May 31, 2013

TO: File 

FROM: Anna Therese McGowan , Chief /RA/ 

User Services Branch

Customer Service Division 

Office of Information Services 

SUBJECT: ADAMS PUBLIC USER GROUP MEETING MINUTES, MAY 8, 2013 

This memo accompanies the summary of the public meeting held on Wednesday, May 

8, 2013, in the Public Document Room of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This was 

the 25th meeting of the ADAMS User Group. 
2

AGENCYWIDE DOCUMENTS ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ADAMS) USER 

GROUP MEETING

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 

2:00–3:00 p.m. 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters 

Public Document Room O1-F21

Agenda for ADAMS User Group Meeting Number 25

1. General Announcements—Anna McGowan (2:00–2:10 PM) 

2. Member Issues and Questions—Anna McGowan (2:10–3:00 PM) 

3. Adjournment (3:00 PM) 
3

MEETING MINUTES 

1. General Announcements (2:00–2:10 PM) 

Anna McGowan, Chief, User Services Branch, Office of Information Services, opened the 

meeting at 2 p.m. She introduced the other U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff 

in attendance. Staff members from the Customer Services Division (CSB), Office of Information 

Services (OIS), were Karen Danoff, Mary Mendiola, Bebbie Rhodes, and Sardar Zuberi. Mark 

Evans, Roy Choudhury, and Jake Zimmerman from OIS also participated. 

Representatives from the following organizations used the telephone bridge to participate in the 

meeting: AREVA, MPR Associates, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 

Westinghouse, Luminant Power, and Winston and Strawn. A private citizen also attended the 

meeting. 

Minutes for ADAMS User Group (AUG) meetings are available for review on the NRC’s 

AUG Web page, which is accessible from the Web-based ADAMS (WBA) page. 

Anna McGowan notified the ADAMS User Group members about the OIS reorganization which 

took effect on April 7, 2013. Ms. McGowan explained that, with the reorganization, the 

Technical Information Center Section became the User Services Branch, and two librarians 

transferred to other branches in OIS. She asked users for patience as the staff adjusts to an 

increased workload and mentioned that there may be occasional delays in responding to user 

requests. If your document request is urgent, please highlight that fact in your request 

2. Member Issues and Questions (2:10–2:40 PM) 

Ms. McGowan asked the participants if they had any questions about ADAMS. 

Q1: Why are documents released individually before they are placed in a package? 

A1: NRC technical staff may release individual components of a package sooner than others 

even though the general practice is to release packages in their final complete form. The 

practice is that released packages are not subsequently updated as new, related documents are 

released; instead, new packages are created and released. This is the current NRC policy on 

creating packages in ADAMS. 

Q2: Why are there packages in ADAMS? 

A2: Creating packages was a policy decision dating back to when ADAMS was created in 

November 1999. ADAMS packages can include, but are not limited to, FOIA requests and 

responses, and smaller documents that make up a much larger document. 

Q3: Before NRC meeting summaries are released in ADAMS, can the accession numbers of the 

referenced documents in the meeting summary be publicly available? Is there a quality control 

check to verify that the referenced documents are also publicly available? 

A3: OIS provides the platform (ADAMS) for offices to process and store their documents. 

Placing documents into ADAMS is the responsibility of the staff of the various NRC offices. 

Each project manager provides the document titles as well as the other profile components. 
4

OIS staff processes the documents that they are given to be placed into ADAMS. The OIS 

Document Processing Center completes a quality control step before the documents are placed 

into Web-based ADAMS. Public ADAMS users may also contact the Public Document Room 

staff with questions or about errors in ADAMS documents. The Public Document Room staff 

then pursues the matter with the program office responsible for the document. 

Q4: Who creates empty packages in ADAMS? 

A4: This was a technical issue that has now been resolved by changes in the software. 

Q5: What is the content of the information sent out through the ADAMS User Group distribution 

list? Who receives the information sent through the list? How can we receive information on 

operating reactor correspondence? 

A5: The ADAMS User Group distribution list is maintained by the Public Document Room staff. 

Information sent out through the list is about ADAMS and the Public Document Room. Users 

who subscribe to the list will receive e-mail messages from this distribution list. The program 

offices are responsible for the different NRC e-mail distribution lists. Information on how to 

subscribe to NRC email updates on different topics is available at http://www.nrc.gov/publicinvolve/listserver.html. 

Q6: In the May 7, 2013, ADAMS daily folder, there was an empty package with the accession 

number ML13120A228. 

A6: As described above in the answer to Question 1, sometimes a package is released before 

its documents. A nonpublic document in an ADAMS package results in a package that is not 

publicly available. Publicly available documents in a package that is not publicly available are 

stored in ADAMS as standalone documents. 

Since the meeting on May 8th, there have been 5 documents placed in the ADAMS package at 

accession number ML13120A228. 

Q7: How many users subscribe to the ADAMS User Group distribution list? 

A7: There are currently over 4,000 subscribers. 

Q8: What is the typical time frame between when a document is received in the NRC to when it 

is placed into ADAMS as a publicly available document? 

A8: It depends. For documents that are received from outside the NRC, the time varies, but it 

could be 5 days. 

Q9: How accurate is the ADAMS search on the NRC’s Web site? 

A9: The search feature on the NRC’s Web site uses Google to search the content of ADAMS 

documents as well as the NRC’s Web site itself. Content search is also available in Web-based 

ADAMS. The Advanced Search feature in Web-based ADAMS provides the option to narrow 

down searches by including document properties in the search. There are currently over 

800,000 documents in Web-based ADAMS. 
5

Q10: Over the years, there have been different platforms for ADAMS. Is the ADAMS platform 

more stable now, or is there a plan for new software? 

A10: The current platform is stable now. There is a plan to change the user interface, but no 

other changes are currently planned. 

Some of the users complimented Web-based ADAMS. 

Ms. McGowan mentioned that the PDR staff is always available to help ADAMS users. They are 

advocates for the public and can answer questions or pass along suggestions to the ADAMS 

developers. 

Mark Evans mentioned that more research will be done on releasing all documents in packages 

at the same time. 

Ms. McGowan concluded by thanking the participants for joining the meeting and reminded 

them that the next AUG meeting will be in November 2013. A call for agenda items will be sent 

out through the ADAMS User Group distribution list in the Autumn of 2013. 

3. Adjournment (2:40 PM)