a solution for next-generation finding aids that are user generated and dynamically updated as information changes

• Initiative 6: Archives.gov
  We will seek to incorporate user-centered practices into a redesign of Archives.gov and improve or build new digital initiatives based on user needs and data analysis. We will review web content to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to read on mobile devices. In the next version of Archives.gov, we will redesign the web pages supporting the “Charters of Freedom,” which include the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

• Initiative 7: National Archives Catalog
  Over the next two years, our development of the National Archives Catalog will focus on improving the performance and scalability of the system, and using open source platforms, so that it can effectively provide access to tens of millions and eventually hundreds of millions of records.

• Initiative 8: External Standards
  NARA will explore the possibility of aligning to external standards.

• Initiative 9: Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC)
  We will continue our involvement in the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC), dedicating staff for continued coordination of drafting governance and administrative policies, establishing a governing SNAC Steering Committee, developing a formal training program, and a formal plan of cooperative management into the future.

• Initiative 10: Digitization
  We will continue to digitize our holdings and establish a short-term digitization project plan that allows individuals or institutions focused on digitizing a smaller volume of material to enter into an agreement with NARA. NARA will work on digitizing content and developing a World War I centennial app. To ensure that the public has even greater access to the 1950 census records when they are released in 2022, NARA will digitize 9,000 maps from the 1950 census and put them online in the National Archives Catalog, where volunteers will create metadata that will enhance access.

New and Ongoing Open Government Initiatives
NARA will continue to work toward a reduction in the backlog of pending Freedom of Information Act requests and explore the best way to implement advanced search and auto-categorization tools that will allow for more efficient and robust search and review in response to all access requests. NARA will continue its implementation of the Open Data Policy and will work to add additional datasets to the agency’s Enterprise Data Inventory and on Data.gov as they become available, including open educational resources from DocsTeach and a dataset with information on how individual agencies are managing their email. NARA will also work to enhance the “Amending America” dataset, containing more than 11,000 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, making it a rich resource for the public and developers. In accordance with the DATA Act, NARA will publish spending data on the USASpending.gov website, making it transparent to the public. NARA will also work to strengthen the agency’s use of open source tools and platforms. Where NARA develops software tools in-house for the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) 2.0, we will release those tools to the public for reuse under an open source license with a public domain dedication. This section of our Open Government Plan also details our ongoing efforts related to: meeting the goals of the managing all email records in accessible electronic format by December 31, 2016, proactive disclosures, privacy, policymaking process, whistleblower protection, congressional requests, public notice, and plain writing.

Provide Leadership and Services
The Office of the Chief Records Officer will analyze new techniques for using data and information collected from oversight reports to assist agencies in making targeted improvements in their records management programs. In addition, NARA will improve reporting methodologies and develop questions to better evaluate agencies, particularly those identified in the moderate and high-risk categories for records management program failures. NARA will also be developing additional guidance related to the Presidential transition in the coming months. NARA will host an open meeting to solicit feedback from the public, agency customers, and other stakeholders on improvements to our website and the functionality of the Records Control Schedules repository.

The National Declassification Center is developing a special systematic declassification review program for previously reviewed and exempted historical federal records that were accessioned into the National Archives and reviewed prior to the creation of the center in 2010. By 2017, NDC will finalize its web and instructor-led curriculum in order to educate cleared declassification reviewers, records managers, and access and security professionals on the historical background to declassification requirements and the executive orders, proper document handling, general agency responsibilities, public access to federal records, and equity identification.

The Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) will work with other NARA offices to develop tools to teach students about FOIA, drawing upon real-world examples to foster democracy and explain how the public can use FOIA to learn more about the government's actions. OGIS will seek partnerships with outside educational and library organizations to create and promote standards-compatible curriculum resources that teachers can use in government, history, or civics classes. All developed resources will be posted online. OGIS will also work with the Department of Justice to develop standards for agency FOIA web pages. As part of this effort, OGIS will assist in developing a template for key elements and encouraging all agencies to update their FOIA websites to be consistent, informative, and user friendly.

The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) will continue to monitor and report on the state of classification and declassification in government through its annual Report to the President; provide guidance and report on agency adherence to the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review (FCGR) as required by Executive order; continue its support to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), including support for the 2017 declassification exemption review required by Executive order; continue to provide all staff support for the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) and its Declassification Technology Working Group and will assist the Security Classification Reform Committee when requested to fulfill the President’s transformation tasking; and plan to issue a national implementation plan for the executive branch for the Controlled Unclassified Information program.

The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) is working on redesigning FederalRegister.gov to improve search capability and to make it easier to distinguish official content that has been published in the Federal Register from material on public inspection, readers’ aids, and docket information. In partnership with the General Services Administration, the OFR will work to capture agencies’ organizational directories (from the U.S. Government Manual) so that they can be created and released as machine-readable raw data in a consistent format across the U.S. federal government. The OFR is also working to update the processing and publication timelines for the U.S. Government Manual, allowing for more frequent updating of this electronic publication and its underlying raw data. The OFR, in Partnership with GPO, is working to digitize historic Federal Register issues to make them available online.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) will implement a reimagined Access to Historical Records grant program in response to input from the archives and library communities. Based on recent public input, NHPRC will also implement the following enhancements: introducing a new application process in Fiscal Year 2017 that requires only a brief (3–5 page) preliminary application; reducing cost share requirements for some grant programs; streamlining the application peer review process; supporting an annual meeting of grant project directors to network with NHPRC staff, NARA staff, and each other; and conducting regular surveys of our programs and processes. NHPRC will continue to add more documents to Founders Online in Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 as additional materials become available from the editorial teams that continue their work on the transcriptions/notations not yet completed. The NHPRC will also begin to collaborate with staff at the Library of Congress and other repositories to discover methods for linking digital scans of the original documents with Founders Online. 

Section 1: The Approach to Open Government

Agency Open Government Plans serve as a public roadmap that shows how an agency intends to incorporate the principles of open government—transparency, participation, and collaboration—into its core mission. Incorporating these values into the core mission of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA or National Archives) is an easy task because open government is fundamental to our work.

Since our founding as a federal agency in 1934, NARA has had the great responsibility to preserve and provide access to our nation’s records. As part of the development of our agency’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Year 2014–2018, we revised our mission statement to further highlight our important role in open government:

We drive openness, cultivate public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy through public access to high-value government records.

Our mission is to provide public access to federal government records in our custody and control. Public access to government records strengthens democracy by allowing Americans to claim their rights of citizenship, hold their government accountable, and understand their history so they can participate more effectively in their government.

You will find evidence of our embrace of transparency, participation, and collaboration throughout our current Strategic Plan, our past open government plans, and in the work we do every day. With our fourth Open Government Plan, we intend to build on existing efforts and push for further innovation over the next two years. We welcome your input and help in shaping these open government initiatives.

Please visit Archives.gov/open to learn more about open government at the National Archives. To provide comments, suggestions, and feedback on this plan or specific initiatives, please email opengov@nara.gov, visit the NARAtions Blog at Narations.blogs.archives.gov/2016/03/15/share-your-ideas-for-our-next-open-government-plan/, or log on to the Open Government section of the History Hub at Historyhub.archives.gov/community/open-government.

Section 2: Strengthen the Culture of Open Government

Our past plans describe the transformational work NARA has undertaken to ensure that the agency better serves the public and federal agencies. This work included the identification of six transformational outcomes—One NARA, Out in Front, An Agency of Leaders, A Great Place to Work, A Customer-Focused Organization, and An Open NARA—and a reorganization to support these outcomes.

We also undertook the development of a Strategic Plan for 2014-2018. Our Plan describes our new strategic goals and objectives that strengthen open government and our substantial efforts to improve both public and employee engagement.

2.1 Sustaining Open Government

We recognize that while our work is critical to open government, it is equally important that we continue to strengthen the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration in how we do our work. As we described in our third open government plan, the values of open government are fully embedded in our Strategic Plan for 2014–2018. Our plan will help us align our priorities and assign resources in a way that sustains our investment in government openness.

Our four strategic goals and related objectives are:

Goal 1: Make Access Happen

Objective: Make all records available to the public in digital form to ensure that anyone can explore, discover, and learn from NARA holdings.

Goal 2: Connect with Customers

Objective: Improve internal and external customer engagement to cultivate and sustain public participation.

Goal 3: Maximize NARA’s Value to the Nation                               

Objective 1: Reform and modernize records management policies and practices within the federal government to effectively support the transition to a digital government.

Objective 2: Drive public and commercial use and re-use of government records to create measurable economic activity.

Goal 4: Build Our Future Through Our People

Objective 1: Create and sustain a culture of empowerment, openness, and inclusion.

Objective 2: Ensure we have a diverse workforce with the skills necessary to fulfill our mission.

Efforts described in this and our third open government plan are aimed at supporting NARA’s strategic goals. While some of these efforts will not be fully achieved by the end of this planning cycle, it is critical that we set a course to achieve them. To learn more about NARA’s strategic goals, objectives and initiatives, please read NARA’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2014–2018, available at: Archives.gov/about/plans-reports/strategic-plan/index.html.

2.2 Public Engagement

At the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), we connect with many different audiences with multiple expectations and needs. Whether we catch the eye of someone scanning social media or draw in conference participants, we encourage the public to learn more about what NARA does and how to use its resources.

We use a variety of methods and platforms to reach these many audiences, including on-site programs, workshops, and exhibits; webinars; social media engagement through several platforms; print publications; and interactions with the press.

Events, Education, and Exhibits
More than 4.5 million visitors a year come to programs and exhibits at NARA locations across the nation, which include the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, the 13 Presidential libraries, and National Archives locations across the country.

Film screenings and symposia raise awareness of our archival film holdings, and author lectures showcase how writers rely on Archives records to tell their stories. We have a robust nationwide program of genealogy workshops to introduce new researchers to the records and point seasoned researchers in new directions. And we have continued our annual Virtual Genealogy Fair, which offers two days of expert-led sessions to thousands of people online.

The majority of these programs are recorded and made available online through NARA’s YouTube channel, extending their reach to a wider audience.

Family activities on themes such as the Constitution, cherry blossoms, and archives give children and adults opportunities to learn about history and what they can find in the National Archives. To connect with an even wider audience, we’ve offered adult hands-on workshops and held story time sessions for preschoolers. And our sleepovers in the Rotunda of the National Archives continue to be popular activities for children and accompanying adults.

Our nationwide education programs introduce teachers to primary sources and help them discover how to use them in the classrooms. Our signature program is our annual “Primarily Teaching” workshop, offered in locations around the country and online. We also offer professional development webinars throughout the year. Other online resources include DocsTeach, where teachers can use thousands of digitized primary sources to build and share lesson plans; lesson plans created by our education staff; and our blog, “Education Updates.”

Through permanent and special exhibits, the National Archives and Presidential libraries tell the stories of the nation and its people. In 2016–2017, our special exhibit in Washington, DC, “Amending America,” headlines a national initiative that includes exhibits, programs, online resources, and more. “Amending America” commemorates the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and highlights how we have amended, or attempted to amend, the Constitution. The National Archives at New York City opened a companion exhibit, and a traveling exhibit on the Bill of Rights will tour large and small communities around the country. A related series of “National Conversations on Rights and Justice” invites Americans to further explore issues of individual rights and collective responsibilities.

In October 2017, we will open an exhibit on the Vietnam War and launch a related social media campaign to collect stories about people’s own personal artifacts and documents from the war.

We are expanding opportunities for traveling exhibits with the National Archives Traveling Exhibits Service (NATES). Over the next couple of years, we will be offering exhibits that connect with the national outreach initiatives as well as showcase the variety and depth of our records on subjects such as World War I, the Vietnam War, the Charters of Freedom, the Bill of Rights, Iraqi Jewish heritage, and the Government’s effect on our food supply. NATES will have 8–10 exhibitions on the road or available for booking by the end of 2018.

To learn more about our public events and exhibits, please visit Archives.gov/calendar/.

Social Media and Citizen Engagement
The National Archives promotes citizen engagement across several social media platforms. Through daily engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, we reach millions of people and encourage them to share their questions, stories, and concerns. More than 200 National Archives staff contribute to 130 social media account on 14 different platforms, generating over 250 million views in 2015.

The “U.S. National Archives” or “USNatArchives” accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the agency-wide outlets, but our Presidential libraries and National Archives locations across the country also have active social media presences. Offices and programs that address special areas of interest (for example, preservation, education, research, and records management) use Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to reach their audiences.

The Today’s Document Tumblr blog features items from our holdings relating to a particular day in history and has a large and faithful following. The public can learn about the daily work of our staff through @ThisIsArchives on Twitter. For a week at a time, guest tweeters describe the work they do, share the routine and the extraordinary, and respond to questions and comments from the public.

We participated in international Twitter campaigns—#ColorOurCollections, #AskAnArchivist, #AskACurator, #MuseumWeek, #archivesshelfie, and #MuseumSelfie—and hosted our own particular outreach activities. Notable Twitter activities included:

• A genealogy chat on American Indian records in the National Archives at Fort Worth
• Creating #ArchivesValentine posts to share
• Hosting a #Spirited Republic chat with the exhibit curator
• With Presidential libraries, coordinating #ThanksMenu posts as part of a live discussion with other museums

We hosted an Instameet (#ArchivesInstameet) on the architecture of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, and participated in a White House Instameet (#WHInstameet). Themed Instagram posts included #archivesAtoZ, which shares our holdings through weekly themes organized by the alphabet; #ArchivesSuperlative, which featured the #biggest, #sparkliest, and #spookiest of our holdings; and #POTUSvacation, which shared short film snippets from 13 Presidential libraries in a “choose your own adventure format.”

We also use Facebook and Twitter to publicize National Archives news, events, and programs, such as the Sunshine Week transcription challenge, the “Box of the Month” on the Innovation Hub, edit-a-thons in the Hub, AnswerTime on Tumblr, naturalization ceremonies in the Rotunda, and the annual Genealogy Fair.

In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2016, the NARA social media staff formed a committee to write a new Social Media Strategy that will guide the way for future, more effective, use of social media in the agency. To learn more about this strategy, please see section 3, Flagship Initiative 3, “Social Media Strategy.”

Citizen Archivists
Citizen archivists enhance access to our records through transcribing, tagging, and scanning. Through such crowdsourcing, we are increasing the usability of our online catalog and making more items available to more people.

Citizen archivists make their contributions at their own homes on their own schedules, or they can join scan-a-thons, transcribe-a-thons, or edit-a-thons hosted by NARA’s Innovation Hub, which opened in 2015 in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. The Hub invites researchers to use its many scanners and is also a space for the public and staff to collaborate on projects that move the agency forward.

In November 2015, we began a six-month pilot project called the “History Hub.” The History Hub offers tools like discussion boards, blogs, and community pages to bring together experts and researchers interested in American history. NARA staff and other experts, history enthusiasts, and citizen archivists share their expertise to help researchers find what they need.

To learn more about these efforts, please see section 3, Flagship Initiative 4, “Citizen Archivist ”and visit the Citizen Archivist Dashboard at Archives.gov/citizen-archivist/.

External Affairs Liaison

NARA also increasingly seeks public engagement around its own core processes, including its Open Government Plan. It has hosted two open-invitation webinars to which any interested stakeholder could connect, the first in March 2014 on NARA’s Strategic Plan and the second in March 2016 on NARA’s Open Government Plan. At both events, members of the public had the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions via phone and chat, interacting directly with NARA’s executive team. NARA’s External Affairs Liaison works with NARA leadership to seek opportunities to engage the public, the professional communities of which we are a part, and the customer communities we serve to improve channels of communication and seeks collaborative ways of solving problems and improving services.

Publications

Prologue, our quarterly magazine, features articles based on records found in the National Archives. The stories in Prologue demonstrate the richness and breadth of our archival records. To mark its 50th year of publication in 2018, Prologue plans to redesign its website (Archives.gov/publications/prologue/) to better highlight its resources and National Archives holdings.

Researcher News is a quarterly newsletter that keeps researchers informed about records and research procedures at the National Archives across the country. You can find the latest edition and back issues at Archives.gov/research/newsletter/.

We also publish eBooks that highlight particular bodies of records, such as political cartoons, or complement exhibits, so that long after the exhibit has closed, its content remains available to the public.

2.3 Research Services

NARA’s Office of Research Services is the custodian for over 4 million cubic feet of archival records from executive branch agencies and federal courts dating to the 18th century. These records are stored, managed, and made available by Research Services at 14 locations across the country. At these various locations we provide services that enable anyone the opportunity to discover, locate, and use the records they seek. Research Services is committed to making access to our archival holdings as open, transparent, and accessible as possible.

As part of our open government commitments, the Office of Research Services plans specific actions that enable access to holdings through public services and other functions that support access. We also plan actions that enable researchers to better understand our processes and priorities and to have useful information about how we manage holdings.

Research Services provides access to NARA holdings through a variety of services that help researchers discover, locate, and use the records in our care. Through public services, we provide researcher education, respond to inquiries, assist researchers in identifying appropriate records and using the NARA catalog, and make copies of records. We also operate research rooms where original records are made available and maintain public access computers and other resources for using electronic versions and supporting aids.

In order to best assist researchers, we plan to seek out and participate in new ways of engaging with the researcher community. NARA’s newly launched History Hub provides a valuable online platform for interacting with researchers and providing access to our holdings. We will explore innovative ways that we can participate in History Hub and incorporate it, and other avenues such as social media, into our reference processes.

To ensure we meet the needs of all researchers, we continually review our public services for opportunities to increase access. As part of our commitments for 2017–2018, we plan to carry out a comprehensive review of our services at all 15 locations to identify any ways that holdings can be made more accessible to researchers with disabilities.

We recognize that staff knowledge and expertise about our holdings is still critical for providing high-quality reference services. Even with the digital resources that are available, we hear how our staff’s knowledge of the holdings and expert assistance can make a big difference to researchers as they discover, locate, and use records. As a result, we are planning actions to ensure that our reference staff’s expertise and knowledge of our holdings strengthens and grows. We plan to initiate staff reference colloquia that will provide a platform for promoting the sharing of records content knowledge among all NARA staff. We will also create a “Records Expert” program to preserve and develop advanced knowledge of key holdings among reference staff.

Providing useful information about our holdings is a critical part of our overall customer service plan. We continue to produce our popular “Know Your Records” series, which is now online to increase availability. Online content available through YouTube will continue to expand as we add many new videos on topics of interest to our researchers. Interesting and useful sessions on a wide variety of subjects will also be made available online through our annual Virtual Genealogy Fair. Researchers will be able to read timely and interesting new articles about our holdings and activities through the quarterly Researcher News newsletter. In addition to providing information about holdings, we often share our expertise, and the Preservation Division plans to provide a series of presentations on preservation topics to the public.

We will continue to update and modernize other online content by reviewing, revising, reorganizing, and updating reference information on Archives.gov to improve usability and better inform researchers. We plan to begin posting a list of new holdings on Archives.gov each quarter and an annual list of all new holdings that were covered by the Privacy Act. We will also add accession-level series descriptions for a majority of our new holdings to the online catalog within one year of accessioning.

Research Services is also responsible for many “behind the scenes” activities that are necessary to accession, store, and manage records. We will update online content that explains the policies and procedures used for accessioning permanent records into the National Archives. We will launch online content describing how we process records and provide other “behind the scenes” information of interest to the public.

We will collect and analyze data to forecast executive branch and federal court records that may come to NARA through 2030 and share our analysis with the public on Archives.gov. We will use this analysis to better understand the overall impact on our storage facilities and to inform planning for the future location of holdings in ways that will be most responsive to access needs.

NARA is committed to providing electronic versions of holdings online and Research Services will continue to develop projects to convert our accessioned records, both textual and nontextual. Projects will include historical audio/video and motion picture film, such as the Word War I and II films, which researchers will then be able to find online in the National Archives Catalog. Research Services will also work with NARA’s Office of Innovation to post records reviewed under the FOIA to the National Archives Catalog. Other digitization-related projects we plan include completing an assessment of NARA microfilm publications for digitization, scanning Air Force Awards cards, and publishing updated specifications for archival storage materials online. We will also process and post on Archives.gov documents from the JFK Assassination Records Collection materials in compliance with the JFK Assassination records Collection Act of 1992.

Access to and management of our archival holdings is made possible through the combined skill and knowledge of the 561 employees of Research Services. We recognize the critical importance of a well-trained staff to promote openness and transparency. Research Services continues to work through a major process of updating performance and development plans for the three archives career fields that make up most of our staff. We will continue to review, update and manage our new Archives Technician Development Program. We plan to update and improve performance plans for the archivist career field and we will determine needs for archives specialists’ development plans. We will also provide training and development for all our staff to foster customer service skills.

2.4 Presidential Libraries

The Office of Presidential Libraries at NARA administers a nationwide network of 13 Presidential libraries beginning with the 31st President of the United States, Herbert Hoover. On January 20, 2017, NARA will take legal custody of the Presidential records from the Obama administration, which will eventually be housed in the Barack Obama Presidential Library to be located in Chicago. These are not traditional libraries, but rather repositories for preserving and making accessible the papers, records, and other historical materials of U.S. Presidents. Presidential libraries and museums are important sources for historians and researchers studying our presidents and our history. In addition to archiving and preserving Presidential papers and objects, Presidential libraries and museums bring history to millions of in-person and online visitors from around the world. 

Strengthening public engagement in the records of the Presidential libraries supports our open government efforts and the mission of the NARA. We will continue to work to increase availability and accessibility of records that are both known to be of interest to researchers as well as working to engage the public in experiences that expose new aspects of the records.

We will continue leveraging technology to provide better access to the records, further public engagement, and enhance and expand the user experience. Presidential libraries will continue to do this by sharing records and content on social media and digital engagement platforms, including blogs, Facebook, Google Cultural Institute, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube. We will also use these social media tools as meeting places for the public to ask questions and exchange ideas with staff. 

In our ongoing efforts to facilitate open government, Presidential libraries host public Twitter chats on a regular basis. During these online conversations, staff from multiple libraries share documents on a timely topic and answer questions from the public. In 2015, we participated and hosted Twitter chats on a range of topics including women working for White House administrations, holidays at the White House, Presidential vacations, disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Ask an Archivist.  Building on these successes, we will continue to engage with the public through established and emerging social media channels on a variety of topics of interest. As part of our commitment to this engagement, we will actively seek to learn about and make use of new communications tools.  

We continue to expand our cooperative digitization projects to increase online access to the records. The Clinton Library has started its second year of collaboration with the Office of Innovation on a pilot project to scan selected FOIA-responsive records. This project results in the scanning of textual records and the creation of necessary metadata so that these records can be made available through the National Archives Catalog. Pending funding, the agency is planning to expand this into similar projects at other Presidential libraries.

2.5 Employee Engagement

Improving Employee Communication and Collaboration

NARA is working to increase transparency and strengthen employee engagement through quarterly All-Hands meetings. These regular meetings foster dialog between staff members and senior leadership on a wide variety of issues facing the agency. NARA’s Program Director for Employee Communication facilitates intra-agency conversation at all levels of seniority and all locations. We will continue to strengthen employee engagement by encouraging staff to share their expertise with colleagues and the public through a variety of opportunities such as lunchtime lectures, reference colloquia, blog postings, and other social media business tools. We will further improve the preparedness of our employees to perform their work and engage with coworkers and the public through an improved pipeline of information aimed directly at staff, particularly by improving the information resources of our managers and supervisors. NARA is committed to bringing essential information to staff wherever they work, which is why over the past year the agency has added digital monitors to public areas of many more locations, bringing this information network into 32 of our 43 facilities. By using digital monitors to remind staff of upcoming training and events, congratulate employees by name on their work anniversaries, and highlight important new policies, the digital monitors bring our message to employees without having to interrupt their work to sit down at a computer.

Recognizing that managers and supervisors play a critical role in sharing information with employees, NARA has created Managers and Supervisors’ Forums and the Managers and Supervisors’ Bulletin. New managers and supervisors also receive communications training as part of their orientation, and leadership prepare Leader Facts to share with manager and supervisors on timely and sensitive topics so that they can discuss those issues with their staff members.

We are communicating more and more across organizational lines and physical locations to find the information we need to achieve the mission of NARA. Social media business tools, like the agency’s Internal Collaboration Network (ICN), are now an important way for us to accomplish our jobs. It enables us to work together to solve problems, offer advice, and find information within the records of the National Archives. Use of tools like the ICN increases our capacity as federal employees and furthers the goal of digital government.

We are leveraging the ICN to solicit substantive feedback into the development of internal and external policy, including robust discussions around movements to align to external standards in authority records, and input on NARA’s fourth Open Government Plan. NARA staff members are also using the ICN to manage complex projects among team members and to provide increased transparency to internal meetings.

As mentioned in the previous plan, Business Support Services and Preservation Programs collaborated to launch the Picture This! challenge in 2013, which asked staff members to submit their personal best photographs.  The winning photographs were then framed, mounted, and displayed throughout the National Archives at College Park.  A new challenge, 2016 Picture This!, began in April and 147 NARA staff nationwide submitted a total of 589 images. This 2016 Picture This! ICN page received over 31,000 views and over 11,000 votes were cast.  A total of 124 images received 30 or more ‘likes’ which qualified them for printing and display.

The ICN is an essential tool for our open government efforts to increase internal transparency, participation, and collaboration. By the end of 2015, almost 3,000 staff members were registered users and about half of all users were “active” users, participating in the last 30 days. Additionally, 82,737 total content items have been created on the ICN, which includes 49,878 status updates, 15,703 documents, 10,155 discussions, 5,904 blog posts, 468 polls, and 629 ideas. As we see increase in use and collaboration on the ICN, we are also refining our best practices in employee engagement. Earlier this year we also migrated Declarations, our employee newsletter, onto the ICN, which consolidates information streams for staff and strengthens both the use of ICN as a tool and the agency’s commitment to information management in service to its staff.

By the end of Fiscal Year 2016 the staff who work full-time on employee communications will have grown from a team of two to a team of six. The agency’s work on behalf of employee communications builds organizational awareness, encourages a community of practice, and values the voice of every employee.

Building a Cadre of Managers and Supervisors

NARA is building a strong cadre of skilled managers and supervisors with a common ethos that supports the mission of the agency. Our focus to date has been to strengthen communication and engagement across the cadre.  We have launched monthly forums, where managers and supervisors can discuss topics of importance, share information, provide input, and take part in short “nuts and bolts” trainings. All managers and supervisors receive a biweekly email bulletin from the Deputy Archivist of the United States highlighting important initiatives from across the agency. These bulletins help inform managers and supervisors so that they can effectively communicate with their staff members on issues that affect the entire agency.  We have established manager and supervisor critical elements for inclusion in performance appraisals, and we have rolled out a leadership development program. This program is not only for our current managers and supervisors but for staff at all levels to help build the competencies and skills necessary to reach our strategic vision.

Through an intensive examination this year of where we still have gaps in our efforts, we are turning our attention toward building a greater understanding and adoption of the leadership competencies, values, and traits that will contribute to superior performance. We are developing a clearly defined leadership model that identifies the leadership pipeline, the competencies necessary for success at each leadership level, and the expectations of performance at each level.  All manager and supervisor initiatives, including learning and development opportunities, will align with this model. Through individual competency gap analysis and targeted individual development plans for all managers and supervisors, each member of NARA's managers and supervisors cadre will have a clearer understanding of how and what they personally need to do to meet and exceed expectations in support of the agency's mission.

Addressing Employee Satisfaction

At the National Archives and Records Administration, we are committed to developing systems and structures that stimulate innovation and support employee engagement at all levels of the agency. Activities to improve Employee Viewpoint Survey (EVS) scores require NARA to focus on building skills and improving processes and policies to increase employee satisfaction and engagement. Multiple ongoing activities support collaboration and transparency in identifying obstacles to employee engagement and ways to resolve issues. Offices across the agency meet monthly, identifying ways to improve performance, share progress, accomplishments, best practices, and lessons learned. Managers/supervisors and staff partner to work on improvement plans designed to help staff feel empowered to make decisions that affect their workplace.

Project/action plans at the office levels are posted on the Annual Employee Survey page on the agency’s intranet, NARA@work, for transparency, enabling staff participation throughout the process. We also mandate monthly (at the least) communication on progress to all staff. Examples of some of the actions that NARA offices are taking to increase employee engagement and satisfaction include:

• Developing employee rewards and recognition programs to create a positive work environment, improve employee morale, and motivate high performance
• Implementing various avenues to improve communication between managers and staff (i.e. managing by walking around, open door policy, frequent meetings, Executive meetings, etc.)
• Improving personal empowerment with respect to work processes through clearly defining roles and performance expectations, communicating responsibility and accountability, encouraging work team collaborations, fostering an atmosphere for creativity/innovation, and documenting standard operating procedures

We are conducting Learn, Engage and Act Decisively series, known as LEAD, to provide managers and supervisors opportunities to expand their skills through a combination of targeted training webinars and activities. These series focus on providing tools and opportunities for discussion and sharing of best practices that equip supervisors and managers with the necessary tools to improve organizational performance and improve workplace culture. Additionally, we updated the managers and supervisors performance plan to include a “Workplace Culture and Morale” critical element that will hold them accountable for creating and sustaining an engaged workforce.

NARA 311: Improving Employee Access to Internal Services

NARA is also working to improve communication so employees can easily access the internal services they need. The NARA 311 system is a creative initiative that offers a one-stop, non-emergency number to assist staff with requesting internal services. This cross-agency program was developed as a direct result from the Internal Services Satisfaction Survey (ISSS), Employee Viewpoint Survey (EVS), and multiple focus groups. It provides the ability for staff members nationwide to call 311, choose an option, talk to a representative, receive an open ticket number for tracking purposes, and find the answer they need. When dialing 311, NARA staff members can chose the IT Help Desk, the Human Capital Office, Facilities, and All Other Services.

Over 5,600 calls have been placed to 311 since its inception in June 2013. Calls to the 311 line have increased 20 percent every year. The 311 initiative has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from staff, and we are looking to expand the system to include even more services in the near future.

Promoting Training Opportunities

NARA’s Learning and Development Division recognizes the importance of transparency to support good governance at all levels and in raising awareness about the agency’s career and professional development opportunities.  The Learning and Development Division regularly communicates training opportunities and guidance for internal customers through various means, including:

• Existing policy on training requirements and standard operating procedures
• Information briefs at all-hands and supervisor forums
• Specific course or program advertisements, discussions, and blogs on NARA’s Internal Collaboration Network (ICN)
• Email announcements to staff
• NARA’s Learning Management System

 Additionally, NARA’s training programs support external open government initiatives by providing learning opportunities for NARA’s workforce consistent with NARA and OPM competencies.

Documenting NARA Career Paths

In support of NARA’s efforts to “Build our Future through our People” and accommodate employee feedback received through the Employee Viewpoint Survey, NARA is in the midst of evaluating and documenting NARA’s career paths to provide greater clarity regarding career mobility and development opportunities for all employees. Documented career paths will provide staff improved transparency regarding opportunities for advancement, the training/education requirements for those positions, and supporting resources to build the competencies consistent with the roles and responsibilities for the positions.

NARA began documenting career paths for its GS-1420 and GS-1421 career series, which includes Archivists, Archives Technicians, Archives Specialists, and Archives Aids.  This core group of occupations makes up 49 percent of NARA’s workforce. Career paths will continue to be developed for additional occupations across NARA once the 1420 and 1421 occupations are complete.

NARA is also in the process of creating Occupational Development Programs to support agency career paths to ensure staff members have the requisite competencies for their current roles while preparing them for future roles. 

Improving Equal Employment Opportunities Through the Special Emphasis Program

In November of 2013, NARA launched one of the new Affirmative Employment Programs, known as the “Special Emphasis Program” throughout the federal government. This program is managed by the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Programs at NARA. Through collaboration, the EEO Office helps to identify gaps and provides recommendations to management officials and employees on matters that affect equal employment opportunities in the workplace.

Who better to serve as change agents than employees themselves? The EEO Office called for volunteers, and over 80 NARA employees applied to work on a collateral duty assignment to serve as a Special Emphasis Program Manager (SEPM) for a two-year term. From among the applicants, 57 SEPMs were appointed throughout NARA facilities in 15 states ranging from grade level GS-3 to GS-14.

The SEPMs are working with the EEO Office on efforts that help eliminate disparate treatment or institutional barriers that may have the potential for denying employment opportunities for individuals or groups of individuals based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, parental status, genetic information, disability or reprisal. Accordingly, the SEPMs will assist with initiatives and activities that help create a work environment that supports fair and open competition for all employees regardless of their differences.

SEPMs are a resource to managers and supervisors, employees, and prospective applicants throughout the employment cycle—Outreach, Recruitment, Hiring, Employee Development/Advancement, and Retention. SEPMs assist in the evaluation of policies, procedures, and practices as well as in the elimination of potential or existing barriers. They are not involved in any aspect of the EEO complaints process, and they do not represent individual employees.

During Fiscal Year 2016, the focus of the SEPMs has been on developing an action plan to support the needs of the organization in the areas of Outreach, Recruitment, Hiring, Employee Development and Advancement, and Retention. Targeted efforts will be addressed using seven EEO SEPM Workgroups established in collaboration with subject matter experts. The workgroups are designed to proactively impact the employment cycle based on barrier analysis, EEO numerical and anecdotal data, and historical precedence of EEO complaints. The workgroups will assist in identifying potential and existing barriers impacting the workforce and provide recommendations for consideration to the various program areas.

The SEPMs efforts align with the agency's strategic goal, “Build our Future through our People.” The SEPM program has the capacity to affect positive change in NARA in a large scale through the direct influence in workforce engagement. In addition, this collateral duty assignment helps employees expand their knowledge and learn new skills in the areas of EEO, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Employee Affinity Groups

Employee Affinity Groups (EAGs) are voluntary, employee-driven groups that are organized around a particular shared interest, identity, or life experience. The EAG program, established in 2013, was designed to create a medium for employees to connect to NARA and each other through shared experiences, interests, and identities, either in person or via the agency’s Internal Collaboration Network (ICN); increase opportunities for employees to get involved in agency-wide initiatives, projects or activities; promote professional development; and to foster a sense of community within the agency.

Since the advent of EAGs at NARA, we have experienced an increase in collaboration happening across the country that is helping to drive the agency’s mission and diversity and inclusion and employee engagement initiatives. The six existing groups and their respective missions are:
 

• Stonewall (LGBT) - create an inclusive workplace where Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning employees, and allies, assist NARA in fostering an environment that is accepting and supportive.
• IKE (Veterans) - assist in the promotion of a work culture that recognizes, supports, and develops the unique characteristics of NARA’s military personnel.
• HALO (Hispanic-Latino) - enhance the quality of life at NARA for Hispanic and Latino employees, and promote external awareness of NARA in Hispanic/Latino communities.
• disABILITY (Individuals with Disabilities) - focus on the awareness and resolution of the challenges facing individuals with disabilities in the workplace and seek to assist them in career advancement.
• Say it Loud! (African American) - create and sustain an inclusive work environment that supports the recruitment, development, retention and engagement of African American employees.
• WAG (Women) - provide information, resources, networking opportunities, promote career growth, and facilitate mentorships for women at NARA.

Providing Increased Transparency to NARA’s Budget

NARA has worked to strengthen employee engagement and communication around the agency’s budget. In order to provide transparency to this process, we make sure our internal and external stakeholders are aware of budget decisions. Budget transparency allows everyone to have an understanding and work together as a team. It also allows employees and managers to ask specific questions about their program needs. We keep our internal customers informed via several channels:

• NARA All Hands and Managers and Supervisors meetings
• NARA’s Internal Collaboration Network (ICN) and Declarations, an internal staff blog
• NARA Notices on budget updates
• Posting NARA’s Congressional Justification at Archives.gov/about/plans-reports/performance-budget/

We strive to foster a collaborative relationship with our external customers and seek to increase transparency in our budget through:

• Regular meetings with the appropriators on Capitol Hill
• Regular meetings with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
• Congressional budget hearings
• NARA’s Congressional Justification and Performance Budget books

To see more information about NARA’s budget, please visit Archives.gov/about/plans-reports/performance-budget/.

Increasing Staff Engagement with Reporting and Performance Measurements

Throughout the year, NARA’s Strategy and Performance Division hosts 90-minute hands-on classes for NARA staff on how to use NARA's Performance Measurement and Reporting System (PMRS). Available to all NARA staff through NARA's internal website, PMRS is a data warehouse of performance data that staff can use to answer statistical questions about NARA. The classes encourage staff engagement with the information and staff members learn how to drill into the data and manipulate the display to meet their needs.

NARA promotes staff awareness of their role in advancing the goals in our strategic plan. NARA encourages staff discussion of the Strategic Plan through posts in our Internal Collaboration Network (ICN).  The discussions create opportunities for staff to share how their work contributes to NARA’s strategic goals and opens communication channels for increased collaboration. Workshops are also held periodically throughout the year to provide staff with opportunities to engage with each other and learn about PMRS and the performance measures tracked within the agency. Employee highlights and success stories are shared through NARA’s virtual monitors stationed throughout the agency.

NARA will continue to further enhance to our Strategic Reporting Dashboard, which serves as a one-stop shop for progress on strategic goals and objectives identified in NARA's Strategic Plan. The dashboard will provide links to quarterly assessments of progress against NARA's strategic goals, links to performance measures from NARA's Performance Measurement and Reporting System, and access to other performance planning and reporting related information. NARA staff will be able to use this dashboard to gain an overall understanding of how well we are performing against NARA’s strategic goals and objectives.

Section 3: Flagship Initiatives: Make Access Happen Through Innovation

The National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) commitment to open government and innovation is reflected in the 10 flagship initiatives of our fourth Open Government Plan. These initiatives are significant cross-agency efforts that work together to achieve the agency’s strategic goals, and directly impact the strategic goal, “Make Access Happen.” These related efforts involve large portions of the agency working together to improve access to the records of the National Archives. These initiatives leverage technology, provide greater transparency, engage the public, and are done in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. The cross-agency initiatives are:
 

1. Innovation Hub
2. History Hub
3. Social Media Strategy
4. Citizen Archivist
5. User-Generated Finding Aids
6. Archives.gov
7. National Archives Catalog
8. External Standards
9. Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC)
10. Digitization

Initiative 1 - Innovation Hub

(Archives.gov/innovation-hub/)
 

The Innovation Hub is a new collaboration space at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, where NARA staff and the public can work on projects that enhance access to records and drive innovation back into the work of the agency. NARA will hire the first Innovation Hub Director to lead these efforts. Over the next two years, the Innovation Hub will accelerate innovation so that we can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to solving our most difficult problems. We will seek to incorporate human-centered design in our processes and explore the intersection of cutting-edge archival, information technology, and communication practices. The Chief Innovation Officer and the Innovation Hub Director will work together to ignite a culture of innovation across NARA, leveraging internal and external expertise to utilize technology, engage with the public, and collaborate with stakeholders.

As part of the Innovation Hub work, NARA hosted two Presidential Innovation Fellows to bring their skills and expertise to the problems of providing improved access to the records of the National Archives. The fellows worked on understanding the perspectives of staff and the challenges facing the agency and then designed and developed a pilot to apply recognition software and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to generate metadata from images of records. This work furthered concepts around automation and opened up a discussion about new approaches to unlocking information and data within the records. Over the next two years, we will explore developing pilots that leverage technology to significantly improve access to records as we scale to hundreds of millions of records online.

The Innovation Hub opened its doors in July 2015, with a scanning lab and a large meeting space. The scanning lab provides equipment for the public to scan archival records from the National Archives. Since its launch, we have uploaded more than 57,000 citizen-contributed images of pages of records to the National Archives Catalog, making these records available online for the first time. The participants receive copies of their images and are recognized for their contributions in the National Archives Catalog. This “citizen scanning” effort is an extension of our citizen archivist and digitization efforts (see related sections below). Users in the Innovation Hub are also encouraged to assist in tagging and transcription of  the scanned records and to engage in “missions” on the Citizen Archivist Dashboard. Over the next two years, NARA will continue to expand outreach and streamline processes in citizen scanning activities and will continue outreach efforts to work with high school and college students, and retirees on scanning and transcription projects.

The Innovation Hub has also been a new resource for us in our collaboration with Wikipedia. NARA is the first institution to host a physical Wikipedia exhibit to promote the understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at cultural institutions. We have also been able to host more events, including edit-a-thons, workshops, and conferences. NARA will continue to leverage the Innovation Hub in its collaboration with Wikipedia over the next two years.

The Innovation Hub has hosted a variety of events, including brainstorming sessions to develop a new social media strategy, a scan-a-thon with a professor and students from American University, a hack-a-thon with our colleagues from the Digital Public Library of America, and conversations with visiting leaders from the Library and Archives Canada. Bringing together internal and external stakeholders for collaborative events will continue over the next two years as NARA’s seeks to expand efforts in the Innovation Hub.

As part of the Innovation Hub efforts, we will also explore possible collaboration with a movement to emphasize the relevance of history. Cultural institutions and others that have joined this effort are seeking to elevate history to a greater role in the lives of our community and the nation.

Initiative 2 - History Hub

(Historyhub.archives.gov/)

 In 2016, NARA launched a new pilot called History Hub. This is an online platform that is transforming how we answer questions from the public. History Hub is a support community for researchers, citizen historians, archival professionals, and open government advocates. History Hub offers tools like discussions boards, blogs, and community pages to bring together a community to provide the public with unprecedented access to history, experts, and government documents. It is a place for the public to share information, work together, find people based on their experience and interests, and get help with their research from experts at NARA locations across the country.

In less than six months, we have seen rising participation from the public on the platform, including 1,114 registered users who posted and responded to 201 questions. The average response time for a reply that is marked "helpful" is no more than three days. Forty-two percent of users are returning visitors, and they read about four pages in three and a half minutes. These early statistics are good indicators that users find the site useful and are likely to use the platform repeatedly. Over the next two years, NARA hopes to expand the pilot, incorporate the platform into NARA’s reference work flow, market it to a wider audience, and collaborate with similar agencies like the Library of Congress and Smithsonian as well as state and local archives.

Initiative 3 - Social Media Strategy

(Nara-web.github.io/social-media-strategy/)
 

In 2009, NARA launched our first blog as a pilot project to build a community and increase transparency in the federal government. Soon after, the National Archives established a presence on Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. In 2010, as a commitment from our first Open Government Plan, we introduced our first social media strategy to empower staff to use social media.

Six years later, the landscape of digital media has evolved and grown. Our digital presence reaches hundreds of millions of people. More than 200 National Archives staff members actively contribute to 130 social media accounts on 14 different platforms, generating over 250 million views in 2015.

Access and transparency are at the core of our work. With the explosion of digital choices, audience needs have changed and their criteria for following cultural organizations have matured. We need to provide exceptional content to stand out—even if it means reaching beyond our comfort zone and trying new approaches.

As we continue to digitize more of our holdings, we have more stories to share. We also want to tell our audiences about the work of our diverse staff and the stories they find. Our staff need an updated social media strategy that guides decision-making and focuses our energies and resources to make a bigger impact and more deeply engage people online.

Beginning in Fiscal Year 2016, NARA social media leaders worked to collaboratively develop a draft of the new strategy involving internal and external stakeholders. In June 2016, we published an update of the agency’s Social Media Strategy for 2017-2020 on GitHub and began to engage staff and the public in feedback on the plan. The code for the strategy is available for reuse by other agencies or cultural institutions and feedback is solicited through the “issues” functions. We will also solicit feedback from other external stakeholders, including the institutions that inspired us through our research in the development of the updated strategy.

The new strategy document looks toward the next three years (FY 2017–2020) and will evolve over time. It is intended to serve our staff and help them create digital content that engages, delights, and illuminates. The strategy also aims to create more opportunities for different levels of staff participation so that we can have greater coordination and impact in the stories that we share.

The four goals of the Social Media Strategy are:

• Goal 1: Tell Great Stories
• Goal 2: Deepen Engagement
• Goal 3: Grow Our Audience
• Goal 4: Cultivate a Social Media Community

These goals are supported by specific initiatives and more than 50 proposed actions that NARA will work towards implementing over the next three years. Over the next two years, we will work to implement the Social Media Strategy and provide updates via GitHub, including examples of specific actions that have been completed. We will also work on further development of supporting resources, including a Digital Plan worksheet for staff members to use while developing social media campaigns, and openly share what we learn from our data via the NARAtions blog.

To learn more about NARA’s Social Media Strategy and provide feedback, please visit Nara-web.github.io/social-media-strategy/. To learn about NARA’s overall social media presence, please visit: Archives.gov/social-media/

Initiative 4 - Citizen Archivist

(Archives.gov/citizen-archivist/)
 

After the launch of NARA’s first Open Government Plan in 2010, we sought ways to creatively harness the power of public participation and to help increase transparency into the records of the National Archives. We began to use the term “citizen archivist” to describe those taking part in our crowdsourcing projects, and in 2011 we launched the capability for the public to tag in our online catalog. In 2012 we launched the Citizen Archivist Dashboard and the Transcription Pilot Project. These successful projects taught us that we needed to drive the innovation we had experimented with into the online catalog to scale our efforts.

Since then, we have launched the National Archives Catalog with increased tagging functions for the public, as well as adding transcription, commenting, and enhanced user accounts. Users in the system can now access all of their contributions and statistics for the number of contributions they have made over time. These new features have increased our ability to leverage public interest and added much-needed metadata to enhance search results. With more than 13 million digital pages of records currently available in the National Archives Catalog, the public is able to crowdsource at a much larger scale.

NARA’s Citizen Archivist Dashboard continues to serve as the portal for crowdsourcing activities. Citizen archivists can participate in tagging, transcription, and scanning activities. They can choose “missions” to get started or they can select records that reflect their own interests. Over the next two years, NARA will seek to expand our Citizen Archivist crowdsourcing efforts, including leveraging the National Archives Catalog API in the Citizen Archivist Dashboard. We will hire two community managers to help us develop engaged communities around our records. By Fiscal Year 2025, NARA will have 1 million enhancements, via citizen contributions, to records within the National Archives Catalog. As described above, we will also further expand our efforts with the citizen scanning in the Innovation Hub and in engagement on History Hub.

Wikipedia
NARA has been working with the Wikipedia community since 2011, when we welcomed a Wikipedian in Residence and began holding events to build awareness of the records of the National Archives. In 2013, we welcomed a full-time employee devoted to engaging the Wikipedia community and NARA staff to promote greater access, reuse, and enhancing context for National Archives records via Wikipedia. Our collaboration with Wikipedia has expanded over time, and the Innovation Hub is a new resource for conferences, boot camps, and edit-a-thons. The Innovation Hub is also hosting the first physical Wikipedia exhibit to promote the understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at cultural institutions. Over the next two years, NARA will continue to expand collaboration with Wikipedia and will seek to upload more digitized National Archives records to Wikimedia Commons as well as continue assisting coordination of the GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium.

Open Innovation
NARA’s Citizen Archivist Dashboard and related crowdsourcing efforts are included in efforts by the White House to promote the use of open innovation methods, including crowdsourcing and citizen science. NARA’s work is included as an example in the memorandum from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, “Addressing Societal and Scientific Challenges through Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing.” NARA’s efforts are included as a case study in the Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit, and the agency participated in the interagency development of the toolkit. NARA’s Citizen Archivist project is also listed in the catalog of projects on Citizenscience.gov. NARA is a member of the Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Community and has presented and hosted a monthly meeting in the Innovation Hub. Additionally, NARA staff helped organize the White House citizen science event, “Open Science and Innovation: Of the People, By the People, For the People,” at the White House on September 30, 2015.

Initiative 5 - User-Generated Finding Aids

Finding aids have been a crucial tool for the public to find and access the archival records of the National Archives. In the past, NARA staff created finding aids that contained valuable information, but were locked in static printed or electronic documents, like PDFs. NARA is working to develop a solution for next-generation finding aids that are dynamically updated as information changes. In this solution, staff members and the public will be able to build finding aids to suit their own needs and interests. This would open up the ability for the public to participate in crowdsourcing efforts to develop finding aids that will serve both traditional and nontraditional audiences.

We will incorporate user-centered design and solicit input from the public and from staff across NARA. The development of next-generation finding aids will provide greater access to the records available to the public, invite public participation in the development of these resources, and facilitate collaboration between institutions. NARA’s work on the development of a World War I mobile application is one example of the work we are doing to reenvision findings aids in a digital environment. Learn more about these efforts in the Digitization section below.

Initiative 6 - Archives.gov

(Archives.gov)
 

Nearly 3 million visitors come to Archives.gov each month to search and discover information about the National Archives. Archives.gov serves as the primary face of the agency both nationally and internationally. The site serves as an important tool in providing greater transparency and access to the records of the National Archives.

User-Centered Design and Data Analytics
Over the next two years, NARA will seek to incorporate user-centered practices into a redesign of Archives.gov and  iteratively improve or build new digital initiatives based on user needs and data analysis. We will reassess existing web pages and sites based on user feedback, and design for the needs of existing and target audiences for NARA’s content. We will use iterative site development techniques to rapidly develop, deploy, and test improvements to the site. Improvements will include incorporating modern web design principles, improving functionality for online exhibits, linking related content across NARA’s digital initiatives (e.g., events, blog posts, exhibits, and content from the National Archives Catalog), and achieving greater consistency in branding.

DigitalGov Search
NARA recently implemented DigitalGov Search, a hosted site search and shared service from the General Services Administration. Using this shared service has increased our ability to better elevate content across our public-facing sites and customize the search experience based on data analytics of trending search terms. We are making iterative improvements for the search results of popular topics, curating a “recommended” section at the top of search results where we feature the most popular records and resources. For example, after seeing a spike in traffic for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech in the spring of 2016, NARA curated recommended resources, including the text of the speech, the official program for the March on Washington, the documentary Making the March, and related results in the National Archives Catalog. Enhancements to search results have improved users’ ability to see related NARA content on social media platforms and filter search results to see only images or only resources from Presidential libraries.

Cloud and Content Management System
To enhance capabilities and flexibilities of the site, NARA is working to complete a migration of Archives.gov to the agency’s enterprise cloud hosting and a migration of the site to a Drupal website content management system. Drupal is a robust, open source platform that empowers subject matter experts to create and manage online content. Over the next two years, NARA will seek to develop open-source Drupal modules and code bases that can be used internally across the agency, as well as shared publicly for others to implement.

Mobile
More than a third of visitors to NARA’s websites access our information via a mobile device. This number increases every year, making mobile access to our holdings and information a significant priority. More broadly, mobile usage of the Internet now outpaces access from traditional devices, making it more important than ever that NARA’s holdings and content are available anytime, anywhere, and on any device. We will prioritize mobile optimization, via techniques such as responsive design, making web-based content accessible to the broadest possible set of audiences and devices. We will review web content to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to read on mobile devices. In the next version of Archives.gov, we will redesign the web pages supporting the “Charters of Freedom,” which include the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

Given the importance of America’s founding documents, we will continue to investigate how to make these records more easily accessible to those online. In addition to improved mobile access, the next version of the Archives.gov will include a home page that features the founding documents more prominently at the top of the page, and we have already incorporated the records more prominently in search results. For additional mobile efforts, see the discussion of the mobile app for World War I still and moving images in the Digitization section below.

Initiative 7 - National Archives Catalog

(Catalog.archives.gov/)
 

The National Archives Catalog contains more than 13 million digital objects, including digitized and born-digital records. More than 94 percent of the records of the National Archives are described in the catalog, totaling 10.9 million descriptions of records. Over 300 NARA staff members, including archivists, specialists, and technicians, are responsible for describing NARA’s records. This includes 34 offices within two program areas—Research Services and Legislative Archives, Presidential Libraries, and Museum Services. Description covers a wide variety of subjects in a wide variety of formats, including textual records, sound recordings, motion pictures, maps, still pictures, electronic records, and artifacts.

Since the last Open Government Plan, NARA worked to launch the National Archives Catalog as a new system, increased the number of records online by millions of records, and improved search capabilities. The catalog has been mobile optimized to enhance the ability of the public to access from any device. We also launched an API for public and staff to make greater use of the underlying data contained within the catalog. The system also has a new home page design that prominently features selected records for the public to discover. Over the next two years, our development efforts will focus on improving the performance and scalability of the system, and utilizing open source platforms so that it can effectively provide access to tens of millions and eventually hundreds of millions of records.

With more than 15,000 active user accounts, the catalog is becoming a powerful platform for our citizen archivist crowdsourcing efforts. With new tagging features, users have contributed more than 168,000 tags to the system. New transcription and commenting functions have been added to the system, enabling the addition of 117,000 transcriptions of records so far and 236 comments. Comments have been used by the public to clarify names within the records and to point out issues with descriptive information. With more than 13 million digital objects and growing, it was essential that we build these features into the catalog so that we could scale our crowdsourcing efforts. Users of the catalog are generating metadata that enhances the search results, helping unlock the information within the records in new ways.

As described in the section above, we are working to better integrate the search results of the National Archives Catalog into Archives.gov, and we will explore how to improve the ability of third-party search engines to find, index, and display objects and metadata from the National Archives Catalog.

We will also work to leverage the catalog’s API to develop feeds of records and metrics to feature from the National Archives Catalog. We are interested in developing feeds that could display newly available digitized records, new user contributions (tags, transcriptions, and comments), and live metrics. We will explore embedding feeds as features on Archives.gov and developing data visualizations using the catalog’s API to better help and highlight records for the public to discover. Other improvements we would like to explore include options for providing greater access to the text layer available in documents that have been scanned with optical character recognition (OCR) technology.

We would like to design a capability within the catalog to allow for the public to vote or nominate records for digitization that are still in an analog format. NARA would use these votes as another source of information as it prioritizes records to be digitized. NARA will also explore how it could provide greater transparency for the public in showing progress on digitization projects as they move through the process to online access in the National Archives Catalog. This could include information on partner projects that are out of embargo, but still need to be processed before they are available online.

NARA will also be exploring an alignment to external standards for description, which would have an impact on the National Archives Catalog. These changes could help improve our ability to share data with collaborative projects, like the Digital Public Library of America. See the External Standards section below.

Initiative 8 - External Standards

In the next two years, NARA will explore the possibility of aligning to external standards, including Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). In 2016 NARA kicked off a robust internal discussion about the alignment to RDA. NARA’s Lifecycle Data Standards Board will consider a formal proposal to adopt RDA standards for authority headings, especially for organizations and person names. RDA will enable the public to better link, remix, and repurpose NARA’s data by using international and national standards; allow for easier participation, discovery, and access in cross-institutional collaborations and cooperatives; and open opportunities to leverage tools built by and for the archival, bibliographic, and museum communities. These changes, if approved, would enhance our ability to make access happen in innovative ways.

NARA faces a unique challenge in its effort to adopt RDA because of its position as the steward of federal organization headings and the effort involved to make those headings compliant with RDA standards. After any decision by the Lifecycle Data Standards Board to adopt RDA, NARA will consider proposing a switch to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) from the Lifecycle Data Requirements Guide (LCDRG) that was developed for NARA internally for archival description standards. Lessons learned from the RDA proposal process will be analyzed and considered in framing any proposal for DACS in a way that meets internal stakeholders' needs and priorities.

Initiative 9 - Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC)

(Socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/)
 

NARA is a partner in the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) cooperative and serves as the Secretariat, coordinating all governance and administrative tasks during a two-year pilot phase funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. SNAC demonstrates the feasibility of separating the descriptions of persons, families, and organizations, including their socio-historical contexts, from the description of historical resources that are primary evidence of their lives and work. One key objective of SNAC is to provide researchers with convenient, integrated access to historical collections held by multiple private and public archives and libraries around the world, while also setting the stage for a cooperative program for maintaining information about the people documented in the collections. SNAC will enable archivists, librarians, and scholars to jointly maintain information about the people documented in archival collections. It will also improve the economy and quality of archival processing and description, and address the challenge of discovering, locating, and using distributed historical records.

NARA staff have worked in an advisory role prior to the start of the pilot, and now work to organize pilot phase projects, among them development of governance policy for the cooperative moving forward; coordination of cooperative partners' meetings; development of user personas to inform the technical development of a user/editing interface; planning and execution of system demonstrations and tests; and drafting editorial policies and best practice guidelines.

Moving into the second year of the pilot phase, NARA plans to dedicate staff for continued coordination of drafting governance and administrative policies, establishing a governing SNAC Steering Committee, developing a formal training program, and a formal plan of cooperative management into the future. NARA’s work on SNAC represents substantial collaboration on an innovative project that will impact fundamentally how we make access happen.

Initiative 10 - Digitization

(Archives.gov/digitization)
 

NARA’s Strategic Plan includes the initiative to “Digitize all analog archival records to make them available online.” The volume of our textual holdings alone, 12 billion pieces of paper, make a single approach to digitization impractical: multiple paths are required. Our Digitization Strategy acknowledges this challenge by outlining five approaches that NARA will use to meet our goal: 1) partnerships; 2) crowdsourced digitization; 3) agency transfers of digitized records; 4) internal digitization as part of a business process; 5) NARA’s Digitization Labs.

The implementation of the Digitization Governance Board (DGB) has created a framework for NARA to systematically address digitization issues from practice to policy. Together with the strategy, the DGB has created a structure for digitization at the National Archives. NARA is shifting from policy to an implementation posture as more of the foundational issues are addressed.

Since the publication of its Digitization Strategy in December 2014, NARA has made positive strides towards the operationalization of an agency-wide digitization program. NARA’s internal Digital Imaging Lab created over 7 million images in the last two years and was geared towards a more specialized digitization operation. With a shift towards a production-oriented service system, NARA projects digitization output to substantially increase over the next few years.

The establishment of the Innovation Hub drove public participation in the creation of digital images and their inclusion in the National Archives Catalog with credit given to individual contributors. From August 2015 to May 2016, more than 57,000 pages of textual records were digitized by the public and added to the online catalog. Additionally, pilot efforts were undertaken to engage external entities such as federal agencies and academic institutions as organizational contributors with NARA entering into agreements with several organizations over the past year.

Public Engagement in Prioritization
As the National Archives sets out on its ambitious goal to digitize all of its holdings, planning just how we are going to accomplish this is critical to our success. Both public feedback as well as NARA staff input is valuable in creating this priority list. NARA will start by compiling a list of the records our staff feel are most important to digitize and make available. No prioritization would be complete without the feedback and suggestions of the people who discover and use our records every day. NARA will also ask the public what they would like to see the National Archives digitize over the next few years. We are excited about sharing the priority list with you and increasing the online availability of our holdings over the next few years.

Historically, NARA’s digitization partnerships have drawn interest from the public. NARA feels strongly that the public should have input on our digitization partnerships, especially those that include an embargo period on digitized records being available in the online catalog. In the recently updated digitization principles, NARA committed to posting all such partnership agreements for public comment.

Partnerships to Expand Public Contributions
NARA is focused on expanding the number of organizations and institutions it partners with by developing different methods of partnering. We will establish a short-term digitization project plan that allows individuals or institutions focused on digitizing a smaller volume of material to enter into an agreement with NARA. These plans will set specific project targets and image/metadata formats that the contributor will supply NARA at the end of the project. In return, the contributor will be allowed to set up their scanners in the research room and keep them in place for the duration of the project. For projects lasting less than one week, NARA established an Innovation Hub that allows researchers to have a separate and dedicated digitization space for their project. The researcher can use NARA’s digitization equipment and space so long as the citizen archivist provides NARA a copy of the metadata and images they create for inclusion in the catalog. NARA’s goal is to have 250,000 images contributed by the public and included in the National Archives by the end of the 2018 fiscal year. For traditional digitization partners focused on large, ongoing projects, NARA continues to offer the partnership agreement that allows for multiple projects under one agreement.

Metadata is the key to access. Without the proper context provided by metadata, records can lose their meaning and power. We are expanding the sources of metadata from only NARA-created to asking partners, contributors, and Innovation Hub scanners to complete metadata for the records they image. Researchers routinely create metadata for their own projects to track and use our records. Tapping into this publicly created metadata would reduce the burden on NARA to create the metadata and could speed online access to records. NARA will pilot the review and acceptance of metadata created through crowdsourcing projects and researchers into the catalog. Once the pilot is complete, NARA will assess the costs and benefits to determine if the pilot should be expanded.

World War I Digitization and Mobile App
NARA is embarking on a new engagement strategy around the still and moving image holdings of World War I (WWI) in order to increase the creative reuse and impact of these collections across multiple communities. Through a series of interviews, literature reviews, and case studies, NARA summarized nine key communities of interest and developed user personas to better understand the motivations for as well as challenges to utilizing NARA holdings. To better focus our resources, we are narrowing our audiences to educators, museums and coders. One way that we will engage with these groups is through the development of the WWI centennial app. Educators will be able to use the app with students in their WWI lesson plans while museums can use the app to fill out their own exhibits with different content. Finally, museums will be able to contribute their own content to the app while coders can use the open source code and API to reuse the images, films, and metadata in their own way. Overall, NARA will digitize 75,000 WWI still pictures and 164 titles (337 reels) for over 65 hours’ worth of content.

1950 U.S. Census
Every 10 years, NARA, together with the Census Bureau, releases a U.S. Census that was taken 72 years earlier In connection with the census, very detailed maps of the 1950 Enumeration Districts are being digitized alongside the 6.4 million 1950 census images. (Enumeration Districts are an administrative division of a particular county or township for the purposes of census taking each of which was designated with a number.) Unlike the census itself, the Enumeration District maps can be released immediately to the public. Based on experience with previous censuses, NARA was aware of a dedicated group of volunteers who were creating metadata for every street found on the maps. In order to facilitate this street-level access to records, NARA is digitizing 9,000 maps and making them available to the volunteers through NARA’s online catalog. By working with this group of volunteers, NARA will ensure that the public has even greater access to the 1950 census records when they are released in 2022.

For more information about becoming a partner or contributor, please visit Archives.gov/digitization or email us at digitization@nara.gov.

Section 4: Freedom of Information Act

(Archives.gov/foia)

At the National Archives and Records Administration, we understand that the effective implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a critical component of open government. NARA’s staff, at all levels of the agency, is committed to improved compliance with the statute and the spirit of openness established by existing policy. Our primary goals are to expand our ability to act on FOIA requests in a timely manner, actively work to decrease our backlog of pending requests, find workable solutions to facilitate the prompt review of classified records by agencies that have interests in the records, work with the Office of Government Information Services to mediate or resolve issues that prevent NARA’s ability to fully process a pending request, and proactively disclose information that is of interest to FOIA requesters and the research community at large.

NARA has responded to public access requests for government information since long before FOIA’s enactment. NARA accepts FOIA requests for the operational records that NARA creates while conducting government business as well as for the accessioned archival records that NARA receives and maintains from all Executive branch agencies as part of the National Archives of the United States. NARA also accepts FOIA requests for Presidential and Vice Presidential records subject to the Presidential Records Act. Using the principles and processes embodied in FOIA, NARA makes available to the public these archival holdings. In the vast majority of situations, FOIA requests are not necessary to access these records because they are open and available. NARA also discloses on our website descriptive information concerning our holdings, publicly available electronic records, and digital images of open materials.

Typically, federal records requested under FOIA are reviewed by an archivist when they were received by NARA. During this initial processing stage, archivists determine whether records can be immediately made available to the public, or whether by withholding whole pages or folders from a box of records, the majority of the records in a box may be made available. A FOIA request is required when an archivist has reviewed a box and determined that the records remain so sensitive that a line-by-line review of the information is required prior to release.

Archival Records

NARA’s Office of Research Services oversees the unclassified archival holdings from federal agencies in Washington, DC, and all of our regional facilities, while NARA’s National Declassification Center (NDC) oversees the classified archival holdings from federal agencies. Presidential libraries whose holdings are subject to the Presidential Records Act process FOIA requests separately as well. Initial requests for access to records are tracked and processed by the component of NARA having custody of the records. This process allows requests to be handled by the individuals who are most familiar with the records and who are best suited to talk with FOIA requesters about those records.

The Office of Research Services leads the way in making permanent federal records from government agencies available to the public. This office is responsible for planning, directing, and coordinating a comprehensive program to review materials. Research Services processes FOIA requests for some of NARA’s most sensitive historical records. This office also participates in interagency programs to develop government-wide regulations for the declassification of security classified materials. In addition, the office conducts numerous “special reviews” to facilitate research of restricted materials for visiting researchers.

In Fiscal Year 2015, the Office of Research Services received approximately 2,650 FOIA requests. The Office responded to 50 percent of those requests within the 20 working days required by statute. The completion rate fluctuates with the volume of incoming FOIA requests, including the number of simple FOIA requests that can be quickly moved through the processing queue, compared to the number of complex requests that take much longer to process (those requiring additional review time based on the large number of responsive records or those which require NARA to address classification or other issues).

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, MO, which maintains both the civilian and military personnel records for the entire federal government, is NARA’s largest location outside the Washington, DC area. Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) constitute the single most requested group of records at NARA. In Fiscal Year 2015, the NPRC received approximately 18,600 FOIA requests and completed the processing of approximately 19,700 requests. Of those, 83 percent—approximately 15,500—were completed within 20 working days. Some FOIA requests for military records take considerably longer than 20 working days, e.g., if the request is for a record that was destroyed in the 1973 fire at the NPRC and the data must be reconstructed from other sources, or if the record has been borrowed by another agency. (The NPRC also provides access to over a million requests for personnel records that remain in the legal custody of other agencies.)

The National Declassification Center received approximately 500 FOIA requests in Fiscal Year 2015. NARA’s control over the time within which many of these requests are resolved is limited because we must refer requests for classified records to the originating agencies for declassification review. The NDC is discussed in further detail in Section 6.2 of this plan.

The Office of Presidential Libraries administers NARA’s nationwide network of Presidential libraries. The Presidential libraries are not traditional libraries but rather archival depositories that preserve and make available the records and other historical materials of each President since Herbert Hoover. Until the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA) went into effect at the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s term, materials at the libraries were donated personal property, which are not subject to the FOIA. (The Nixon historical materials are governed by a special statute, the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, and are also not subject to FOIA.) Each library may also contain a small amount of Executive branch agency records that are subject to the FOIA.

Presidential records at the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush Libraries are subject to the Presidential Records Act, which incorporates the FOIA with several variations. The PRA applies to the official records of Presidents, Vice Presidents, and their staffs. The PRA, however, restricts all public access to Presidential records for the first five years after the end of an administration, at which time the public can seek access to the records through FOIA. In addition, for the first 12 years, the PRA allows the President to invoke as many as six specific Presidential restrictive categories, along with eight of the nine FOIA exemptions to public access, and there is no judicial review of denied requests. After 12 years, regular FOIA procedures apply, except that the (b)(5) exemption is not available. In addition, the Presidential Records Act establishes procedures (outlined in EO 13489) for Congress, courts, the incumbent administration and the former President to obtain special access to records that remain closed to the public.

Requests for records under the Presidential Records Act are also subject to notification procedures outlined in the Presidential Records Act, as amended, which requires that NARA inform both the incumbent and former Presidents of NARA’s intent to release any Presidential records in response to a pending FOIA or any other request for access. This notification gives the incumbent and former President an opportunity to decide whether or not to invoke Executive privilege over the records. The review period authorized by the PRA begins after all review decisions, including classification issues, have been resolved by NARA and other agencies, and the reviewed records are proposed for opening to the public.

During Fiscal Year 2015, Presidential libraries received approximately 400 new Presidential Records Act/FOIA requests and completed approximately 500 requests (some of which consisted of carry-over from prior years). Of these, 82 requests were completed within 20 working days, for an on-time completion rate of 21 percent. The libraries’ low on-time rates are attributable to many factors, including the requirement to perform line-by-line review of all Presidential and Vice Presidential records, compliance with Executive Order 13489, the volume of incoming requests, the size of the library staffs, the overwhelmingly large volume of FOIA requests submitted at the five-year point that a new library becomes subject to FOIA (the George W. Bush Library, within the first week of their records being subject to FOIA, received almost 200 FOIA requests requiring the library to process 7 million pages of textual records and 16 million emails), and the complex process required for declassification review and consultations with other agencies. The libraries continue to emphasize the importance of providing an initial response to FOIA requests within 20 working days, providing information concerning expected processing times. Researchers avail themselves of this information, and it informs their further discussions with the archivists about potentially narrowing requests and identifying true information needs. However, with long backlogs at each of the libraries and the increasing numbers of requests, it has been extremely difficult to meet the statutory time limits for FOIA processing. To address this problem, NARA will explore the best way to implement advanced search and auto-categorization tools that will facilitate more efficient and robust search and review in response to all access requests.

NARA’s Operational Records

FOIA requests for NARA’s operational records are processed by the Office of General Counsel, the Office of the Federal Register, and the Office of the Inspector General. NARA performs extremely well processing FOIA requests for its operational records within 20 working days. During Fiscal Year 2015, NARA received approximately 397 FOIA requests for access to operational records. NARA completed processing of approximately 360 requests in that same time period, including approximately 264 requests within 20 working days, for an on-time completion rate of 66 percent. Since 1999, NARA has answered, on average, 86 percent of all FOIA requests received for operational records within 20 working days. When compared to other executive branch agencies with similar FOIA workloads, NARA does an exceptional job in processing requests within the statutory time limits.

Effective System for Responding to Requests

FOIA requests at all NARA facilities are received via mail, email, or fax. NARA also accepts FOIA requests via the FOIAonline portal for operational records. Misdirected FOIA requests are routed to the appropriate office for tracking and processing within 10 working days, as mandated by the OPEN Government Act. As described below, tracking methodology varies by available technology in the NARA office responsible for processing the incoming FOIA request.

The Offices of Research Services and Agency Services use the Archives Declassification, Review and Redaction System (ADRRES), which automates case tracking and the process of reviewing and redacting sensitive and classified materials in response to FOIA and other legal mandates. ADRRES is an automated records repository that allows staff to scan records into a FOIA case file, redact electronically, and track the request. The system also tracks statistical information concerning FOIA requests used for regulatory and compliance reporting. NARA also uses an unclassified version of ADRRES, the Unclassified Redactions and Tracking System (URTS). Both systems are custom-built applications, which are not able to handle the volumes of electronic records now being requested under FOIA.

Each Presidential library has a database linked to the NARA Performance Measurement and Reporting System (PMRS) for tracking statistical information concerning incoming FOIA requests performance and for annual reporting purposes. In addition, the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton Presidential Libraries have the Presidential Electronic Records Library (PERL) system, which contains both Presidential electronic records and finding aids created by the White House. These databases include document-level metadata for incoming and outgoing correspondence that was tracked during each administration by the White House Office of Records Management, which is helpful to NARA staff in finding documents that are potentially responsive to FOIA requests. Electronic records created during the George W. Bush administration are stored in NARA’s Electronic Records Archives . This system also contains finding aids at the document and/or folder level for millions of textual records created during the administration. The search functionality of the ERA instance which contains records from the Executive Office of the President as well as these finding aids are used to identify responsive records at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, whose records became subject to FOIA on January 20, 2014.

Each NARA location outside of the Washington, DC, area receives and processes its own FOIA requests. The vast majority of FOIA requests received outside of the Washington, DC, area are for Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs), which are processed by the NPRC in St. Louis. Accordingly, NARA created a Case Management Reporting System (CMRS), which allows for electronic tracking of all requests for OMPFs. At the NPRC, all requests pertaining to military veterans are entered into this database and then tracked and processed. All new cases are received electronically or converted to electronic images upon receipt.

This system also allows for collecting various analytical data about FOIA requests. Since the system’s implementation, FOIA performance has improved drastically. In Fiscal Year 2003, 60 percent of FOIA requests for military records were completed in 20 working days. By Fiscal Year 2005, the on-time completion rate was 84 percent; as of March 2012, the rate was 91 percent.

To process the FOIA requests for NARA’s operational records, NARA began using FOIAonline, an interagency online portal for FOIA requests. This portal allows NARA to track FOIA requests and requesters to easily access their requests and responsive documents. NARA logs each request it receives and provides a data feed concerning each request to the PMRS, which monitors the processing of FOIA requests against the goals outlined in the annual performance plan. The Chief FOIA Officer and NARA office heads use the data in PMRS to monitor processing, assess the backlogs, set priorities and determine areas for improvement in the process. NARA’s Fiscal Year 2014 goal is to process 85 percent of FOIA requests within 20 working days. In the first half of Fiscal Year 2014, 64 percent of requests for NARA operational records were processed within 20 working days.
 

FOIA Processing and Backlogs
NARA continues to work toward a reduction of its backlog of pending FOIA requests. In Fiscal Year 2016, NARA was able to close out our 10 oldest FOIA requests, which were also the 10 oldest FOIAs in the federal government. However, since NARA’s last Open Government Plan, the backlog has increased by 457 requests. NARA received 22,555 requests in Fiscal Year 2015, an increase of 318 requests over the 22,237 requests received in Fiscal Year 2014. Halfway through Fiscal Year 2016, NARA has already received 28,861 FOIA requests however, including a more than 50 percent increase at the National Personnel Records Center.

Although NARA has made significant strides to enhance performance on the processing of FOIA requests, we still face significant challenges. Like many government agencies, NARA faces budgetary and staffing limitations that impede our ability to meet FOIA goals.

A breakdown of our current work of pending FOIAs is outlined below by NARA office:

Learn More
Information concerning NARA’s FOIA program can be found on our website at Archives.gov/foia/. For information about the Office of Government Information Services, the FOIA Ombudsman, please visit Section 6.5 of this plan.

Section 5: New and Ongoing Open Government Initiatives

Open Data

Archives.gov/data/

NARA’s open data efforts directly fuel the agency’s mission to “drive openness, cultivate public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy through public access to high-value government records.” NARA works to make open data assets available every day—both within the agency’s historical records and within NARA’s operational records.

Access to data in the form of our historical records, or holdings, is a core part of our mission. We work to unlock information that may be held within analog formats, through digitization, optical character recognition (OCR), and crowdsourced tagging and transcription. We face challenges scaling this work with more than 12 billion pages of paper records, including handwritten records. We prioritize these efforts and pursue partnership agreements to further strategies that will make the data within records more accessible to the public. These partnership agreements spur innovation and collaboration as well as create tangible economic opportunity for private businesses to provide enhanced access to the records and, for some, generate considerable revenue. Over the next two years, NARA will develop different methods of partnering in order to expand the number of organizations and institutions it partners with. For more information on these efforts, see the Digitization section within the Flagship Initiative of this plan.

The National Archives Catalog is the system used by the agency to make available historical electronic records that have been accessioned to the National Archives. The catalog includes paper or analog records that have been digitized and electronic records that have been accessioned directly from federal agencies. NARA also makes available historical data records through the Access to Archival Databases (AAD). To learn more about these records and how to access these records, please visit Archives.gov/research/electronic-records/info-for-researchers.html.  

The catalog has an Application Programming Interface (API), which provides access to more than 13 million digital objects. To learn more about the National Archives Catalog API, visit Github.com/usnationalarchives/Catalog-API. For more information about the National Archives Catalog, see Initiative 7 - National Archives Catalog in the Flagship Initiatives section of this plan.  

NARA also continues to work to implement open data policies, including the May 9, 2013, Executive Order (EO 13642) and accompanying Open Data Policy - Managing Information as an Asset (M-13-13). The policy requires agencies to open data and information in machine-readable formats in order to fuel innovation in government and the private sector. Our Open Data efforts are an expansion of our work in open government and Digital Government Strategy and support the agency’s transparency efforts and engagement with citizen developers.            

Enterprise Data Inventory

NARA’s Enterprise Data Inventory contains the agency’s public and non-public data assets and is available at Archives.gov/data.json. These include datasets in a variety of formats, including XML, CSV, PDF, and HTML. You can also access the entire listing and access previous listings from Archives.gov/data/files/index.html. The public can also access all data assets and metadata from NARA’s Enterprise Data Inventory through Data.gov.

NARA follows the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements for quarterly reporting and will work to maintain the Enterprise Data Inventory by expanding the number of data assets included in the inventory, enriching the metadata, and opening additional data assets. NARA staff are encouraged to nominate data assets through an open call on the agency’s Internal Collaboration Network. NARA also works with data asset owners to enrich metadata, including increasing the number of keyword tags and clarifying descriptions of data. NARA will regularly identify new data assets related to information systems through the agency’s Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) process, as business needs are identified.

New Data Asset Releases
Recent additions to NARA’s data assets included updating all of the datasets related to the Office of the Federal Register, including the U.S. Government Manual, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations. New datasets were added for the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), and a new collection for Privacy Act Issuances, including bulk XML for 2011, 2013, and 2015.

Other additions included new bulk data assets from the National Archives Catalog, including Archival Descriptions and Organization Descriptions. Updates were also made to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Grants dataset. 

One of the datasets NARA made available to the public for the first time in 2016 was “Amending America: Proposed Amendments to the United States Constitution, 1787 to 2014.” This dataset is a compilation of information from several congressional publications and contains more than 11,000 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution. NARA plans to enhance this dataset over the next two years so that it can become a rich resource for developers and the public. To learn more and access this dataset, visit Archives.gov/open/dataset-amendments.html. 

Additionally, NARA released a dataset that provides information about the White House Tapes of the Nixon Administration, 1971–1973. This dataset contains metadata on meetings and telephone calls recorded by the White House taping system. The metadata offers details for all 22,723 conversations, including title, time and date of recording, audiotape, recording device, geographic coordinates, participants, and brief descriptive statements. To learn more and access this dataset, visit Archives.gov/open/nixon/37-wht-dataset-conversationlist.html.  

In the next two years, NARA plans to add additional datasets as they become available. New releases will include open educational resources from DocsTeach, our tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives. For more information, please see “Open Educational Resources” in section 5 of this plan and visit DocsTeach.org. We will also add to our Enterprise Data Inventory and on Data.gov, a dataset with information on how individual agencies are managing their email. This dataset, maintained by the Office of the Chief Records Officer, is updated every two weeks as information becomes available on agencies.  For more information, please visit Archives.gov/records-mgmt/email-management/agency-email-mgmt.html.  

Customer Feedback Process
NARA will continue to consider suggestions from the public on expanding, enriching, and opening data assets. Please send us your ideas and suggestions via email to opengov@nara.gov or open an issue on the feedback repository on the US National Archives GitHub account at Github.com/usnationalarchives/feedback/issues. In your feedback, please let us know if there are alternative formats that would make the data easier to use.

Data Publication Process
NARA will determine whether data assets have a valid restriction to release and ensure appropriate data assets are made available publicly. This process will include internal review of data assets by the agency’s Office of General Counsel, which operates NARA’s privacy and FOIA programs, and NARA’s senior leaders. NARA will utilize the access levels of “Public,” “Restricted Public,” and “Non-Public,” as defined by implementation guidance, to categorize all agency data assets. 

Learn More
To learn more about the agency’s implementation of the Open Data Policy, please visit Archives.gov/data/. To learn more about high-value datasets NARA makes available, please visit Archives.gov/open/available-datasets.html. To learn more about NARA’s resources for developers, please visit Aarchives.gov/developer/index.html.

DATA Act and Spending Information

The implementation of the DATA Act provides another opportunity for NARA to deliver on the promise of an open government. NARA is working diligently to increase the availability, accuracy, and usefulness of our procurement and financial assistance spending data. In accordance with the DATA Act, the spending data will be published on the USASpending.gov website making it transparent to the public. Our stakeholders should find the data on this site to be more accessible, searchable, and reliable. Providing accurate and timely data will improve NARA’s accountability to its stakeholders and will foster two-way communication and an open exchange of ideas to improve government spending.  NARA is committed to driving openness, cultivating public participation, and strengthen our nation’s democracy.

In accordance with the DATA Act and open government, NARA is working to transform the way we do business by making our federal spending data public and receiving input from our stakeholders to improve our internal management decisions. Award-level data published on the USASpending.gov website will not only make it easier to understand how NARA spends taxpayer dollars but will also serve as a tool for better oversight, data-centric decision-making, and innovation. Improved transparency in federal spending data allows NARA to make better management decisions and increase efficiency through automated reporting.

Open Source

NARA will strengthen the agency’s use of open source tools and platforms over the next two years.  More than five years ago, NARA was one of the first agencies to have a presence and release code on GitHub, the collaborative social coding platform. We started with a set of digitization tools and expanded to include the code for FederalRegister.gov, which is an entirely open source project. Since then, we expanded our use of GitHub to solicit feedback from the public on improvements and data assets they would like to see made available and we published documentation and tools for the National Archives Catalog API. We also launched a repository and pages containing data sets for agencies utilizing the Capstone Approach to email records management, including a list of Capstone Officials by position titles. To learn more about NARA’s GitHub presence and to see all public repositories, please visit Github.com/usnationalarchives. 

Recently, NARA released an updated Social Media Strategy on the agency’s GitHub Account to solicit feedback from the public and to enable other potential institutions to “fork” the repository for their own uses.  For more information on this effort, please see “Initiative 3 - Social Media Strategy” within the Flagship Initiatives section of this plan. 

In the next two years, we will work to redesign Archives.gov and we will implement Drupal, an open source web content management system. As part of these web development efforts, we will seek to develop Drupal models and code base for Archives.gov that can be shared publicly.  For more information on these efforts, please see “Initiative 6 - Archives.gov.”

We are also working to develop a World War I mobile application and will work to release the source code for this project. For more information on these efforts, please see “Initiative 10 - Digitization.”

Additionally, NARA will leverage and develop open source tools for use in the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) 2.0 development efforts. Where NARA develops software tools in-house for ERA 2.0, NARA will release those tools to the public for reuse under an open source license with a public domain dedication. For more information on these efforts, please see section 6.4, “Electronic Records Archives.”

Open Educational Resources

In conjunction with the federal initiative to support Open Educational Resources (OER) to provide equitable access to quality education, the National Archives is publishing teaching tools that are clearly identified as OER. Following the recent overhaul of the National Archives' DocsTeach website, all teaching activities on the site are labeled with the CC0 tool—the "no copyright reserved" option in the Creative Commons toolkit. Additionally, activities created by the National Archives education team are included in the Open Node of the Learning Registry, a joint effort of the Department of Education and the Department of Defense that aggregates metadata about learning resources to enable educators, publishers and developers to locate and consume them; these resources are being featured in the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign that encourages states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials. In addition to labeling DocsTeach activities with CC0, all primary sources on the site—records from the holdings of the National Archives—now include clear copyright information and full citations. We will continue to label all other OERs that we create as such, so that educators and students can use all of our resources in the most informed and responsible manner possible.

Proactive Disclosures

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) seeks to proactively release operational records to increase the level of transparency the public has into the working of the agency. NARA has also made available online both the bi-weekly calendars of the Archivist of the United States and agencies’ records control schedules.

Operational records can be found on NARA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room, available at Archives.gov/foia/electronic-reading-room.html. This page is updated to include information routinely available to the public as well as frequently requested under the Freedom of Information Act. For more information about the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act at the National Archives please see Section 4.3 of this plan.

As NARA works to expand proactive disclosures, the agency will consider releases including formal correspondence and letters to other agencies. NARA is always open to suggestions for proactive disclosure.

Archivist’s Calendar
The Archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero’s bi-weekly calendar is published to promote transparency and open government at the National Archives. You can expect to find major calendar items by date, including attendees and their affiliations. Bi-weekly calendars are available starting December 27, 2010 through the present on the Blog of the Archivist of the United States at Aotus.blogs.archives.gov/calendar.

Records Management
Inspection reports

With regard to records management and oversight, NARA continues to make available its inspection and oversight reports of other agencies at Archives.gov/records-mgmt/resources/inspections.html. NARA is currently devoting new resources to its inspection program and expects more reports to follow.

Senior Agency Official Reports

For the first time, NARA proactively disclosed all Senior Agency Official for Records Management reports to NARA. NARA began requiring agencies submit this report in 2013. Summaries and analysis of reports were prepared in 2013 and 2014. Beginning with reports covering calendar year 2015 (submitted in calendar year 2016) NARA has posted the agency submissions in full.

Email Management Data

In addition, as agencies adopt plans to manage email electronically by December 31, 2016, NARA is making an agency email management spreadsheet available, which provides status updates on each agency. For agencies using the GRS to manage email under a Capstone approach, NARA is disclosing agency submissions and plans for doing so on GitHub as they are approved.

Records Schedules

In 2010, NARA began to make records schedules available online through the Records Control Schedule repository available at Archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/. The repository provides access to scanned versions of records schedules or Standard Form 115, Request for Disposition Authority, which have been developed by federal agencies and approved by the Archivist of the United States. The repository includes images of all post-1973, unclassified records schedules. Also included are records schedules that have been closed without further action, or withdrawn, and are not approved by the Archivist of the United States. Newly approved records schedules are published weekly.

NARA Corporate Records Management

In May 2016, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) became the first agency in the government to use the General Records Schedule (GRS) 6.1 (otherwise known as the Capstone GRS) for email retention. NARA will meet the goal to manage all email records in an accessible electronic format by December 31, 2016.

Under the Managing Government Records Directive, all federal agencies are required to manage all their email messages electronically by the end of 2016, doing away with print-to-paper recordkeeping. The Capstone approach developed by NARA offers agencies the option of capturing and retaining emails according to the role or position of employees, not according to the content of specific emails. This approach improves the ease and effectiveness of electronic email management.

At NARA, we have identified the accounts of primarily senior officials within NARA for permanent retention (i.e., the Capstone accounts), with the accounts of all other NARA staff (i.e., non-Capstone accounts) now scheduled as temporary and approved for disposal after a minimum of 7 years. A list of NARA’s Capstone officials is available on the Capstone GRS page at: usnationalarchives.github.io/capstone-grs/.

NARA is also on track to meet the goal to manage all permanent electronic records in an electronic format by December 31, 2019. NARA established a 1.1 Electronic Records Management (ERM) Working Group, including NARA’s Records Officer and Chief Information Officer, to provide senior leadership with a strategy and plan to manage all NARA permanent electronic records. More information on this work can be found on NARA’s Senior Agency Official for Records Management Fiscal Year 2015 Annual Report, available at Archives.gov/records-mgmt/agency/nara-sao-annual-report-2015.pdf.

To learn more about NARA’s records schedule, please visit: Archives.gov/about/records-schedule/. NARA’s permanent historical records are in Record Group 64. To learn more about this record group, please visit Archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/064.html.

Privacy

Protecting the privacy of both our customers and the public is of paramount interest to the National Archives. As NARA focuses on accessions of electronic records and digitization and online release of older holdings, NARA has taken on an active role as a member of the newly formed Federal Privacy Council. This Council, established by Executive Order in February 2016, refocused energy on protecting privacy throughout the government. Following on the EO, NARA has been closely monitoring proposed changes to Office of Management and Budget Circular A-130, which sets forth government wide policy on information management and tasks an agency’s Senior Agency Official for Privacy with a variety of responsibilities.

As a result, NARA has reviewed and updated its privacy policy for Archives.gov at Archives.gov/global-pages/privacy.html NARA is committed to bringing all agency web pages into compliance with this privacy policy. In addition, all mobile apps will have updated, dedicated privacy policies.

NARA is also committed to ensuring all existing information systems have updated Privacy Impact Assessments within the next three years that take into account updates to OMB guidance. Current PIAs for all NARA information systems and social media applications, along with Privacy Act System of Records Notices, are available on NARA’s recently updated Privacy Program page at Archives.gov/foia/privacy-program/.

NARA’s Privacy Act regulations at 36 C.F.R. Part 1202 outline how individuals can make a Privacy Act request for NARA operational records or request amendment to their records. NARA has no computer matching agreements and does not engage in data mining as defined by the Federal Agency Data Mining Act.

NARA also remains committed to providing updated guidance to archival units throughout the agency on how to screen records for personal privacy information. While the Privacy Act’s restrictions on access and process for amending records do not apply to NARA’s archival holdings, NARA does protect privacy interests of living individuals using FOIA’s Exemption 6 and our General Restrictions to withhold privacy information of living individuals. NARA also takes privacy considerations into account when prioritizing records for digitization. The Office of Research Services plans to begin posting a list of new holdings on Archives.gov each quarter and an annual list of all new holdings that were covered by the Privacy Act before they were accessioned.

NARA’s only required privacy report is the Senior Agency Official for Privacy’s section of our annual Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) report to OMB. This report is not publicly available. Learn more about NARA's Privacy Program at Archives.gov/foia/privacy-program/.

Policymaking Process

NARA’s policymaking process for creating and revising NARA regulations will continue to incorporate online public engagement through Regulations.gov and RegInfo.gov, which provide information to the public on the status of pending regulations. Additionally, the National Archives has provided a step-by-step narrative about how it develops or changes regulations, available at Archives.gov/about/regulations/process.html. 

Participation in Transparency Initiatives

NARA’s participation in transparency initiatives includes the following efforts:

Data.gov - NARA makes available public datasets and web apps on Data.gov and publishes the agency’s Public Data Listing at Archives.gov/data.json. For more information on the agency’s implementation of the Open Data Policy, please see section 4.1 of this plan.

IT Dashboard - NARA uses the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) IT Dashboard to share the latest cost, schedule, and project performance with OMB, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the interested public.

Grants.gov and CFDA.gov - NARA uses Grants.gov to advertise opportunities and collect applications for grants offered through NARA's National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grants program. NARA also uses CFDA.gov to disseminate general information on the NHPRC grants program as well as non-financial assistance programs administered by NARA.

SAM.gov, USASpending.gov, and FSRS.gov - NARA uses SAM.gov to ensure that potential vendors and grantees are registered in the Central Contractor Registry (CCR), have appropriate representations and certifications, and are eligible to do business with the government (not suspended, debarred, or otherwise excluded) before contract/grant award. NARA reports contract awards and grant awards to the public through USASpending.gov and requires prime contractors to report subcontracts and prime grantees to report subgrants through FSRS.gov.

Whistleblower Protection

NARA obtained 2032(c) Certification from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in July 2015.  All new employees receive information about the Whistleblower Protection Act and prohibited personnel practices during their on-boarding.  Every October, NARA issues an Agency-wide notice to all employees regarding employees’ rights under the Whistleblower Protection Act.  NARA's Fundamentals of Supervision training course for new supervisors includes a module on prohibited personnel practices and whistleblower protection. In addition, NARA has implemented PPD-19 and provided employees with the notice required in the Whistleblower Protection Enhancements Act.

Public Participation Playbook

NARA is leveraging the U.S. Public Participation Playbook to inform the development of several of the Flagship Initiatives of this Open Government Plan. We are using play 2 of the Playbook, “Understanding your participants and stakeholder groups,” in the development of personas representing NARA’s digital audiences and in customer “journey mapping” to incorporate user-centered design. Play 9, “Encouraging community building through responsive outreach,” lies at the foundation of our efforts to develop communities around the citizen archivist crowdsourcing efforts and the History Hub project. Play 11, “Using data to drive decision making,” has helped our efforts to target the most important areas of Archives.gov as we begin a redesign. For more information about our Flagship Initiatives, please see Section 3 of this plan.

Analytics.usa.gov

NARA was one of the first ten agencies to participate in Analytics.usa.gov through the Digital Analytics Program. The analytics.usa.gov dashboard enables transparency into the web traffic to NARA’s sites. We are also investigating the development of a dashboard that would focus on more granular levels of NARA’s web content. These topic-based dashboards would allow even greater transparency into use of NARA’s websites for NARA staff and external stakeholders.

Congressional Requests

The Congressional Affairs Office of the National Archives serves as the principal point of contact with Capitol Hill and can assist offices with constituent concerns or questions regarding agency policy and procedures. To learn more about the Congressional Affairs Office please visit Archives.gov/congress.

Public Notice

Strengthening transparency at NARA requires active communication of our progress to the public. We strive to communicate in an efficient and clear way the major milestones and significant actions and business of our agency. We will continue to make announcements in both traditional ways and through social media to encourage two-way communication with the public. While social media is an important and highly interactive way to engage the public, we also realize that more traditional forms of media are sometimes better at reaching members of the public who do not have immediate access to the Internet. A few examples of actions that will be communicated with the public include:

• Significant acquisitions of records
• Releases of previously unavailable material
• Approved agency-specific disposition authorities and the Government-wide General Records Schedules
• Partnerships with outside organizations to increase access to archival material
• Changes in research room procedures
• Changes in visitor/researcher policies
• Temporary closures of records when records are being moved from one facility to another
• Changes to fees charged for some services
• Announcements of conferences, symposiums, exhibits
• Appointments of senior staff
• Availability and awards of grant funds

We use a number of means to communicate with the public, from face-to-face meetings to social media. NARA encourages public feedback through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, email, blogs, and the mail. Press releases and on-site press briefings publicize NARA actions and programs through the news media. All press releases are also posted on Archives.gov so that they are available directly to the public. Important agency news is announced on the front page of Archives.gov.

We will continue to hold public meetings, such as those held on researcher room changes, to facilitate immediate exchange of ideas. We are also investigating web chat possibilities for communicating with the public. NARA’s Facebook sites reach the public at large, as well as targeted audiences. On our public and research pages, we will make announcements about agency-wide actions and developments. Facebook pages maintained by our archives and Presidential libraries across the nation as well as those relating to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Federal Register will ensure that their specialized audiences are informed of particular developments in their areas.

Through our NARAtions blog (Narations.blogs.archives.gov/), we converse with researchers about issues relating to access to records (both traditional and digital) and the research experience. The Pieces of History blog (Prologue.blogs.archives.gov/) tells the public about our holdings and our history. Through our Records Express blog (http://blogs.archives.gov/records-express/), we provide the latest information regarding Government-wide records management activities. To learn more about all of NARA’s blogs and social media tools, please visit Archives.gov/social-media/.  

Plain Writing

President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 on October 13, 2010. The act requires federal agencies to write “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use.” The Plain Writing Act calls for writing that is clear, concise, well organized, and consistent with other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience. Such writing avoids jargon, redundancy, ambiguity, and obscurity.

At the National Archives, the Archivist established the Plain Writing Working Group to help NARA staff use plain language in their communications with the public. While this is not a new concept, we know that we need to be clear and understandable so that our customers can use forms and web pages without getting lost and frustrated.

The Plain Writing Team:

• Trains NARA staff through plain language instructor-led workshops and makes online training available through NARA’s Learning Management System
• Provides “on-demand” advice and longer-term editorial services to NARA staff
• Maintains an internal plain writing web page that provides resources and training for NARA staff
• Maintains an external plain writing web page that explains how we are using plain language and asks for public comments about NARA’s communications
• Posts plain language “tips” on our staff blog and archives them for future reference
• Uses customer feedback (such as the National Personnel Records Center Survey of Customer Satisfaction) to improve our written communications
• Maintains the agency's Style Guide, which includes plain writing techniques, guidelines, and examples

Additionally, the Plain Writing team:

• Reviews communications directed to the public
• Reviews documents before they are published in print or on the web
• Reviews existing documents when they are revised
• Meets monthly in teleconferences with plain language contacts in Washington and field offices around the country

To learn more about plain writing at NARA, visit Archives.gov/open/plain-writing/.
 

Section 6: Provide Leadership and Services

6.1 Records Management: The Backbone of Open Government

(Archives.gov/records-mgmt/)

NARA works in conjunction with agencies to determine which federal records may be disposed of and which must be permanently preserved for access by future generations. It is one of the most important responsibilities of the Archivist of the United States and it lends profound meaning to the mantra, “Good records management is the backbone of open government.” It makes possible transparency and accountability, which is necessary for success in the overall Open Government Initiative.

The absence of good records management is apparent from the growing number of incidents involving the loss, removal, or unauthorized destruction of federal records. Government agencies must observe the evolving electronic landscape and take positive steps to be accountable for the management of the federal records that they create. While records management in a paper context is based on filing, storage, and scheduled destruction, the digital environment introduces new concerns for preserving and retrieving electronic records. NARA continues to research best practices, develop policy, provide training, and bolster oversight and inspection activities monitoring compliance. As stated in the last Open Government Plan, the long-term success of the Open Government Initiative—and the future of the National Archives—hinges on the ability of each federal agency to manage its records in accordance with the applicable laws, regulations, and standards. NARA’s records management approach remains grounded in these three principles:

• Federal agencies must economically and effectively create and manage records necessary to meet business needs.
• Federal records must be retained long enough to protect all public rights and assure accountability of all officials for decisions made.
• Federal records of archival value, including metadata, must be preserved and made available for future generations.

The Open Government Initiative and these principles further assist NARA in focusing the federal government’s attention on effectively identifying and addressing the challenges of the electronic records and information management continuum. NARA uses the open government platform to provide guidance to federal agencies in framing and instituting needed governance, oversight, policy, training, and technological platforms to support business needs and make records and information readily available to the public.

Office of the Chief Records Officer
NARA’s Chief Records Officer (CRO) for the United States Government leads records management throughout the federal government, emphasizing the concerns related to electronic information and assessing the effectiveness of federal records management policies and programs. The CRO is responsible for:

• issuing federal records management policy and guidance;
• serving as liaison with the Office of Management and Budget, Congress, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council, and other external stakeholders on records management issues; and
• serving as an ombudsman between agencies and the Archivist of the United States to ensure statutory mandates and records management requirements are met.

The staff of the Office of the Chief Records Officer includes about 100 full-time employees, located in the Washington, DC area and around the country. These records and information management professionals actively work with the designated federal records officers in over 250 agencies across the federal government. The Office of the Chief Records Officer staff:

• develop electronic records management policy and guidance for federal agencies;
• offer records management training to federal records officers, IT professionals, legal counsel, program managers, and private contractors who provide records management services to federal agencies;
• conduct studies and analyses of recordkeeping practices in federal agencies to enable identification and sharing of best practices;
• work with agency records officers to conduct self-assessments of their agencies’ records management programs, using the Archivist’s statutory authority to conduct inspections and report findings to the appropriate oversight committees and the Office of Management and Budget; and
• work with agency records officers to appraise and schedule—either for permanent preservation or eventual destruction—the records each agency creates, to ensure adequate and proper documentation of our government’s actions.

Records Management Reporting

NARA will be analyzing new techniques for using the data and information collected from the Senior Agency Official for Records Management (SAORM), Records Management Self-Assessment (RMSA), and other oversight reports to assist agencies in making targeted improvements in their records management programs. In addition, NARA will improve reporting methodologies, and develop future SAORM and RMSA questions to better evaluate records management risk in agencies. Reporting continues to encourage agencies to maintain open dialogue with NARA in an effort to remediate and improve their records management programs.

Oversight
Through inspections NARA investigates overall compliance with federal records management statutes and regulations within federal agencies, the general state of agency records management programs, as well as progress towards the Managing Government Records Directive's (OMB/NARA M-12-18) goals. In 2015, NARA's Oversight Teams inspected the Departments of Treasury, Navy, and Energy, as well as the Internal Revenue Service. NARA issued recommendations requiring these agencies to update and develop policies and practices fostering transparency about how they monitor and ensure records management program compliance. The inspections also recommended greater interaction and accountability between the senior agency officials and records management staff. In Fiscal Year 2016 we are conducting inspections of the Departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Interior, and Commerce, and completing the inspection of the Department of the Navy. NARA has also developed a strategic plan for a multi-year project to conduct inspections of the departments and offices within the Department of Defense beginning in Fiscal Year 2017. In addition to DOD, other agencies slated for upcoming inspections include the Departments of Justice, Agriculture, Labor, and Transportation.

In order to inform the public and other NARA stakeholders of key data related to improving records management across the federal government, we have published final inspection reports from Fiscal Year 2011 through Fiscal Year 2015 at Archives.gov/records-mgmt/resources/inspections.html.

Presidential Transition
In advance of the administration transition, NARA updated guidance for all federal employees describing their responsibilities for managing federal records. This guidance, “Documenting Your Public Service,” applies to all employees but is particularly intended for those affected by the upcoming administration transition. The Office of the Chief Records Officer has developed additional guidance related to the transition, including records management handouts, checklists for onboarding and offboarding officials, and a video briefing from the Archivist of the United States stressing the importance of good records management practices. NARA is working with the Partnership for Public Service to ensure political appointees are aware of their recordkeeping responsibilities.

Records Control Schedules
NARA has implemented internal procedures to streamline the posting of records schedules into the repository. Moving forward, NARA will host an open meeting to solicit feedback from the public, agency customers, and other stakeholders on improvements to the website and the functionality of the repository. NARA will also continue to evaluate improvements to the records schedule repository and website.

Regulatory Updates
NARA is working to modernize 36 CFR Chapter XII Subchapter B, Electronic Records Management regulations. Currently, seven parts have been revised. These regulations have been outpaced by technology and business needs, and have been rewritten to update records management practices for the 21st century.

A proposed rule published on March 9, 2016, proposing changes to the following CFR parts:

• Part 1223, Managing Vital Records;
• Part 1224, Records Disposition Programs;
• Part 1227, General Records Schedules;
• Part 1229, Emergency Authorization to Destroy Records;
• Part 1232, Transfer of Records to Records Storage Facilities;
• Part 1233, Transfer, Use, and Disposition of Records in a NARA Federal Records Center; and
• Part 1239, Program Assistance and Inspections.

We are preparing to issue a proposed rule that would update the following parts:

• Part 1235, Transfer of Records to the National Archives of the United States;
• Part 1236, Electronic Records Management; and
• Part 1237, Audiovisual, Cartographic, and Related Records Management.

NARA continues work to build an open and collaborative electronic records management community with federal and industry stakeholders. We encourage the public, federal agencies, and other stakeholders to provide comments and suggestions to improve the regulatory framework for records management in the government. The goal is to provide federal agencies with practical approaches to ensuring adequate and proper documentation and preservation of federal electronic records and information.

6.2 National Declassification Center

(Archives.gov/declassification)

On December 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information,” which overhauled the way documents created by the federal government are classified and declassified and created the National Declassification Center (NDC), located within the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Through declassification process streamlining, including the implementation of quality assurance and risk management strategies, the NDC has been strengthening open government while meeting significant milestone deadlines associated with classified federal records accessioned to NARA. During 2016 and beyond, the NDC will build on its success with declassification processing by expanding opportunities for prioritization within NARA’s still-classified holdings.

Success with Declassification Processing

Applying the lessons learned since the stand-up of the center in 2010, NDC’s primary goal is to process classified series for quality assurance within one year of their accessioning to NARA, thus eliminating any future equity identification backlog. In addition to that yearly goal, the NDC is prioritizing special release collections based on researcher requests, the significance of the historical topic, and the quality of the earlier review. NDC notifies the public on its web site and blog when new series of records have completed the declassification process and are available for research. The center also provides a listing of those series that have been through the declassification process, but await final indexing, an “indexing on demand” feature that allows researchers to have a voice as to which records go to the front of the line for access.

Success with Automated Referral Notification

During 2015, the NDC was able to expand its focus on making access happen by way of an expanded Interagency Referral Center (IRC). The IRC focus on document-level secondary referral review provides the opportunity for increased public access to previously reviewed and exempted records and reduces the number of records that must otherwise be requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) provisions. To support the fixed E.O.-directed timeline for referral completion, the NDC has implemented an equity referral notification and tracking system that automatically notifies appropriate representatives of other departments and agencies when classified records containing their classified equities require declassification review. In 2016 and beyond, this metrically based system will allow NDC to increase referral opportunities based on individual agency resources. The system helps NDC ensure that departments and agencies meet yearly referral review deadlines.

Establishing a Special Systematic Declassification Review Program

EO 13526, section 3.4, directs “each agency that has originated classified information under this order…to establish and conduct a program for systematic declassification review for records of permanent historical value exempted from automatic declassification,” in accordance with priorities established by the Center. Section 3.4 also directs the NDC under the authority of the Archivist of the United States to “conduct a systematic declassification review program for classified records accessioned into the National Archives.” During 2016, the NDC is developing a special systematic declassification review program for previously reviewed and exempted historical federal records that were accessioned to the National Archives and reviewed prior to the creation of the center in 2010. This pilot activity will be followed with a formalized process to make re-review of previously exempted records a priority for the NDC.

Expanding Collaboration with Other Federal Agencies

Since its inception, the NDC has promoted cross-government effective, transparent, and standard processes, training, and quality assurance measures for identifying embedded agency equities and facilitating their review and declassification. Building on this interagency effort for 2016 and beyond, NDC is working to facilitate onsite classified FOIA or other access collaboration particularly for older (and possibly overlooked) cases and requests. This activity should allow NDC to build on its 2015 success at reducing its classified FOIA backlog by 26%.

To support other agency declassification review experts, as well as the NDC staff, in recognizing each other's designation of classified information and to interpret it correctly during the review process, NDC has been leveraging expert reviewers’ agency-specific sensitive equity expertise with NARA’s own expertise in records management, overall national security information knowledge, and declassification processing to develop a series of courses aimed at establishing a baseline of review capability and quality assurance common across government. In 2011, 2013, and planned for 2017, the NDC has hosted and will host multi-day equity training conferences attended by declassification reviewers from across government. By 2017, NDC will finalize its web and instructor-led curriculum in order to educate cleared declassification reviewers, records managers, and access and security professionals on the historical background to declassification requirements and the executive orders, proper document handling, general agency responsibilities, public access to federal records, and equity identification.

National Archives' Leadership Role

The National Archives plays a key leadership role in ensuring that millions of classified records are declassified and made available for the people to inspect and for historians to mine and enrich the account of our nation's history much sooner than otherwise would have been possible. Through the efficient processes of the NDC, records that might have remained classified and withheld for far too long, are made available in a more timely fashion. The National Archives has long embraced providing the public as much access as possible to the records that document the rights of our citizens so they may exercise them fully. The NDC is integral to NARA in meeting this mission.

6.3 Federal Records Centers

(Archives.gov/frc/)

Through its nationwide network of 18 facilities with more than 1,100 federal employees, the centers serve 400 federal agencies. Federal Records Centers store and service every kind of federal record—tax returns, claims files for military veterans, blueprints of federal buildings and structures, cancelled checks for Social Security payments and tax refunds, bankruptcy court records, inmate files on federal prisoners, and maps of national parks to name just a few. Federal Records Centers hold records for any citizen who has ever served in the military, had a Social Security number, or applied for a passport.

The volume of records housed in Federal Records Centers is staggering—with 30 million cubic feet containing nearly 87 billion pages. The volume of transactions processed is also massive—Federal Records Centers fulfilled 8.9 million reference requests in fiscal 2015.

Transparency

The records in the physical custody of Federal Records Centers legally belong to the federal agencies that created them and generally can be requested only by authorized representatives of these agencies. However, a number of federal records can be accessed by the public under agreement with the owning federal agency and this continues to enhance open government.

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri and Valmeyer, Illinois, stores and services personnel records of former members of the military and civil service. These records are very important for individuals to establish eligibility for key benefits, such as housing, medical care, and retirement or even the right to be interred in a military cemetery. National Personnel Records Center serviced 1.2 million requests for military and civilian records in fiscal 2015.

Collaboration

Federal Records Centers provided crucial assistance to individuals in the aftermath of disasters. Many people lost not only their houses and possessions to the 2005 hurricanes but also their personal records. Some were left without a single scrap of paper to prove who they were—no driver's license, no passport, and no birth certificate. In the aftermath of the storms, the National Personnel Records Center saw an uptick in requests from veterans in the affected areas desperate for any documentation that would help them prove their identities, qualify for benefits, and begin to rebuild their lives. The National Personnel Records Center instituted special procedures to identify and give priority processing to requests from these affected veterans.

Open Government
In addition to storing and servicing temporary records, Federal Records Centers plays a key role in the lifecycle of permanent records and helping to foster open government. Permanent records, as the name suggests, are records that warrant preservation by the federal government beyond the time they are needed for administrative, fiscal, or legal purposes because of their historical or other value. Federal Records Centers protect and preserve permanent records from the time they are no longer needed for daily business until they are accessioned into the National Archives. Archival control of the permanent records is assured because the records are in continuous federal custody for their entire lifecycle. About 90 percent of textual permanent records that are accessioned into the National Archives have come through the federal records center system.

The Federal Records Centers have ably served the federal government and the citizens of the United States for more than 50 years. As the needs of federal agencies change and grow, NARA's Federal Records Centers are also changing and growing to ensure that they will continue to protect the information assets of the federal government.

6.4 Electronic Records Archives

(Archives.gov/era/)
Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is a complex information management system that was developed to archive the variety of electronic records that the government currently produces. ERA is designed to support access by authorized users within NARA and across the federal government, as well as provide public access to releasable records. The continued existence of ERA is crucial to open government because it will provide long-term preservation and access to electronic records.

ERA is a “system of systems,” with multiple components that perform archival functions and manage records governed by different legal frameworks. The complexity of ERA architecture is simplified by this diagram, which shows the four essential functions that ERA performs.

• Government agencies use the Submission function to deliver records and metadata into the federal instance of ERA
• Electronic records are preserved and reviewed in the Repository
• The National Archives’ knowledge of what those historically valuable records are, who created them and why, and what processes have been applied to them is all documented in the Metadata
• The public uses the National Archives Catalog to research public releasable records

ERA is a continuous state of improvement, as new tools are added to handle the variety of records and formats coming to NARA. NARA is currently building ERA 2.0, using an agile development approach. User Stories are documented, taking the place of a massive list of fixed requirements, and development takes place in four week sprints, producing working code that the staff can see and provide feedback on every month. The User Stories provide implementation guidance and acceptance criteria for the functional requirements, and each four week sprint both closes stories and surfaces requirements for new stories. The process leverages work done to date, but is more transparent than in the past, and provides for a much greater level of participation for NARA staff to guide the development.

NARA is taking a modular approach in modernizing ERA in an effort to reduce overall complexity of the system and meet ever-changing federal electronic record management requirements.  The system will be comprised of three modules. The Digital Processing Environment (DPE) in ERA 2.0 supports the ingest process, and provides the software tools and metadata editing capabilities necessary for electronic records verification and processing functions, where tools can be swapped in and out as needs change. The initial implementation is scoped to include approximately fifteen tools, both embedded thin client as well as thick client tools accessed through virtual machines provided for each processing archivist. Initial tools include those for format characterization, bulk file reformatting, image manipulation, common business productivity software, PII recognition, and redaction. A tool management framework has already been built to allow the simple addition and substitution of tools, and to support multiple VM workbench images for specialized needs such as textual processing versus video or audio processing.

The long-term storage, search and retrieval capabilities for electronic records, once they have been processed and verified in the DPE, will be provided by a Digital Object Repository (DOR) component of ERA. DOR will provide all holdings management and preservation functions, including recording of fixities, object versioning, search, auditing, and reporting. When additional processing is needed, such as bulk preservation actions or creation of new public use versions of records to meet researcher requests, files are copied into the DPE environment for the work to take place, then versioned back into the DOR. DOR maintains the audit trail for all actions performed automatically or manually in its data warehouse.

Lastly, the current online forms and approval workflows for the scheduling and both physical and legal transfer of government records to NARA will be provided by the Business Object Management (BOM) component of ERA.  The current system includes only a single workflow for federal records that excludes other record types; ERA 2.0 will comprise multiple workflows for federal, Presidential, legislative and judicial records, digitized analog records, and donated materials, with a mechanism to easily update workflows or instantiate new workflows as requirements change.

Each module—DPE, DOR, and BOM—is an independent codebase and not a monolithic system. The implementation is a custom Java application but leverages open source tools in the stack and will, at least for unclassified records, be cloud-based. Government agencies are increasingly managing their electronic records in the cloud, and NARA would like to be able to take advantage of a “Data at Rest” concept where records in the cloud do not need to be repeatedly moved to come under NARA control, be processed, or made accessible—the National Archives Catalog is already a cloud-based service. Given the scale projections for the transfer of electronic records to NARA and the digitization of analog records, the elasticity of the cloud is a must for the review and processing of records. Processing archivists will be working entirely in the cloud, utilizing embedded tools for bulk actions such as format characterization and reformatting, and working in virtualized workbenches directly on the files in the cloud to take advantage of elastic compute capabilities. 

While public access to records is enabled through the National Archives Catalog, the DOR will include advanced search functions for staff of both metadata and record content. This will support highly granular search and review requirements to find sensitive content and review information when searching for records responsive to FOIA or other researcher access requests.

6.5 Office of Government Information Services

(ogis.archives.gov/)

The Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) opened at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in September 2009. Amendments to the FOIA signed by President Obama on June 30, 2016 expand OGIS’s role in providing mediation services to resolve FOIA disputes between requesters and federal agencies, reviewing agencies’ policies, procedures and compliance under FOIA, and identifying policies and procedures for improving compliance with FOIA.

OGIS will continue to provide leadership and administrative support to the FOIA Advisory Committee. NARA established the FOIA Advisory Committee in May 2014 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to support the Administration’s goal to modernize the administration of FOIA in the second United States Open Government National Action Plan. The Committee brings together agency FOIA professionals and requesters to collaborate on recommendations to improve FOIA administration and proactive disclosure. In order to build on the improvements in the administration of FOIA since 2009, the White House charged the Committee during its second term to look broadly at the challenges that agency FOIA programs will face in light of an ever-increasing volume of electronic records, and chart a course for how FOIA should operate in the future.

As the Federal FOIA Ombudsman, OGIS works to improve understanding of the FOIA process and acts as a resource for FOIA requesters and federal agencies. As part of the commitments in the third United States Open Government National Action Plan, OGIS will work with other NARA offices to develop tools to teach students about FOIA, drawing upon real-world examples to foster democracy and explain how the public can use FOIA to learn more about the government’s actions. OGIS will seek partnerships with outside educational and library organizations to create and promote standards-compatible curriculum resources that teachers can use in government, history, or civics classes. All developed resources will be posted online.

To further improve public understanding of the FOIA process, OGIS will work with the Department of Justice to develop standards for agency FOIA web pages. As part of this effort, OGIS will assist in developing a template for key elements and encouraging all agencies to update their FOIA websites to be consistent, informative, and user-friendly.

6.6 Information Security Oversight Office

(Archives.gov/isoo/)

The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) is a component of NARA and receives its policy and program guidance from the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. ISOO supports the President by ensuring that the Government protects and provides proper access to information to advance the national and public interest. ISOO leads efforts to standardize and assess the management of classified and controlled unclassified information through oversight, policy development, guidance, education, and reporting. The ISOO mission extends into numerous areas, and those listed below directly support open government.

In order to keep the public informed on the state of classification and declassification in the government, ISOO collects statistical data from all the relevant agencies about their programs. ISOO reports its findings annually to the President and makes the report available to the public. ISOO will continue to monitor and report on the state of classification and declassification in government through its annual Report to the President. ISOO will provide guidance and report on agency adherence to the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review (FCGR) as required by Executive Order.

The Director of ISOO is the Executive Secretary of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP). ISOO provides all staff support for the ISCAP. The ISCAP plays a unique role in open government by serving as an impartial appeal resource for any member of the public who submits mandatory declassification review requests to a federal agency. Since 1996, the ISCAP has acted on a total of 2,407 documents. Of these, the Panel declassified additional information in 75 percent of the documents. Specifically, the Panel declassified 694 documents (29 percent) in their entirety, declassified 1108 documents (46 percent) in part, and fully affirmed the declassification decisions of agencies in 605 documents (25 percent). ISOO will continue to support the ISCAP by facilitating meetings, preparing documents for review by the panel and posting information about decisions on the ISCAP website, to include the documents declassified and released by the panel. Agencies consider the decisions of the ISCAP when determining their own declassification decisions, helping to provide current and consistent decision-making across agencies. Additionally, ISOO will support the ISCAP during the 2017 declassification exemption review required by Executive Order.

The Director of ISOO is the Executive Secretary of the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB). ISOO provides all staff support for the PIDB and the PIDB’s Declassification Technology Working Group, established in 2015. The PIDB is a committee that advises and makes recommendations to the President and other executive branch officials on declassification in order to promote the fullest possible public access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities. The President included many PIDB recommendations in his Executive Order, including establishing the National Declassification Center in 2009. The Second Open Government National Action Plan includes recommendations from the PIDB’s Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System. These include creating the Security Classification Reform Committee to drive reform in the areas of classification and declassification and calling for the systematic review and declassification of historical data on nuclear activities. The President’s Third Open Government National Action Plan continues building upon technological modernization for classification, declassification, and records management recommended by the PIDB. ISOO will continue to provide all staff support for the PIDB and its Declassification Technology Working Group and will assist the Security Classification Reform Committee when requested to fulfill the President’s transformation tasking.

In order to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the declassification process, ISOO operates an on-site review program that examines and grades recent declassification products. This on-site review program covers all agencies ISOO deems possessing significant declassification programs. These reviews focus on three major areas of concern - missed equities, improper exemptions, and improper referrals.

• Missed equities indicate instances of a declassification review not identifying for referral the security classification interest of one agency found in the record of another agency;
• Improper exemptions indicate instances of a declassification review resulting in the attempt to exempt a record from automatic declassification under an exemption category not permitted by that agency’s declassification guide as approved by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel;
• Improper referrals indicate instances of a declassification review resulting in the referral of records to agencies lacking the authority to exempt information from declassification or waiving their interest in declassification.

One of the main benefits of this program comes from its ability to identify weaknesses in agency staff training and experience. ISOO addresses those weaknesses with focused training support. This program is one of ISOO’s most successful on-site review programs. Since 2008 when ISOO launched the program, agencies’ graded scores improved from averages in the high 70s to the high 90s. ISOO concluded its initial five-year assessment period in Fiscal Year 2012, accomplishing its strategic goal of improving the quality of agency declassification review programs. ISOO now uses an updated assessment plan and revised scoring methodology to balance the use of ISOO and agency resources with the need to monitor automatic declassification review proficiency.

ISOO also conducts general on-site reviews of agency security classification programs. The reviews examine numerous topics, but the central feature is the analysis of classification policies and procedures, to include the evaluation of a sampling of classified products. ISOO will continue its on-site security classification assessment program with the strategic goal of helping agencies continue to improve their programs and maintain high scores for their reviews.

Controlled Unclassified Information

ISOO fulfills Executive Agent (EA) responsibilities for the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Program, which were designated by Executive Order 13556 to NARA. The CUI Program mission is to standardize the way the Executive branch handles unclassified information that requires protection consistent with and pursuant to law, federal regulation, and Government-wide policy, while emphasizing and enhancing the openness, transparency, and uniformity of government-wide practices.

The EA advanced its policy development strategy by completing a draft implementing directive and issuing a proposed rule on CUI (32 CFR 2002), which included an opportunity for public comment. With the issuance of 32 CFR 2002, the EA plans to issue phased implementation schedule for the Executive branch. In addition to the CUI Advisory Council, established during FY 2013 to improve consultative functions, the CUI EA obtained direct input on the draft directive from public interest groups through meetings and submission of comments. ISOO continues publishing requirements and providing training resources through the CUI EA website and online CUI Registry. The EA continues to broaden its outreach activities through meetings with Senior Agency Officials and their staffs, particularly those of the President’s Cabinet, as well as State, local, and private sector entities, and public interest groups.

The EA and Office of Information Policy (Department of Justice) jointly published a memorandum to expand upon the Fiscal Year 2012 issuance of Guidance Regarding CUI and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). ISOO will continue developing CUI baseline training on final policy and guidance in anticipation of the CUI Program’s target date for Initial Operating Capability. All CUI training modules are publicly available at the CUI website for either direct access or download. Training source code is available to allow mission-specific modification and implementation for agencies.

6.7 Office of the Federal Register

(Archives.gov/federal-register)
NARA’s Office of the Federal Register (OFR) provides ready access to the official text of federal laws, Presidential documents, agency regulations, and descriptions of federal organizations, programs, and activities. OFR publications include the daily Federal Register, the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), the annual Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Privacy Act Issuances, Public and Private Laws, U.S. Statutes at Large, the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, and the U.S. Government Manual. All OFR publications are produced jointly with the Government Publishing Office (GPO) under a long-standing statutory partnership.

Open Government at the OFR

Since its creation in the 1935, the OFR has been a leader in promoting the ideals of transparency and open government. As we have entered the digital age, the OFR and GPO have made the Federal Register, CFR, Public Papers of the Presidents, and Privacy Act Issuances available as bulk XML data to enable anyone to access and re-use this information as needed. Recently the eCFR has been added to the OFR's XML repository, and additional publications are currently being evaluated with the intention of adding more datasets to the OFR’s publications collection.

Redesigning Federalregister.gov

Federalregister.gov was released in 2010 to improve readability and usability of content published in the Federal Register. Currently we are working on a complete redesign of the site to improve search capability and to make it easier to distinguish official content that has been published in the Federal Register from material on public inspection, readers’ aids, and docket information. The site is open source and underlying code can be found on GitHub.

Open Data

The OFR will continue its strong focus on creating and releasing quality raw data for end users to repurpose. In partnership with the GPO, we released the XML version of the eCFR. For the public, the goal is to provide improved user readability and navigation within the eCFR and the ability to compare past, current, and future versions of CFR provisions. It will also provide greater opportunities for APIs and to customize delivery for targeted audiences.

Standardizing Government Organizational Charts

In partnership with the General Services Administration, OFR will work to capture agencies’ organizational directories (from the U.S. Government Manual) so that they can be created and released as machine-readable raw data in a consistent format across the U.S. federal government. Standardizing this material as open data will allow other government bodies, including state and local governments, to also publish using the open data format. Creating this standardization will help the public access information and contact government, while also allowing government to more easily serve the public. This joint effort is one of the commitments set out in the third U.S. Open Government National Action Plan.

Continuously Updated U.S. Government Manual

The OFR is working to update the processing and publication timelines for the U.S. Government Manual. These new efficiencies will allow for more frequent updating of this electronic publication and its underlying raw data.

Bulk Data Applications

Over the past several years, OFR has been adding its publications, one by one, to the Data.gov repository and to FDsys.gov. We’ve now added the Privacy Act Issuances to both sites.

Digitizing the Historic Federal Register
The OFR, in partnership with GPO, has started scanning the first set of Federal Register issues (1990-1994) that will be converted to an official PDF format. This project, when complete, will make historical issues of the Federal Register available online, beginning with the first issues from 1936.

6.8 National Historical Publications and Records Commission

(Archives.gov/nhprc)
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) enables the National Archives to reach beyond federal records and assist in “making access happen” with records held by state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities, and other institutions.  It carries out this mission through competitive grants that invest in archives preservation and access projects, online publication of historical records, digital dissemination of archival collections, curation of state government digital records, and research and development in new archival methods—particularly those that advance citizen engagement with primary sources.

Congress created the NHPRC in the same 1934 act that established the National Archives, acknowledging that some of nation’s most vital historical records are often held outside of federal stewardship, including the documents and papers of America’s Founding Fathers, dozens of U.S. Presidents and statesmen, civil rights leaders, scientists, inventors, and records that are primarily important to state and local history.  Through the NHPRC, the National Archives is committed to partnering with the network of repositories that comprise the nation’s archives, and helps them to preserve and make accessible those records, wherever located, that are vital to a transparent and open government, as well as a deeper understanding of our rights, history, and culture.

Leadership Initiatives

During Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 the NHPRC will focus on implementing its strategic plan, newly devised and approved in May 2016 (Archives.gov/nhprc/about/strategic-plan.html).

There are four broad goals to the plan, with associated activities to carry them out.

• Connect the National Archives with the work of the nation’s archives
• Expand access to the nation’s historical records
• Engage the American people in preserving and discovering the American record
• Enhance the capacity of small and diverse organizations with historical records collections

The NHPRC will undertake a set of targeted initiatives during Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 that bring together many communities with an interest in these goals and related challenges, and we will lead collaborative efforts with those communities in developing common strategies for addressing them.  We expect that the results of these initiatives will directly impact our grant program offerings going forward. In addition, in Fiscal Year 2017 the NHPRC will implement a reimagined Access to Historical Records grant program in response to input from the archives and library communities.  We expect that the new program will result in new and first-time applicants with projects that bring innovation and best practices to light.

The NHPRC reviews its policies and procedures on an ongoing basis, and routinely solicits stakeholder input about its grant programs and processes.  Recent public input on our processes will result in the following enhancements: the introduction of a new application process in Fiscal Year 2017 that requires only a brief (3-5 page) preliminary application; the reduction in cost share requirements for some grant programs; the streamlining of the application peer review process; the support of an annual meeting of grant project directors to network with NHPRC staff, NARA staff, and each other; and conducting regular surveys of our programs and processes (the first being conducted in April 2016).

Up-to-Date Information about NHPRC awards

We continue to report all grants made to the federal website, USASpending.gov, on a monthly basis.  All NHPRC grants from 2001 to the present are featured on USASpending.gov including recipient name, project title, amount awarded, project period, location, and additional information.  Individuals may also download the information into a variety of formats (such as CSV or XML files).  We continue to comply with all DATA Act reporting requirements as well.

Quantitative Analysis of grants

We report monthly via the National Archives’ Performance Measurement and Reporting System (PMRS) the results of completed grants, including the number of cubic feet and electronic records preserved, amount of digital facsimiles created, and volumes published.  In addition, we assess the overall success of each project. The information is available in a summary format on the PMRS website, with success rates beginning in 2002, and complete information after 2004.  We summarize this information for quarterly narrative performance reports as well.

 Communicating Results with the Public  

The public has access to qualitative results of specific grants via our Facebook daily postings and other social media outlets, our bi-monthly online newsletter, the NHPRC annual report, our website, and our contribution to the National Archives’ Performance and Accountability Report.

Creation of New Resources Using Historical Records

Founders Online             

Since its launch in June 2013, Founders Online (founders.archives.gov) has become an award winning web tool with an ever-growing population of users.  This free and fully searchable database contains modern transcripts of over 175,000 documents from the nation’s founders and the founding era.  The transcriptions and associated notes make the original documents accessible and intelligible.  Users include educators, scholarly researchers and historians, journalists, curators, genealogists and students – all of whom tell us that Founders Online is powerful and easy to use.

We will continue to add more documents in Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2018 as additional materials become available from the editorial teams that continue their work on the transcriptions/notations not yet completed.  In addition, the NHPRC will begin to collaborate with staff at the Library of Congress and other possible repositories to discover methods for linking digital scans of the original documents with Founders Online.  

Appendix A: Summary of Comments Received

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) created a robust dialog and consultation process for the development of the agency’s fourth Open Government Plan.  Internal and external engagement efforts surpassed all previous efforts, which resulted in more than 180 discrete ideas, suggestions, and proposals for strengthening open government at NARA.

NARA held more than 10 internal brainstorming sessions and office briefings. NARA also hosted its first webcast Open Government Town Hall for all staff members to participate in locations across the country. The Archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, was joined by NARA senior executives to present on open government topics and respond to suggestions.  The Open Government Team at NARA received feedback via email and on the agency’s Internal Collaboration Network throughout the two-month consultation process. 

During Sunshine Week in March 2016, NARA’s external engagement kicked off with blog posts on the NARAtions Blog, NDC Blog, Records Express, the FOIA Ombudsman, and social media posts on Facebook and Twitter. The Open Government Team at NARA also monitored ideas and comments submitted on the Open Government space on History Hub, a pilot project for researchers and the public to ask questions and collaborate on research. 

On March 29, 2016, the Archivist of the United States and NARA Senior Executives held the first Open Government webinar.  The webinar included an overview and presentations on innovation, research services, declassification, Freedom of Information Act, and records management. The recording from this webinar is also available on the agency’s YouTube channel. NARA also held an in-person meeting with the researcher community at the National Archives in College Park, MD, with remote participation from researchers across the country.

As part of the development process, we considered more than 180 ideas, comments, and suggestions for inclusion in this plan. The number of ideas submitted by general topic is below, along with a summary of some of the suggestions and initial responses to those ideas.

We continue to welcome your feedback on History Hub or via email at opengov@nara.gov. For more information about opportunities to participate and to follow open government updates, please visit Archives.gov/open.
 

Customer and Research Services
Suggestions related to customer service include ideas for improving NARA’s communication with the public and improving the research experience.

Declassification
Ideas related to declassification include suggestions for improving access to declassified material and for ensuring that as much material is declassified as possible.

Employee Engagement
Ideas related to employee engagement were focused on actively seeking feedback from NARA staff and on encouraging collaboration across the agency.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
Ideas related to FOIA were primarily focused on improving communication with FOIA requesters about the process and what can be released.

Other
Ideas included in the “other” category included a suggestion that NARA forwarded to another agency with responsibility for the topic addressed, and comments regarding better explaining NARA’s goals and ideas for engaging new users and potential partners.

Presidential Libraries
Some commenters made suggestions directly related to improving access to materials at Presidential libraries.

Records Management
Ideas related to records management addressed storage and record keeping policies at NARA and ways to help other agencies improve their records management.

Sharing Innovation
Comments under the category “Sharing Innovation” include suggestions to make available the code for NARA-created tools like the History Hub and to take steps to improve understanding of the development and uses of NARA’s tools.

Digital Engagement
Ideas regarding NARA’s web presence include suggestions of new apps that NARA could develop, and suggestions for how to expand or otherwise improve access to NARA’s holdings.

Appendix B: 2016–2018 NARA Open Government Commitments

The following table includes NARA’s commitments from the 2016–2018 Open Government Plan of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Appendix C: Updates to 2014–2016 NARA Open Government Commitments

The following table includes all National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) 2014–2016 Open Government Plan proposed actions, narrative updates on the implementation, and overall status of each action. The status categories include:

• Implemented to indicated that work has been accomplished
• Ongoing to indicate work that continues
• Forthcoming to indicate proposed actions that have not yet been completed
• Cancelled to indicate tasks that are no longer being pursued

Please refer to NARA’s 2014–2016 Open Government Plan for additional information about the commitments, available at Archives.gov/open/open-plan.html.