U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

64–651 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS

ADMINISTRATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 20, 1999

Serial No. 106–121

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JIM TURNER, Texas

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

BONNIE HEALD, Director of Communications/Professional Staff Member

CHIP AHLSWEDE, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 20, 1999 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Carlin, John, Archivist of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, accompanied by, Lewis J. Bellardo, Deputy Archivist and

Chief of Staff; and Adrienne C. Thomas, Assistant Archivist for Administrative Services ........................................................................................... 5

Stevens, L. Nye, Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues,

U.S. General Accounting Office; Page Putnam Miller, executive director, National Committee for the Promotion of History, representing

the Organization of American Historians; Stanley Katz, vice president

for research, American Historical Association; and H. Thomas

Hickerson, associate university librarian for information technology,

Cornell University, and president, Society of American Archivists .......... 88

Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:

Bellardo, Lewis J., Deputy Archivist and Chief of Staff, information concerning records of party conferences ........................................................... 52

Carlin, John, Archivist of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

Information concerning grants awarded ................................................. 64

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

Hickerson, H. Thomas, associate university librarian for information technology, Cornell University, and president, Society of American Archivists, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 112

Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, prepared statement of ................................................................ 3

Katz, Stanley, vice president for research, American Historical Association, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 107

Miller, Page Putnam, executive director, National Committee for the

Promotion of History, representing the Organization of American Historians, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 102

Stevens, L. Nye, Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues,

U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ............................ 90

Turner, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 130

(1)

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS

ADMINISTRATION

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Stephen Horn

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn and Turner.

Staff present: Matthew Ebert, policy advisor; Bonnie Heald, director of communications and professional staff member; Chip

Ahlswede, clerk; P.J. Caceres and Deborah Oppenheim, interns;

Trey Henderson, minority counsel; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority staff assistant.

Mr. HORN. This is the Committee on Government Reform’s first

oversight hearing on the National Archives and Records Administration since the Honorable John Carlin became the Nation’s Archivist in 1995. We welcome Governor Carlin, former Governor of

Kansas. He has done a great job as the Archivist and we look forward to having some of that put into the record.

The National Archives and Record Administration is an independent Federal agency charged with preserving the Nation’s history through its oversight and management of Federal records. The

agency has 33 facilities that hold more than 4 billion pieces of

paper generated by all branches of the Federal Government from

1789 up.

Today we will examine one of the agency’s essential responsibilities: how it determines which Government records should be preserved and which records may be destroyed. I shudder at the last

remark.

The National Archives assists other Federal agencies in maintaining and disposing of Government documents—electronic and

paper. The agency is attempting to streamline and revise its guidelines under an 18-month business process reengineering plan and

plans to survey Government agencies on their electronic records

management programs. The subcommittee will examine the agency’s progress on this plan today.

Since President Clinton’s 1995 order to declassify historic documents which are 25 years or older, the Federal Government has

processed 593 million pages for declassification. The subcommittee

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will examine how the National Archives, as a key player, is implementing this process in meeting its declassification deadlines.

In addition, we want to examine the viability of the National Archives’ revolving fund. The fund, which was established last year,

was set up as a mechanism for Federal departments and agencies

to reimburse the National Archives for the expenses it incurs for

storage of temporary records.

We welcome our witnesses today. We look forward to each of

their testimonies.

We will proceed and yield to Mr. Turner when he comes in shortly.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:]

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Mr. HORN. As panel one, we have Governor John Carlin, Archivist of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration, who is accompanied by Mr. Lewis Bellardo, Deputy Archivist and Chief of Staff, and Ms. Adrienne C. Thomas, Assistant Archivist for Administrative Services.

I think you both know the routine here. We swear in all witnesses. Please stand and raise your right hands. If there are any

staff behind you that will be giving you suggestions, please have

them stand, too.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that the three witnesses and one

staff member affirmed the oath.

Governor, we are delighted to have you here. Please take any

time you want, but we would obviously like you to summarize your

fine statement.

I might add that the statements automatically go in the record

when we call on each witness. You do not have to read it, but we

would like to have you summarize it. Then we can spend more time

on dialog.

STATEMENT OF JOHN CARLIN, ARCHIVIST OF THE U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION, ACCOMPANIED BY, LEWIS J. BELLARDO, DEPUTY ARCHIVIST

AND CHIEF OF STAFF; AND ADRIENNE C. THOMAS, ASSISTANT ARCHIVIST FOR ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

Mr. CARLIN. Mr. Chairman and staff, I am John Carlin, Archivist

of the United States.

As the Chair has pointed out, I administer the National Archives

and Records Administration. We are certainly grateful for this opportunity and welcome the chance to work with this very important

oversight committee. I thank you for placing my full text in the

record. I will summarize. I would like to touch on some of the

things that might be of particular interest to you and then of

course answer questions.

Because our strategic plan puts our customers first in our thinking, I want to first make it clear who they are and what we provide

them.

Our mission, as defined in our strategic plan, is to ensure ready

access to essential evidence documenting the rights and entitlements of citizens, the actions for which Federal officials are responsible, and the national experience. As you stated, we have 34 facilities across the country. They include regional archives, records

services centers, and 10 Presidential libraries, where we preserve

and provide access to literally millions of records—billions if you

count individual pages, photographs, and recordings—ranging from

our 18th century records to 100,000 late–20th century electronic

files.

Literally thousands of people, including genealogists, lawyers,

historians, veterans, newspaper and television journalists, and government employees, annually do research in our archival facilities,

and thousands of others write or call with inquiries for records or

information from our records. Approximately 1 million people,

many of whom are school children, annually view the Charters of

Freedom in our Washington rotunda, and each year approximately

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1.4 million people view exhibits in our Presidential libraries. Approximately 1.5 million veterans annually request documentation

from us of their entitlement to benefits.

People throughout the country this past year made more than 7

million user visits to our webpages. And the number of documents

that researchers have pulled up to review from electronic editions

of the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and related publications that NARA produces now exceeds 100 million annually. In addition, as you know, Mr. Chairman, many historians, archivists, and records managers across the country are carrying out

projects to preserve and publish records with the help of grants

from the National Historical Publications and Records Administration, which is part of NARA.

I am pleased to say that increased support from the Congress

and the administration for special initiatives over the past 3 years

is enabling us to serve these customers better. As a political scientist, Mr. Chairman, you will be glad to know that scholars,

among other researchers, are grateful to the Congress for making

it possible, in the budget just passed for fiscal year 2000, for us to

hire more archivists to assist them in our research rooms, and to

provide better research room equipment for their use.

Researchers are grateful to Congress for enabling us to continue

our progress in building an Archival Research Catalog that eventually will provide on-line descriptions of everything in our holdings

so that their research can start at home. And researchers, especially genealogists, are also grateful for funds appropriated in our

fiscal year 2000 budget to enable us to prepare for opening the

1930 census records.

Providing public access to records, however, is only half our job.

We are the National Archives and Records Administration. We provide guidance to our largest customer, the three branches of Government, including the Federal courts and more than 300 Federal

agencies with thousands of locations nationwide and around the

world, on documenting their activities and managing their records.

We also have the responsibility to approve how long Federal

records are kept in order to protect individual rights, hold Government accountable, and document the national experience. For the

Congress and its legislative agencies, we preserve official records in

our Center for Legislative Archives and provide access to them.

Mr. Chairman, I do not have to tell an oversight committee how

important it is for Government agencies to be able to locate and

provide access to records quickly and adequately. When they have

difficulty doing so, as in some recent cases, congressional committees feel frustrated by what, to us, is a records management problem. There have been a lot of charges and counter-charges about

records availability, but I think it is true to say that the Congress,

the executive branch, and NARA itself have not in the past put

enough emphasis on the need for effective records management in

the Government.

But fortunately that is changing, and we are grateful for the support that the Congress and the administration have been giving us

in recent budgets for records management improvement.

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With that introduction to what we do and for whom, Mr. Chairman, I would like now to turn to some specific concerns that may

be of particular interest to you and your committee.

As you know, we are all concerned about electronic records. They

pose an unprecedented challenge because such records are vulnerable to erasure, media instability, and technological obsolescence,

and because they are mushrooming in quantity and in multiple formats. But we are making progress toward meeting these challenges

and averting loss.

The magnitude of the problem has made us realize that NARA

does not have, nor will we have, the expertise or the resources to

meet these challenges on our own. Consistent with our strategic

plan, we have made partnering with others our key strategy, so

that our limited resources can be leveraged for maximum return.

For example, we have partnered with the Department of Defense

to develop a set of baseline requirements for the management of

electronic records, and we subsequently endorsed this baseline as

a starting point for agencies that want to begin implementing electronic recordkeeping. Also, we have formed a partnership with Government records managers and information officers, and with private sector consultants, to launch an inter-agency Fast Track Guidance Development Project. This project will identify ‘‘best practices’’

currently available to Federal recordkeepers in managing electronic

records.

In terms of electronic records preservation and access, we also

have new hope, thanks to another partnership. Over the past quarter-century, NARA has taken into our archives approximately

100,000 files of electronic records from the U.S. Federal Government as a whole. But we estimate that the Treasury Department

alone, for example, is now generating annually, in e-mail alone,

nearly a million files of electronic records that we are likely to need

to take into our archives.

So we entered into a partnership to support work at the San

Diego Supercomputer Center on an automated system to enable us

to take in large quantities of Government e-mail messages in a

short time, and the Center has produced a prototype that is able

to preserve 2 million e-mail messages in 2 days. This could be a

huge breakthrough.

In the meantime, we continue to have volumes of paper records

with which to deal through our records center operations for Federal agencies. We maintain a regional network of records centers

in which we provide storage, retrieval, and other services on

records that remain in the agencies’ legal custody. With your support, Mr. Chairman—for which we are grateful—we instituted on

October 1st a reimbursable program in which we offer agencies

customer-oriented, fee-supported records center services.

For the first time, all agencies—not just some—will reimburse us

for all records center services we provide. And as part of implementing this program, records storage standards were established,

which will apply to both NARA and private sector or agency facilities.

We also continue to address needs of archival facilities that

house the permanently valuable records in our own legal custody.

Funds appropriated by the Congress are enabling us to search for

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the kind and quantity of space we need to replace outmoded and

full-up facilities in Anchorage, AK and Atlanta, GA. And we plan

to renovate our grand old original archives building here in Washington—the building that houses, among other treasures, the

records of Congress.

We’ll upgrade its HVAC system to meet today’s archival preservation standards, remedy shortcomings in electrical distribution

and fire safety, meet requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and improve public spaces generally. Here again, though,

we are developing partnerships by soliciting private sector contributions to supplement public funds for educational aspects of the

project.

The centerpiece of the renovation will be the replacement of currently deteriorating cases for the Nation’s Charters of Freedom—

the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the

Bill of Rights. They will receive state-of-the-art reencasement so

that they may continue to be safely viewed in our rotunda by millions of visitors well into the new millennium.

On that happy note, I conclude my oral testimony. Again, I am

grateful for support from you, Mr. Chairman, this committee, and

the Congress. We have far to go to reach the goals in our strategic

plan, but I am more encouraged today than at any time since I became the archivist. I am beginning to see real progress toward

meeting the electronic era’s great challenges in providing the services that the people of a democracy need to document their entitlements, hold their Government accountable, and understand our national historical experience.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carlin follows:]

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Mr. HORN. We thank you, Mr. Carlin.

Do either of your other staff members wish to add anything to

that?

Mr. CARLIN. Not at this point.

Mr. HORN. Let me turn first to our ranking member on the subcommittee, a very hard-working member from Texas, Mr. Turner.

I am going to start the questioning with him. We are going to alternate between him and myself and anyone else that shows up 5

minutes at a time. So we can get a lot of subjects out on the table.

Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Governor. Thank you for being here. Thank you

for the visit we had the other day. I am impressed, Governor, with

the enthusiasm with which you have undertaken your job. I think

it has meant a lot to all of us to have you in that position.

There is one issue I wanted to ask you to comment on. I know

there has been some concern from the Census Bureau about the

preservation of the original forms. I know the plans, I think, are

to make only copies or the computer records being ones that you

archive rather than the original forms.

Could you tell us a little bit about why that decision has been

made? What are the pros and cons? I know it is something that the

Census Bureau has expressed some concern about.

Mr. CARLIN. Historically, this has been the pattern. Only up

until the 2000 census, the original documents—there was a microfilm copy and it was the microfilm copy that was the preservation

copy, the access copy, the copy by which we distributed across the

country to all our facilities and made available for rent. Once we

had the microfilm copied, then the original questionnaires were always destroyed. That has been the pattern from the very beginning.

What is new and unique this year is that we are shifting to a

new medium. For the first time, instead of microfilm, we are talking about electronic medium. What is left at issue, in my mind, is

really two very significant things. One, we have not yet scheduled

with the Census Bureau those electronic documents—the systems,

et cetera. The existing schedule for the questionnaires that are

temporary is in place, but communicated with that schedule—if

they will be destroyed—is that they cannot be destroyed until they

have made a copy on an appropriate medium. In this case, in the

year 2000 it will be electronic. We have that work left with the

Census Bureau to get that scheduling done.

The second thing I would assure you is that I am not signing

those schedules until I am confident that this new first-time use

of electronic systems, electronic technology, that we in fact have

the information so that we can provide access—or obviously somebody else, 72 years later down the road—to those records. In that

sense, it is very different. It is very sensitive and it is the first

time. I can assure you that we will be very, very careful before we

sign the schedules for those records, which would then allow the

destruction—which we have always done. It has been the patter

from the very beginning that the voluminous volume of originals

are not practical to be kept as long as there has been made a

copy—and of course to this time, it has been microfilm.

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Mr. TURNER. So for the first time we will not microfilm, but there

will be a computer file.

Mr. CARLIN. That is correct. They are being produced in electronic form. So access to them 72 years down the road will be very

different. As I talked to my staff yesterday, thinking about some

of the subjects we might discuss, one of the things we readily

agreed was that it would be somebody else’s problem to convert

those microfilm reading rooms to electronic many decades down the

road. But our responsibility is to make sure we have captured and

secured that information—those census records—so that we cannot

just preserve but provide access at the appropriate time.

Mr. TURNER. Specifically, what type of concerns have been expressed by the Census Bureau? Are they worried that these new

computer records will not be as accessible as they were under the

microfilm system?

Mr. CARLIN. I am not aware that they have expressed any concerns along that line. I am aware that my staff has worked very

closely with them on the procedures, the development of the process—starting as early as 1995—beginning the discussion and communication back and forth.

I think the concern is more on our side in making sure that the

scheduling gets done and making sure we are confident that the

technology that we have been a part of describing and developing

in fact can do the job.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Let me pick up on Mr. Turner’s question.

I was on the visiting committee once for the Stanford University

libraries. One of the librarians came in and had 30 books there and

started to snap them in half. We all just about fainted. But that

is the problem with the acidic paper.

To what degree do you have that problem in the preservation of

records and the wear and tear on paper since the 1830’s?

Mr. CARLIN. This is a good followup question because that is

again where microfilm plays a significant role and where we try to

focus our energies on the limited resources we have for microfilming additional records, that is, microfilming those records that are

used most frequently so that the access the researcher gets is

through microfilm, not the original.

Obviously, this is a small portion of our holdings, but we focus

on that for preservation purposes.

Mr. HORN. What do we know about magnets and other things

that can upset an electronic data system? Suppose you had it all

wiped out after this? Where is the record?

Mr. CARLIN. Well, if you are relating this to the past question,

we are talking about a very nervous archivist in terms of making

sure that we are confident in what we have.

I am going to yield to my Deputy in a moment, who has a little

more direct expertise in this area. But that is why I want to make

sure we get it. I do not know if the plan is to have a back-up preservation copy—I assume there is. That is the traditional way. But

you are correct. As I stated in my opening remarks, one of the challenges of electronic records is that they are so easy to disrupt, so

easy to erase.

Lew.

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Mr. BELLARDO. The standard procedure that we have for electronic media would be to have an offsite back-up copy, which I

guess we would call our preservation copy.

Mr. HORN. Where do you store that? In a cave somewhere?

Mr. BELLARDO. Well, we currently——

Mr. HORN. I am not being facetious. Get it away from effects that

could be on them electronically.

Mr. BELLARDO. That is the case for microfilm security copies. We

do have them actually in underground storage. The magnetic

media are stored—unless there has been some recent change—in

the Washington area, but offsite, therefore, we have the ability to

generate another copy.

The other concern that the Archivist expressed is to be sure that

the format that these materials would be coming to us—that we

would be able over time to preserve that and to also provide access

to it. We are working through those format questions with the Census Bureau.

Mr. CARLIN. The technology we will receive it on will be migrated

several times before ultimate access. We cannot even imagine what

technology might be like 75 years down the road, but we can assume it will be several generations—many, many generations—removed from what we experience today. So one of our issues is to

make sure that we can migrate that information to a technology

that would be in use at the time access becomes available.

Mr. HORN. The census records, you say, have been destroyed

from past censuses?

Mr. CARLIN. The originals are destroyed once they are copied

onto microfilm.

Mr. HORN. Did the person who was polled in that census—did

they fill out a separate form saying 1860? 1870? 1910? What was

the form?

Mr. CARLIN. The patterns have varied over the years, but it is

my understanding that we have always microfilmed the original.

Mr. BELLARDO. Basically, what happened was the enumerator

would walk down the street and question the individuals and they

would make notations on the form. They would occasionally encounter people who did not want to be interviewed or whatever.

But other than that, they did their best. You can actually track the

street they were on and the addresses and so forth of the people

they were talking to.

But generally speaking, it was not a form that people filled out

themselves. I think the most recent census I participated in I actually got a mail-in form, filled it out, and sent it back in.

Mr. HORN. Let’s say a President in 1860 and a President in the

year 2000—it would seem to me to be very interesting to keep that

document—the original. So what do you do with that? You burn

Abraham Lincoln’s interview and you burn William Jefferson Clinton’s about-to-be interview?

Mr. BELLARDO. I think what has happened in the past is that at

the time the microfilm was transmitted to us those records were

in fact destroyed after the quality was checked.

In the case of Clinton—of course, in the case of Lincoln, it would

not have been in his handwriting. It would have been the enumeraVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
45

tors handwriting. In the case of Clinton, presumably, if he has a

mail-in form and mails it in, then it would in fact be in his hand.

Mr. HORN. There are a lot of people, as you know, interested in

genealogy. You have the Mormon church, the Church of Latter Day

Saints. They have great genealogy records. It seems to me that I

would rather put these in State libraries—if it is a State—or someplace. Or make some money off it, to be blunt about it. We have

everybody in their library who hangs up commissions by this or

that President or confederate bonds or whatever it is. It seems to

me there might be an interest in genealogy if one had one’s ancestors records before they are burned. I would like nothing more than

to have the records of my great grandfather from Ireland in the

1840’s in Washington, DC.

There is a possibility there to make money for the archives in a

trust fund, or an endowment, or whatever.

Has that been thought of?

Mr. BELLARDO. If I can return to the historical census, we have

really been talking about the population schedules. The non-population schedules, which were also done during the 19th century—

some of those survived in hard copy and actually some of those are

deposited in State libraries or archives or the equivalent of that.

We have some of them at the National Archives as well.

In terms of the 2000 census, we have not thought about that at

this point.

Mr. CARLIN. You have given us something to think about, Mr.

Chairman.

I would tell you, we have not been pressed by the genealogists

on that subject as much as making sure that we get the information so it can be made available. The originals—we will take a look

at that.

Mr. HORN. I have a real problem with microfilm—I will tell

you—and to microfilm readers. The ones in the Library of Congress

are a disgrace and they know my opinion on it. Maybe we will have

to put a line item in their next budget to make sure that they get

some decent microfilm readers. But I am going through about 50

years of records on microfilm in newspapers. I did that in research

as a graduate student and other books and so forth. But it seems

to me they are a horrible thing and there must be a better way to

invent a decent microfilm reader where you can get focus and not

have things blacked out on the page and all the rest of it. It depends on how the person held the object before they snapped the

microfilm button.

That bothers me that records are just smudged and all the rest

of it. In this case, it is the California State library and I am using

the Library of Congress equipment to read it. But it bothers me.

So what do we do to improve that service?

Mr. CARLIN. Thanks to the support of Congress, starting in the

year 2000, we have a sum of money to replace on a sane basis our

microfilm readers in all our facilities across the country. Assuming

we can find quality microfilm readers, we will not be talking about

broken-down, ancient, poor-serving microfilm readers.

Mr. HORN. Let me move to another subject. I am not done with

that, but in a report we might have something to say on it.

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What would you say, Mr. Carlin, is the greatest challenge you

face as Archivist?

Mr. CARLIN. I think the most significant challenge I face and

that we at NARA face is the set of issues involving electronic

records.

Mr. HORN. Are you issuing guidance to Federal agencies on

these? How does that work? Is there another agency in the Government who is looking at the overall electronic use of records—just

for operations, let alone archival purposes?

Mr. CARLIN. We are accepting the responsibility we have to work

with agencies to provide them guidance. As I indicated in my testimony, we have established a group of our own experts, plus experts

from Federal agencies, as well as outside experts to begin the process. In fact, very soon, the first set of advice going to agencies will

be up on the web.

Clearly, we feel—not just because of our responsibility for those

records scheduled permanent, but for all records, temporary as well

that have an incredible value for a particular period of time—that

we have a responsibility to work with the agencies. Our partnership with the Department of Defense to establish standards was an

effort to start to provide guidance to the private sector to produce

software that met certain standards that would be conducive to

agency use today and our use as well as theirs down the road for

future access.

Mr. HORN. Do you feel that industry is responding in terms of

what you are seeking in the software?

Mr. CARLIN. They appear to be very interested in what we are

producing. They obviously know the Federal Government is a large

customer and they want to make sure they are providing something the Federal Government will buy. I think there is no problem

here. The challenge is to make sure—as we have indicated—to

DOD we are saying, This is one way to go. We are not saying it

is the only way to the private sector or agencies.

Mr. HORN. The National Archives’ fiscal year 1999 performance

plan indicated that the business process reengineering plan would

be complete in 1999. However, fiscal year 2000 performance plan

notes that the reengineering plan is scheduled for completion in the

year 2000. What is the cause for the delay?

Mr. CARLIN. We are talking about the business process reengineering of the scheduling and appraisal of our operation, I assume, if I heard you correctly.

The reason this is delayed is—first of all, we put this in our

original strategic plan as a key challenge we needed to address. We

set the time table which we thought was realistic. Then we faced

a lawsuit, for one example, that took a great deal of our time and

energy. With our limited staff and resources, we had no choice but

to focus and suddenly make it a priority. That was one point that

caused it to slip.

The second thing that caused it to slip is that the more we looked

at the subject, the more we realized that initially there were major

policy issues that needed to be addressed first before we even started the traditional BPR.

47

I would like to have my Deputy, who is working on this in terms

of what we are really doing today, take a moment to share where

we are headed on this very important task.

Mr. HORN. Fine. And as you know, we will have the GAO on the

next panel. If you can stay, we will get a dialog on that report.

Mr. CARLIN. OK.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Bellardo.

Mr. BELLARDO. As we have been dealing with the GRS–20 guidance and bulletins and have heard back from agencies, one thing

that has become clear to us is that the world is changing very rapidly in terms of how agencies are doing their work. In order to get

a real sense of what the problems are that need to be addressed

in a reinvention project relating to appraisal, scheduling, front-end,

what our role should be, what the agency’s role should be—we need

to have a better picture of the way records are being created today,

the role of the various players within the agencies—the IGs, the internal auditors, the general counsel’s office, records managers, and

so forth—and then how those records are being used.

We do know that there are developments with the web and how

people are using information, how they are accessing it, and how

they need it presented to them. We are interested in both the public as well as agency users of information.

On top of that, we think we need more information about how

the records are actually being disposed of in the agencies. This is

an area where the dialog has been with the GAO folks.

But we are not setting aside this reinvention effort. In the coming few months, we are going to be gathering information in the

areas I have just talked about, feed that information to the policy

review, and out of that build our as-is model and our to-be model

in terms of how we feel we can be more effective in the agency

scheduling and appraisal processes.

Mr. HORN. In July, when the General Accounting Office issued

the report stating that the National Archives could learn from its

planned baseline survey of Government-wide agency records management and could incorporate positive changes in their business

process and reengineering plan, why did the Archives disagree with

the GAO recommendation to move forward with the baseline survey?

Mr. CARLIN. Let me just say in general, from my point of view

I do not think we have a disagreement. The initial baseline was

heavily focused on just standard data elements, not the kind of information my Deputy feels very strongly that we need to know to

do this right.

So in terms of communication, we stopped that part of it because

we felt it was foolish to gather all that information if eventually

the system was going to be changed and it would have to be done

again. But from a practical point of view, what GAO was saying

I think we are now doing. We think it is very important to know

what is going on, to gather information. It is just that the original

plan was very narrow and focused on detail rather than the kind

of general knowledge that we needed that would only come from

a different approach.

Mr. BELLARDO. I would like to first say that it is an excellent report. We were very much interested in it. I think if there is a failVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing here, it is perhaps in our ability to communicate what the original baseline was projected to be.

It was basically projected to be a review of how agencies are following our existing policies and procedures and so forth. What we

are now about looking at is whether those policies are working and

whether we need to look at other policies and other kinds of procedures. I think that is probably underlying the suggestions that are

being made in the GAO report.

So I do not think we are really in disagreement as to where we

need to be. It is just that in order to comment on the recommendation that we should do the original baseline as we outlined it, we

feel as though that would not have helped us in the reengineering

process.

Mr. HORN. My understanding is that the fiscal year 2000 performance plan aims to convert 10 percent of existing record series

descriptions or finding aids to an on-line archival research catalog.

Is that the way——

Mr. CARLIN. That is the direction I would want to check to confirm.

I would say in general that as an agency we are very supportive

of GPRA and the targets—the performance aspect. We are very

committed to our strategic plan. We were committed to that plan

before, so all of this has worked very well together. But we did

learn very early—although in general, in most areas we are achieving our goals—because we did not in many cases have good baseline information, we will be adjusting those goals to a more realistic set of targets as the 2000 is finalized as well as the 2001 developed.

Mr. HORN. Do you think you can hit the 100 percent mark by

2007? That is what presumably 10 percent means when you start

in the year 2000. Is that a realistic timeframe?

Mr. CARLIN. We think it is realistic if we can secure, by one

means or another, the resources to achieve that goal.

Mr. HORN. What do you need? Is it the hardware, the software,

or both?

Mr. CARLIN. In this particular case, talking about the research

catalog, it is just the challenge of populating. We have the resources to put the catalog together. That will be done very shortly—in terms of months, not years. But then it will be the challenge

of populating it, getting everything in there, and that will be laborintensive.

Mr. HORN. Have you asked for those resources in recent budgets?

If so, has OMB cut you or supported you?

Mr. CARLIN. We have not specifically asked for resources to populate to OMB, so they have not—we have been supported for the resources we felt we needed through the 2000 budget to do because

the focus through 2000, for the most part, is to complete the system, to get it up, operational, and running. Then the challenge

ahead is populating, which we think can heavily be focused on existing resources, but we do not know at this point how far that will

take us and whether in future years to be complete in 2007 we will

have to add additional resources.

Mr. HORN. Agencies often rely heavily on websites to convey information to the public. To what extent does the Archives consider

49

materials on websites as permanent records and what guidance are

you issuing to agencies for their preservation?

Mr. CARLIN. I am going to let my Deputy comment specifically

on how we schedule web records. We see the web as an incredible

opportunity to take our resources to people that never have the opportunity to visit one of our facilities. We also see it as an incredible opportunity to communicate more efficiently with our biggest

customer, the Federal Government and all the agencies we deal

with in terms of guidance we provide. Our hope is, in the coming

years we will greatly expand how we use the web to communicate

back and forth to make the processes that work through the life

cycle of the record much more efficient.

But on the scheduling issue, I want to yield to my Deputy.

Mr. BELLARDO. First, a word about guidance.

We have been working and have an internal draft for records

management guidance for agencies relating to websites. We are not

happy with that draft at this point. One of the things we hope to

be working on with this fast track team is the web guidance. We

would hope that one of the projects they take up would be to refine

the web guidance and really make it a tool that could be useful to

agencies.

In terms of the scheduling aspect, what we are saying to agencies

is that if you do not have a separate record file of the document

that you are putting on the website, then these must be treated as

records and must be scheduled. On that basis, we would do an appraisal and then make a determination as to which of those we will

accept for accessioning.

From a practical standpoint, we are going to have to be looking

in the future at creative ways—if I can use the word—to harvest

that information in cooperation with the agencies because much of

it, I suspect, will be very ephemeral if we do not act in a very

proactive way.

Mr. HORN. To what degree do we know, in the Presidential libraries, the degree to which we have electronic records? Have they

been destroyed? We think of the Ollie North situation where he can

go through and wipe out a lot of the electronic records. What can

we do to get the material into the Presidential libraries without a

lot of ‘‘throwing a few tapes overboard’’?

Mr. CARLIN. There are a lot of things we can do. Obviously, the

Presidential libraries—the Presidential records are more electronic

to date than Federal records. So it has sort of led the challenge in

dealing with electronic records going back two or three administrations.

The No. 1 thing we can do, Mr. Chairman, for the future, is to

be much more aggressive as an agency and successful in working

with a new administration from day one. The problems to this

point have come from not knowing what should be done, to not

being there with succeeding administrations to really assist them.

It is our goal to be very aggressive with the new administration in

the transition period following the 2000 election so that—particularly with electronic records, but not exclusively—we can provide

the guidance, make sure the systems are set up.

As you are well aware, the bulk of Presidential records are permanent. It is a very different situation. We do not do the tradiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tional scheduling. We start out with the assumption that they are

permanent and go from there. So we are talking about a large volume of electronic records in various formats that are being preserved today for Reagan and Bush, for example, but in a difficult

and expensive way. If we can get there up front and get it done

right, we can save money and provide access much faster.

Mr. HORN. We put legislation in to provide for an orientation of

Presidential appointees and nominees, regardless of who is President in 2000 and regardless of whether it is between the election

and taking the oath of office because there is a continual number

of appointees. I think it would be good—and I will have staff note

it—that we also get into the archives role of that.

You are absolutely correct. Cabinet secretaries ought to be

brought up to speed.

I remember in the Eisenhower administration we had three wonderful mail clerks in the secretary’s room and those records were

absolutely immaculate when they were turned over to the Eisenhower Library.

I think that would be very helpful.

I see we have a vote on. I will have to recess this so Mr. Turner

and I can keep faith with our constituency, whatever that is over

there.

Mr. CARLIN. We would not want that to be interfered with.

Mr. HORN. So we will be in recess for about 10 to 15 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. HORN. What can you tell me on records about the legislative

branch and the degree to which you are getting them?

Mr. CARLIN. As you are aware, we are the custodian of the legislative records. I will let Lew comment in depth, but it is my feeling

that Mike Gillette and his operation have established a very good

relationship with both House and Senate and not only are we getting the records, but access is not only based on a schedule but congressional support for access. That support has significantly improved on the access side of things in the last few years.

Mr. BELLARDO. I am a previous head of the Center for Legislative

Archives, and even at that point in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s

we had a good rapport. I think Mike has been even more aggressive in working with the historical offices and with the committee

staffs and so forth.

The sense that we have is that there is a very regular process

of transferring materials. As you know, it is committee records and

not the records of the individual Members’ offices. Those are basically their records and they usually donate them to a university

back home.

We are also doing some work on the Senate side as they are developing a new electronic records system in the Senate. We have

staff who are involved in working with Senate staffers on that. I

believe that cooperation is moving forward as well.

Mr. CARLIN. I would also add, Mr. Chairman, your new clerk is

exceptionally well-grounded on records issues. We look forward to

a very good relationship with him.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. Mike Gillette has done a terrific job, no

question about it. I particularly enjoyed seeing what he had done

for the schools of this country in terms of real-looking documents.

51

You would think they were the originals in terms of Thomas Jefferson, women’s suffrage, and this sort of thing.

Besides the committee records, to what degree are you able to get

the party records, such as the Democratic Caucus in the House and

the Republican Conference in the House? I would love to see the

notes Bobby Baker in the Senate kept on who got what position

and what committee and this kind of thing. They could put a 50-

year limit on it, but it would be great historical evidence that

frankly you do not have right now. I do not know what they do

with those, whether they dump them in the ash can or what.

Mr. BELLARDO. No, I do not think they do. I think we need to

get back with you with more accurate information, but it is my understanding that there has been significant progress on the caucus

records. Whether or not we have actually accessioned them at this

point I am not sure. That is what we will need to get back to you

on.

[The information referred to follows:]

52

53

54

55

56

Mr. HORN. I will give you another example that you might get

them collecting, then.

When I first came here, I started collecting each flyer that is

used on the floor to pass or to not pass a bill. No one has ever done

it. I have 6 years and I am going to keep it. [Laughter.]

Somebody around this place—once I am not here—should be

doing that because it is fascinating in terms of what they say is in

that bill versus what is in the bill. I can put a lot of——

Mr. CARLIN. We will make sure we pass that one along.

Mr. HORN. It would be a fascinating little comparison.

We were talking about websites. You project that in fiscal year

2000 the Archives will process and release 75 million pages of

agency records for access. What portion of the total amount of

records are backlogged and need processing of that 75 million? Is

that a realistic schedule?

Mr. CARLIN. Are we talking about classified records?

Mr. HORN. Mostly, yes, it is classified records.

Mr. CARLIN. How much progress we make is obviously impacted

by additional responsibilities we are given. We estimate, for example, the Lott amendment, which will require us to go back and revisit page by page a lot of records that have already been declassified and in fact are out on the shelf. The latest estimate that has

been given to me is some 200 million pages that will have to be

gone through page by page which will slow us down in terms of

how much we can get done under the challenge of declassifying

records that have never been declassified.

As you are well aware, we are heavily dependent upon the agencies to provide us guidance. If they provide us guidance, we can do

the work. If they do not provide us guidance, then all we can do

is try to facilitate, encourage, support, assist, fix up a nice room for

them, provide them support, bring the records, encourage them to

come down to do the work. What really gets challenging is where

you have multiple equities in one record where you can get the Air

Force to declassify it but the Army hasn’t. So until all the equities

have been resolved, you do not have an open record.

Mr. HORN. On that point, somebody told me a couple of years ago

that we still have some World War I records that have not been

declassified. Is that true?

Mr. CARLIN. Yes. And my Deputy would like to comment on this.

We also have the formula for disappearing ink classified. Although

I never ate the right cereal, my Deputy might share his experience.

Mr. BELLARDO. I understand that there are such formulas available to those who eat the right breakfast cereals. But I do not know

if we can go into further detail than that. The information is——

Mr. CARLIN. My Deputy is much more sensitive to CIA restrictions than the Archivist. [Laughter.]

Mr. HORN. But who has control over those World War I records?

Mr. CARLIN. The agencies that still maintain an equity in those

records. If they had provided us guidance, they would be open. But

they have not. So by law they have total control.

President Clinton’s Executive order—a more aggressive order

than previous Executive orders—put a deadline. But now there has

been and will be a postponement of that deadline and the new administration ultimately will deal with whether that deadline will in

57

fact be real or not. But it did put some teeth in and the massive

amount of declassification that has been done in the last 3 years

is directly related to the strong orders that were issued in that particular Executive order.

Mr. HORN. The Executive order cannot trump a law, so do we

need a law to say that all the records relating to World War I

should be released?

Mr. CARLIN. We would certainly be interested in any legislation

that would encourage access. We are as sensitive as anyone to inappropriate declassification. There have been multiple discussions

in the last few years—as you are well aware, Mr. Chairman—on

ways to take lessons from Executive orders and put it into the law.

There has not been much progress to this point.

You have been involved and supportive of—Nazi war crimes

records have a particular emphasis right now. We are making

progress in that area and a lot of records are being opened that

would not have been opened without that leadership. But a more

across-the-board systematic approach would be the most conducive

for efficiently dealing with declassifying records in a way that is

appropriate.

Mr. HORN. Should there be a special commission of outsiders and

insiders to do that? Or do we just say, Do it, and forget about it?

Who has the records on World War I? Where are they?

Mr. CARLIN. To those agencies that would be responsible, it

would—from our perspective, we would like to have generic acrossthe-board guidance that would lead to action rather than a special

committee that would pick and choose. It is less efficient and we

feel ultimately will not serve the best interest. But we would certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss what legislation might be

able to provide and followup on the successes and the lessons we

have learned from Executive orders.

Mr. HORN. Does the Archives have the papers from World War

I that have not been declassified? Is it under your custody?

Mr. CARLIN. Under our custody to store them, but we do not have

the authority to declassify them ourselves.

Mr. HORN. But you have the records? Or does the Department

of Defense have it?

Mr. BELLARDO. We have basically a half dozen documents that

are still classified from World War I. We have many other records

from World War I that are not classified. But I do not believe that

we can with absolutely certainty state that there are no classified

records in an agency’s physical custody from that period. We do not

know, so I cannot answer you.

Mr. HORN. Have we ever asked the question of them? It seems

to me, in response to a congressional committee, the Archives

ought to be able to ask the Department of Defense, the military

historians over there, what are the holdings and where they are

held.

Mr. CARLIN. I think that is absolutely appropriate and one of our

long-term intentions in changing the culture of NARA to where, in

terms of our relationship with agencies, we are much more

proactive, we are partners with them. One of the issues in terms

of our scheduling reappraisal is the issue of inventorying the

58

records that exist. It is one of the first steps an agency needs to

take to make sure all the records are scheduled.

Yes, I think it would be very appropriate for us to work with

agencies to get out on the table and make sure that we have a better opportunity to address records that have been held that we are

not even aware of.

Mr. HORN. Could you explain for the record the Kyl and Lott

amendments and what impact they can have on the Archives and

your resources?

Mr. CARLIN. The Kyl amendment was focused on existing classified records in the pipeline, records that have not been declassified.

But instead of the traditional way, through guidance and decisions,

using more of a bulk approach, the Kyl amendment focused on a

page-by-page review. When you are talking about millions and millions of pages of records, the resource issue changes rather significantly when you go from a more bulk approach to page-by-page.

We have tried—and are in the process of working out on the Kyl

amendment—a set of procedures which really were assigned to us

as part of that legislation that we sit down and work with. The

focus with the Department of Energy, for the most part, is that we

develop ways to identify where logical focus ought to be for the

page-by-page and reduce the quantity that must be looked at pageby-page.

I think ultimately we will be successful with that.

The Lott amendment takes the next step, you might say, in going

toward page-by-page review of already declassified records, records

that are out on the shelf, records that have been in the public

arena. There again, we are trying to take a look at ways we can

narrow that universe so that we can have some kind of consensus

on where it is possible, most likely, that a mistake might have been

made, where records that should not have been declassified in fact

are out on the shelf.

It obviously requires an even more significant burden and certainly puts on the table a set of records that we had assumed were

now open and beyond the challenge of declassification.

Mr. HORN. What led to this? Was there something that bothered

somebody around here?

Mr. CARLIN. What led to this was the concern of premature release of records, of information in terms of nuclear energy that

were being shared overseas. Some of the scandals that have been

the focus of the last couple of years have caused Members of Congress—and from that perspective, rightfully so—to question and be

concerned. Out of that came these two concepts to—on behalf of

making sure that records that shouldn’t be out there are not out

there.

Mr. HORN. Generally, that judgment would be made, I presume,

by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Or would it? Or would it

be made by the defense group within the Department of Energy?

Mr. CARLIN. Now it is a matter of going back to these entities

and working with them. Initially, particularly on records that are

already declassified, they would have been declassified either by

the entity—the agency themselves—or through guidance they provided to us for us to do the work. So it is a matter of going back

and rechecking work that has already been done.

59

In the case of the Kyl amendment, it is a more intense focus on

what has already been done, but done in a broader, more general

way than the page-by-page.

Mr. HORN. Are we talking about hiring a number of nuclear

physicists for the Archives who could understand what is in those

documents?

Mr. CARLIN. Mr. Chairman, that is why in most cases—in this

specific example—we will not receive guidance to do it on our own,

but we will be working with the agencies. I think it would be inappropriate for us to come to Congress and ask for the resources to

have expertise in all the technologies. When we get into a technology, an area of science like nuclear energy, that is where we

should work with the scientists. But it is our responsibility to push

the envelope and try to bring them to the table so that in an appropriate way these records are dealt with and open to the public.

Mr. HORN. I am told that it is possibly 513 million records that

might be subject to the Lott amendment?

Mr. CARLIN. That is correct. We are hoping to—through discussions and negotiations—lower that to about 200 million.

Mr. HORN. And would it be a sampling? Or page-by-page review?

Or how detailed will it be?

Mr. CARLIN. It is my understanding that it is to be page-by-page.

Mr. HORN. Your appropriations committee will be interested in

that.

Mr. CARLIN. And we intend to keep them in the loop on this

issue.

Mr. HORN. Let’s move to State archives issues for awhile.

You and I have chatted about this and the possibilities of partnerships. We have some very fine State archives in this country.

What is the relationship between the National Archives and the

State archives? What could be deposited within those libraries to

save you space for some things that pertain to the history of that

State?

Mr. CARLIN. We partner in a variety of ways, Mr. Chairman. As

you are very personally aware, one of the areas is through the National Historical Publications Records Commission, our grant-writing entity, where we provide grants to State and local units to assist them in archival records management challenges.

The benefit there is multiple—not just to the entity that receives

the grant—but the other State and local entities that can benefit

from what was learned with the carrying out of that grant. A lot

of times there are examples where they have done demonstration

work that has been beneficial to us because our work is basically

the same. So NHPRC is an incredible entity for us to partner with

State and local.

But it is really broader than that because we share not only similar responsibilities. As I have indicated to you, I am very much

aware, as a former Governor, that much of what is done at the

State and local level is done with Federal money. But once the responsibility shifts to the State and local unit—once the money has

been delivered—the records that are created are State and local

records. So I have taken a real interest in a variety of ways of making sure we work together.

60

When we worked on the standards of the storage of records, Lew

and I worked very closely with inputs from the States and across

the country because they were interested in those standards. When

we have tried to deal with some of the electronic guidance challenges—they have similar challenges—we have likewise tried to

partner with them to make the most of the combined resources

that we can bring to the table.

In terms of there being a site for the storage of records, we do

have what we call an affiliated archives system. Compared to what

you might be alluding to, it is very modest. But we have examples

of Federal records, archival records, permanent records that are

stored in a non-Federal facility for various unique reasons—usually

a specific collection rather than a more broader, general purpose.

We do try, in terms of the direction you are headed, to make

sure—where it is good archival practice—to have records of a particular interest to an area that those records are deposited in a regional archive rather than a Washington archival facility.

Mr. HORN. I think there is a lot to that.

You know the Smithsonian is now loaning a number of artifacts

from its collection to university museums, city museums, and that

has been very helpful in broadening the opportunity for people to

look at a particular period of art, or whatever it is.

Mr. CARLIN. Mr. Chairman, we are doing something somewhat

similar, but not in a massive way. We do loan particular records

of significance to a particular area for a time, assuming preservation security issues can be agreed upon.

Mr. HORN. What do we know at the national level about the

state of various State archives? Is there an accrediting group to tell

us which States are prepared to handle the turning over of records

which pertain to those States?

Mr. CARLIN. The bulk of what we know comes through our work

with NHPRC and the State advisory groups that are set up. There

have been, over the years, a number of projects where the results

have provided us some information. As I indicated to you in a conversation we had last week, we do not have a program right now

where we go out and analyze in depth, State by State.

I think it could be justified because, as I said earlier, there is a

lot at stake in terms of—purely from a congressional point of view

on accountability for the programs you pass—being able to document what is really happening with those programs, you need

State and local records to make that accountability really work.

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from Texas?

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Governor, I wanted to inquire into this issue of archiving e-mail

records. I was interested in your statement about the ability of the

San Diego Supercomputer Center to basically preserve 2 million email messages in 2 days time. Yet I understand there are questions

about—once you preserve the records—whether you have the computer system that can then go read those records.

What is the status? And what is the Archives’ position on preservation of e-mail records by the various agencies? And how are we

going to accomplish that?

Mr. CARLIN. First of all, I think it is very important to understand that the medium on which something is presented, conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tained, or printed does not determine whether it is a record. A

record is a record, whether it is on an electronic system, textual,

microfilm, whatever. So the same applications apply. The unique

challenges are there, certainly in terms of e-mail.

One of the principal issues we are dealing with with the San

Diego Supercomputer Lab is to address what you are really raising

here. Until we have the capacity to not only take in, preserve, and

provide access in an electronic system, we cannot really have the

capacity in that way to deal with e-mail. Now, in many cases where

agencies do not have the electronic recordkeeping system—which is

the bulk of them—they print out paper. That was part of the discussion with the lawsuit we got involved in and some of the aspects

of that.

But ultimately we want a system by which we can take those email records in electronically, preserve them, and make them accessible electronically.

Do you want to add anything?

Mr. BELLARDO. Just one of the aspects of this we are working on

this year. We have a prototype that is being built for the reference

end of this set of systems. By the end of this year, we believe that

prototype testing will be complete, which was basically to determine—once you have it preserved—how you can make it available

for people to use in an on-line environment. We are very hopeful

that this prototype will work well and that that would feed to the

larger project that would involve all the processes we would have

to do to bring the materials in, to preserve them, to put them in

a neutral environment or hardware/software independent environment, and then to make them available.

We are excited about this prototype and are looking forward to

seeing how this works out.

Mr. TURNER. Since agencies and Presidents have been using email, how much of it have we preserved? How much do we have

access to? And once you capture it, is it in a form that will last?

Or are there some problems with it deteriorating over time?

Mr. CARLIN. In the case of Presidential records, that is one of the

issues I alluded to earlier indirectly when I said that we must get

there at the beginning of an administration to get the system set

up right. We have gone to extraordinary means to be able to recapture and ensure documentation that was created in the Reagan,

Bush, and Clinton administrations. I think in the end we are going

to be successful and we will be able to say that we have those

records and be able to provide access to them.

But it was not done efficiently and certainly not without great

cost. The bulk of the agencies are printing out e-mail that are Federal records in paper and we would be dealing with them, for the

most part, in the regular way.

Mr. TURNER. That must be a very inefficient way of trying to preserve those records.

Mr. CARLIN. Absolutely. But until we have systems set up to be

able to preserve and provide access long-term, it is the short-term

transition procedure that we must continue to use.

One of the decisions out of the lawsuit was in this area and policy-wise we made the decision—separate from the lawsuit—that all

program records should be scheduled, including the electronic copVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ies of records. That is one of the issues we are working on to carry

out ultimately, how we do that with agencies to make sure that

even the electronic copy—there is an opportunity for the public to

comment on how long it should be kept. If the recordkeeping copy

is the textual one and it is a permanent one, it will be the permanent. But the decision is that the electronic copy—there should at

least be on program records a review of how long it is kept because

it might in the short-run be very valuable for a period of time.

Mr. TURNER. Are the e-mail records of past Presidents available

at the Presidential libraries today?

Mr. CARLIN. They will be, as the law provides and processing has

taken place, yes.

Mr. TURNER. In hard copy? Or is it available in some accessible

form on the computer?

Mr. CARLIN. I think there will be some electronic access, yes.

Mr. BELLARDO. Until we have a full system in place, we will be

basically using simple viewers for people to be able to view the

messages. The next step beyond that would be moving this prototype to an operational pilot and then a full-blown reference system.

That is a few years out.

The first step would be simply to be able to view them as opposed to having very sophisticated searching capabilities and so

forth. But that is being built. It is certainly the case for Reagan,

Bush, and Clinton—their records will be in electronic form and not

just on paper.

In fact, we have just worked out an agreement with the Office

of Administration relating to the transfer of formats and processes

by which we will get the Clinton e-mail. You can see why we are

so excited about this prototype. We want it to work.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much.

Let me pursue a few closing questions here on this panel and

then we will have the GAO and others come forward.

Just for the record, what is the current funding level of the National Historical Publication and Records Commission?

Mr. CARLIN. For the basic program, it is $6 million.

Mr. HORN. Has that changed at all over time?

Mr. CARLIN. The current fiscal year will be the second year at

the $6 million level. It has gone from $4 million to $5 million to

$5.5 million to $6 million.

Mr. HORN. How much money could we use there?

Mr. CARLIN. I think it depends a lot on whether the program is

reevaluated and redesigned. There is some interest across the

country among State archivists at taking a bigger picture look at

particularly their records management challenges in the State and

local areas. At this point, based on applications that come in, we

are able to fund almost all of the quality projects. We seldom turn

down.

In fairness, a lot of the not so acceptable are screened out before

they even come to the NHPRC. So if you were to look at the total

universe in terms of ideas being proposed, we would not be funding

almost 100 percent. But of the ideas that come through the screenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing process of the advisory committees, the current level takes care

of the funding.

That does not mean it takes care of all the need. But the way

the current program is designed, it takes care of those who apply.

Mr. HORN. Could you just file, for the record, the number of

projects that are underway now and the ones that were completed

in the last 2 years so we can get a feel for what type of work—

I assume it is getting together, say, papers for a particular person

in American history and this kind of thing.

Mr. CARLIN. It is divided into two areas, generally, the documentary side. I believe the last I can recall of last fiscal year there were

about 43 or 44 projects. The other half is in the records management archival area and I think there were 30 projects. The average

grant is in the neighborhood of $72,000.

The big documentary projects that take larger sums and a variety of other projects—I think there are 43 or 44 documentary

projects in operation at this point.

Mr. HORN. Without objection, that information will be put in the

record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Could you tell me what partnerships, if any, the Archives has developed with the Library of Congress? Is there a duplication of effort here?

Mr. CARLIN. We have no official partnership. We have many unofficial ones. Dr. Billington and I work very closely together and

communicate as much as our separate agendas and challenges

allow. We both recognize that in a previous time there was some

overlapping activity. As you are well aware, the Library has a

much longer history. The Archives did not come into play until the

mid-1930’s. So it is understandable from earlier donated papers

that the Library would have some records that if we had been in

existence from day one would have come to the National Archives.

We really have two very separate distinguishable missions. We

deal with records and they deal with manuscripts, use of records,

what has been done with them, personal donations, et cetera, a

broader role they have extended to the world. We are limited and

focused on Federal records, U.S. Federal records. Dr. Billington and

I have discussed the possibility, if our schedules ever allow, sitting

down and talking about some of the records and some of the nonrecords that need to be shifted back and forth for a more appropriate placing.

I do not see any duplication in terms of our day-to-day actions.

Mr. HORN. As I understand the National Technical Information

System at the Department of Commerce was closed down and the

documents of that department went to the Library of Congress. As

part of a Federal agency, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to go to

the National Archives to receive those documents?

Mr. CARLIN. First of all, for the record, the Department has recommended closing down NTIS. It is still dependent upon action of

Congress. My staff communicate to me that action is unlikely this

year. Our interest is in the records of that entity. I have discussed

personally with both the Secretary of Commerce and Dr. Billington

and we have universal agreement that the Federal Records Law

will apply to NTIS, that those that are scheduled permanent will

come to the National Archives and that the function—if the idea

that has been put on the table is carried out—would be one of distribution for the Library of Congress.

Mr. HORN. Has the Archives recommended improvements for the

Presidential Records Act? Is there a need for that?

Mr. CARLIN. I have under review a recommendation for the Presidential facilities. There is the Presidential Records Act and then

one that deals with the facilities, the actual libraries that gets into

the endowment area. I do have under review some ideas for change

that at the appropriate time I would welcome the opportunity to

discuss them with you.

Mr. HORN. We would welcome that because I think the Presidential libraries are a great institution. I know some want to have

everything deposited in Washington, but I do not. I don’t think you

understand President Eisenhower unless you go to Abilene. I think

it is good to go to the Carter Library. I have enjoyed the Lyndon

Johnson Library, pharaoh-like though it is. I have found the people

very helpful in these libraries on various types of research.

Mr. CARLIN. Mr. Chairman, in regard to your comment about

Austin, changes have been made since then, as you are well aware

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of, and you have been a part of making those changes. We have

worked very hard as an agency to develop better facilities standards so that the facilities that are built are efficient and right for

the Federal Government to accept. So some of the problems that

have occurred—through no fault of anyone, necessarily, but just because of a lack of experience and guidance—I think we are working

to correct those. I want to explore further ways we can develop that

system so that—I agree with you that it is an excellent system and

I want to do everything that I can to assure that it continues appropriately.

Mr. HORN. Now on the renovation of the National Archives building, the main one downtown, and the reencasement of the Charters

of Freedom. What is the time schedule for renovation of the building and the reencasement of the Charters of Freedom?

Mr. CARLIN. We had resources from the Congress as well as a

foundation grant to do work on the reencasement in fiscal year

1999 and have made a lot of progress. Adrienne Thomas can comment in much more depth.

We also had in fiscal year 1999 the money to do the design concept for the renovation of our main building downtown. Currently,

in our 2000 budget that has been signed by the President, we have

the resources to take what we call the pre-construction steps—final

design as well as some initial physical work on the facility to build

some office, what we call swing-space—so that we can do the renovation and keep the main functions of the building open during

the 2-year renovation. We will be ready to start that in February

of next year. It is our goal, if continued support from the administration and Congress comes for final renovation, that we would

begin the renovation in February 2001.

Adrienne, do you have anything else you would like to add?

Ms. THOMAS. I just would say that the rotunda part of the building, where the charters are displayed, will have to close to the public for some period of time because we are going to be doing some

major work in that area. But the rest of the building, in terms of

research and so forth, will be open. The closing of the rotunda does

not happen until July 2001. Then we hope to reopen approximately

2 years later. Actually, we are looking at Constitution Day as an

appropriate time for reopening.

Mr. HORN. Everything around here takes 2 years. I noticed the

east steps of the House could be done in 2 months, not 2 years. The

lady that sits on top of the dome took 2 years. And so it goes.

Is there a magic number there?

Ms. THOMAS. I think there must be.

Mr. HORN. Is there any way that the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights could be put somewhere in the Archives?

Ms. THOMAS. There is some work to be done on the charters.

They have been on display since 1952, since they were moved from

the Library of Congress to the National Archives. We began the encasement project because the glass of the cases was deteriorating

and we were concerned about that impact on the documents, since

the documents rest directly against the glass. We were concerned

about whether or not the seals on the cases have been maintained

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for that period of time, or whether the original helium gas that had

been inserted into the cases had leaked out. We weren’t sure.

Part of the process will be not only to build new state-of-the-art

encasements for the charters, but also for our very talented conservator staff to take the documents out of the old cases, take them

off display, and do a careful assessment of what possible conservation methods might need to be applied to the documents.

So there is a period of time where they are off display when we

are working on them and the conservators are looking at them.

Mr. HORN. On that point, is there a set time in the future—let’s

say 100 years from now—that all of that ink would fade no matter

what you do? How assured are you that it will not fade?

Ms. THOMAS. Hundreds of years? I don’t know.

Mr. CARLIN. They will be there 100 years from now. But if you

start talking 1,000 years, as my Deputy has reminded me from

time to time, eventually everything will disintegrate, regardless

what you do.

Ms. THOMAS. But we are taking all sorts of steps in terms of UV

filtration and protection of the documents.

Mr. HORN. What are the new techniques? Would you put helium

back into the case?

Ms. THOMAS. Actually, we are going to use argon, which is another inert gas but has larger molecules, so it is more difficult for

it to leak out if there is any possible leakage.

Mr. HORN. Has somebody tried that with existing documents

that are not the Constitution?

Ms. THOMAS. Yes.

Mr. HORN. And there has been no damage in the changeover?

Ms. THOMAS. No, none at all.

Mr. CARLIN. There is the signature page that we have had a

chance to work with. There is the one page that has never been

displayed, the transmittal page, which is the same age, same

paper, same everything. It will be the one that we will try first in

the new encasements.

Ms. THOMAS. As a matter of fact, the conservators are today taking the transmittal page out of the old encasement and will start

their process of reviewing the document and determining whether

anything needs to be done. The first prototype casement is supposed to be delivered in December. So probably by the end of January the transmittal page will be placed in its new encasement. For

the next 6 to 8 months after that, they are going to observe the

transmittal page as a test case.

Mr. HORN. What does the transmittal page say? ‘‘Dear Continental Congress, John Adams, change some of my words’’, or what?

Ms. THOMAS. No, it is ‘‘Here delivered is the Constitution of the

United States, signed George Washington.’’ It is not much more

than that.

Mr. CARLIN. It has George Washington’s signature in terms of

value. But it does give us something to work with that will be incredibly valuable long-term in terms of the meat of the subject

matter.

Mr. HORN. So the Declaration of Independence does not have a

transmittal page?

Ms. THOMAS. No.

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Mr. HORN. That is what I thought you were talking about.

Mr. CARLIN. No, it was the transmittal page for the Constitution.

Mr. HORN. Well, it is interesting. So you are saying we have a

refurbished view of that in 2002.

Ms. THOMAS. Yes.

Mr. HORN. Now on the money, what do you use the private

money for and what do you use the governmental Federal money

for?

Mr. CARLIN. What we have basically done with the Federal

money is the basic things that you would have to do to renovate

a building. We are not using private money to do any of the mechanical work, handicapped access, et cetera. We are using the private money to enhance the experience of those who use the building, generally, under an educational-type direction. The one exception that fits there is the murals that are in the rotunda. There is

no Federal money to take care of the murals. We will raise private

money to take care of them. They are badly in need of a lot of

work. In fact, the latest estimate could be as high as $3 million just

to work on the murals.

We would like to build a permanent exhibit that would put context to those documents, to make the experience more than a religious one for those who visit the rotunda. We will do that with private money, paralleling the division of labor we have with the Presidential Library System where permanent exhibits are filled with

private money. Generally, we are using the private money to enhance the experience to make it more valuable, to complement the

tremendous support from the Congress and the administration to

do all the fundamentals, the basics.

Mr. HORN. How much has the PEW Foundation spent on this?

Mr. CARLIN. They gave us $800,000. The Congress appropriated

$4 million. Those two sums take us well into and beyond the initial

reencasement work.

Mr. HORN. That is great. PEW is a wonderful foundation. They

have done so many constructive things in the last 5 years that relate to government. I am very impressed by them.

Mr. CARLIN. I certainly concur.

Mr. HORN. Let me move now to the revolving fund and then we

will move to the next panel.

I guess when you look at the reimbursable revolving fund—do

you think that will mean you have lost significant amounts of business from the agencies when they do not want to participate in the

revolving fund? How does that work?

Mr. CARLIN. The way it will work is the agencies will make a

choice as to whether they want to continue to do business with us,

or in some cases we have an example or two that has been in the

private sector that is now going to switch to us. But the standards

and the processes will be the same. The agency will have to certify

that their records—if they choose their own facility or a private

vendor—that they meet the standards we have established, that we

will be meeting and will be taking care of their records based on

those standards.

We think also that, because they will be paying for a service—

the Federal Government for the first time—they will look at the

records in a little bit different fashion. In fact, we will actually

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learn more about the records, establish a much more in depth relationship with the agencies, and from a cost-efficiency perspective,

may together agree that some schedules on temporary records are

too long, that the retention period should be shortened.

This obviously would be done with public comment and careful

analysis, but I am quite sure we will find examples where 30-year

temporary records—it could be 20 years—saving a considerable

amount of resources in the process.

I think on balance we will have a much more positive, productive

relationship as it relates to records because we will have—in an indirect way—raised the value of records and their importance.

Mr. HORN. Well, if they are going to go the private facilities

route, will anybody from the Archives check on it to see that it

meets your standards?

Mr. CARLIN. The system is set up, putting the burden on the

agency, to certify us that if they choose to go to a private vendor

that that private vendor is meeting the same standards that would

be in a Federal records center. Obviously, if someone raises an

issue, question, or concern, we will check into it. We felt it was the

more efficient route, initially, to put the burden on the Federal

agencies.

Mr. Chairman, as I have shared with you, one of the big differences we are finding in terms of standards deals with fire and

the standards that apply to protect us from loss.

Mr. HORN. That is what I am thinking of, the Santa Barbara

Museum, when it was rebuilt, has a marvelous system to prevent

any damage to the paintings by foam and so forth.

Does the Archives have that now?

Mr. CARLIN. Yes. Tragically, we learned it the hard way. I guess

it would be fair to say that we did not learn it in 1921 when we

lost the 1890 census. But the fire, where we lost the top floor of

military personnel records in Saint Louis—after that we developed

standards which focused on not just the facility, but the contents,

to limit the loss. We cannot magically eliminate fires, but when the

standards focus as well on content, then you can reduce—our

standard is to limit the loss to 300 cubic feet. That is a big difference when you think that many facilities might have 50,000,

100,000, 200,000, or 400,000 cubic feet of records. If the standards

are focused on the facility, the contents will be likely lost.

We are finding that is a significant difference between us and the

private sector, although not exclusively. We are finding that the

private sector, in many cases, with the support of their clients, are

not as concerned about the contents as we are as the responsible

agency for protecting the records of the Federal Government.

Mr. HORN. I am glad you mentioned the Saint Louis situation.

Almost every day in our district office, we have 600 cases at any

point in time and 10 might clear today and 10 more come in. A lot

of it is based on not finding the records of the military in the Saint

Louis fire.

Mr. CARLIN. We have made some progress in reconstructing

records, but obviously it was a tragedy that we will pay a price for

forever.

Mr. HORN. Is there anything else you can do to make sure of the

preservation of records?

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Was that an internal combustion fire at Saint Louis? Man-made?

Or what?

Mr. CARLIN. I do not know if we know exactly. We definitely

know the facility was not designed to put the fire out. The only

thing that kept it from being even more of a serious tragedy is that

it was a well-constructed building so that the fifth floor down was

able to hold all the water that was being put up there and not simply collapse the building—which would have taken all the records.

Ms. THOMAS. But it had no sprinkler system.

Mr. HORN. No foam?

Ms. THOMAS. Nothing like that. No fire suppression system.

Mr. HORN. I thank you. And if you can stay a little while longer,

I would like you to participate, perhaps in panel two.

Mr. CARLIN. We will stay, Mr. Chairman. I would just say in

closing, thank you very much. You, your colleagues, Congressman

Turner, staff—you are most welcome to visit anytime. I issue a specific invitation, as we go through the reencasement—if you would

like to view or see directly what new technology is coming, let us

know and we will set it up.

Mr. HORN. One more question comes to mind, which is the Ellis

Island situation, where they are going to put on the records of immigrants that came here and there will be computer access. Is the

Archives involved in that at all? Or is that strictly Immigration?

Mr. CARLIN. We are involved. I cannot recall exactly, but there

have been several projects—at least a couple of major projects—up

there that have competed and now it has been sorted out. Particularly our regional office is connected in terms of how that all is

going to work out because we have—of course, one of our most useful and valuable records are our Immigration and Naturalization

records.

Mr. HORN. Right, and your shipping records.

Mr. CARLIN. Yes.

Mr. HORN. Well, let’s call panel two forward. That’s Mr. Nye Stevens, the Director of Federal Management and Work Force Issues,

U.S. General Accounting Office; Page Putnam Miller, executive director, National Committee for the Promotion of History, representing the Organization of American Historians; Stanley Katz, vice

president for research, American Historical Association; and H.

Thomas Hickerson, associate university librarian for information

technology, Cornell University, and president, Society of American

Archivists.

Please come forward and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. Were there any subordinates behind you who were

going to speak, too?

All four of the new witnesses have taken the oath.

Mr. Stevens, we always respect the GAO reports, so if you can

summarize that for us, we would be grateful.

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STATEMENTS OF L. NYE STEVENS, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL MANAGEMENT AND WORKFORCE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; PAGE PUTNAM MILLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE PROMOTION OF

HISTORY, REPRESENTING THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS; STANLEY KATZ, VICE PRESIDENT FOR

RESEARCH, AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION; AND H.

THOMAS HICKERSON, ASSOCIATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN

FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY,

AND PRESIDENT, SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARCHIVISTS

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief. As you know, we have done a report on National Archives: The Challenge of Electronic Records Management, sometimes referred

to as ERM. Our report shows that the Archives and the Federal

agencies face five general challenges in managing their records in

an electronic format. The first is just the sheer volume of these

records. Some agencies, by themselves are generating each year 10

times as much e-mail as the total amount of electronic data files

that were sent to NARA over the past quarter of a century. The second challenge we think is definitional. Just what con- stitutes an electronic record? The old definition of a record was

complicated enough, even when it presumed a permanent format.

Distinguishing and separating material with permanent value from

the temporary and ephemeral raises a plethora of questions.

The third challenge is because agencies follow no uniform hardware or software standards, NARA has to be capable of accepting

a wide variety of formats from the agencies, and it has to have the

capability of reading those records in a wide variety of formats.

Preserving long-term access to these records is the fourth challenge, and perhaps the most difficult. The average life of a typical

software product is about 2 to 5 years. NARA needs to be able to

preserve the records and notably the capability of reading them

long after the hardware and the software on which they are based

is obsolete.

Then finally, since NARA shares responsibility for records management with Federal agencies, developing and disseminating guidance to agencies is another long-term challenge for NARA. The existing guidance simply has not yet caught up with the universal deployment of personal computers. There used to be thousands of file

clerks in the Government whose job was to identify, classify, and

preserve records. Today, that duty is much more disbursed and individual professionals with PCs are the front-line of records management, and they need guidance in how to carry out those duties

and responsibilities.

No one really knows the state of the agencies’ adaptation to the

needs of managing their records in an electronic environment. Our

limited work at a few of them show that some agencies are waiting

for more specific guidance from NARA and others are moving forward on their own. The Defense Department has perhaps done the

most. NARA has endorsed the DOD software standard as a tool

that other agencies can use as a model until the final policy is developed by NARA.

In doing our work, we were struck by the absence of Government-wide information on the records management capabilities and

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programs of Federal agencies outside the NARA orbit—this is the

issue that you have alluded to—because NARA had intended to do

a baseline assessment survey to collect this kind of data on all

agencies by the end of this fiscal year and the information was to

be collected on the infrastructure of the records management activity, on internal guidance, on training, on implementation of the

schedule process—a number of areas.

However, as you know, NARA has decided to postpone this effort

to concentrate on the business process reengineering—the BPR you

have talked about. We believe that the information they would get

from this baseline survey would really be a necessary ingredient to

doing the BPR in as sophisticated and comprehensive a way as it

needs to be done. We think that conducting the survey now could

provide valuable input to the business process reengineering itself.

It could help fulfill one of NARA’s own strategic goals to stay

abreast of the technologies in the agencies. And it would put NARA

and the rest of the Government in a better position in later years

to assess the results of the business process reengineering and to

put the agencies themselves as—we simply just don’t know yet

right now what other agencies are doing.

I would just like to conclude, Mr. Chairman, with a single observation that your initiative in holding this hearing is welcome and

is far-sighted. Since NARA became an independent agency in 1985,

neither Congress, nor the President, nor OMB, nor GAO for that

matter, has placed a high priority on oversight of NARA’s functions. The challenges I just mentioned in preserving our documentary heritage for the use of future generations really are profound

and Congress is going to have to be a part of any solution to them.

I conclude and will respond to any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stevens follows:]

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Mr. HORN. We thank you very much on that.

We will hear from all the witnesses and then open it up to questions.

At this point, we will have our next presenter, which is Page

Putnam Miller, the executive director, National Committee for the

Promotion of History, representing the Organization of American

Historians.

Ms. MILLER. Thank you very much, Representative Horn.

I have been following the National Archives for almost 20 years

and have attended almost every hearing that has been held in Congress dealing with the Archives. I can attest that there have been

no oversight hearings that are broadly geared to the operation of

the Archives. There have been some hearings when there has been

a fire, or when there have been questions about a particular program. We are so appreciative of your holding this hearing and of

your commitment, as has previously been said, to giving attention

to this very important agency.

I am representing today the Organization of American Historians, which is basically made up of history professors who teach

at the college and university level. So I want to address my comments today to issues of research and to access of records. If

records are not used, you wonder why they should be preserved

and kept.

One of the keys to using records are good finding aids. To put

this in perspective, if you put all the records for the National Archives for Archives I and II—not the Presidential libraries or the

records center—on a shelf, that shelf would extend 650 miles. You

can imagine how difficult it is for a researcher to know where to

go to find records without good finding aids.

Our dream for the National Archives and part of the Archives’

strategic plan—and you mentioned it earlier—is to have a series

level description of all the holdings by 2007. A series is generally

records that are similar in characteristic. For instance, it may be

the correspondence of an Under Secretary for an office for a certain

period of time. But you need some description of what is in this series. A series may be many, many boxes of records. So the series

level description—which is sometimes called the reference quality

description—is so important to us.

But at present about 30 percent of the holdings of the National

Archives do not have a series level description. This is a backlog

that has developed. It goes back to the 1950’s and 1960’s. There

has been a long backlog of basic description. So when Archivist

John Carlin was talking about populating the archival catalog, the

on-line catalog, he is talking about entering the descriptions of

these series of records.

Our concern is that you have a big enough problem in scanning

in descriptions that are on paper to put into the computerized series, but what about the records for which no description has ever

been written that is of research quality? The Archives has a locator

file that provides very basic intellectual control of records, but this

is not research quality.

So haveing good finding aids is one of our major concerns. It is

our thought—and you began to get at this when you asked about

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formation on 10 percent of the records into this computerized finding aid and to get to 100 percent in just 7 years, when you have

a 30 percent backlog in basic description, there is going to need to

be a real infusion of staff time. This is archival staff that have expertise in records that would be needed.

So we have concerns about the state of that finding aid. To have

the finding aid on-line would mean that researchers across the

country would know whether it is worth their while to make the

trip to Washington. So that is so important.

Another aspect of access that I would like to mention is declassification. We are pleased that the Executive order has resulted in

so many agencies declassifying records and transferring them to

the National Archives. We know that in fiscal year 1997 there were

204 million records transferred. In fiscal year 1998 there were 193

million records. But when these records are declassified by an

agency and sent to the National Archives, for a researcher to have

access to them—and this is my issue, access to the records for researchers—the Archives has to process them. And to process them,

they need to open each box, take out the record that still needs to

be classified, put these in a secure area, put a marker in that file

to show that a record has been removed, and then they need to prepare the description and develop the finding aid.

So as successful as the Executive order is in having records declassified and transferred, we as users will not have access to these

until they are processed. The Archives has put in the strategic plan

for the year 2000 processing 75 million records which is a significant amount. But in that pipeline there are 200 million records. So

here again we are concerned about the backlog that will be building up. As agencies do their work on the Executive order there will

be more required for the National Archives.

We love to hear these figures about agencies declassifying

records, but we know that as researchers we still will not see those

records until the Archives has been able to process them. And that

is another very labor-intensive task that concerns us.

A final point I would like to make on access deals with the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. I am glad

that you have been able to spend some time today talking about

the NHPRC because that is the part of the National Archives that

deals with non-Federal records. Certainly for historians, we are interested in Federal records, but also non-Federal records. The

NHPRC has had a wonderful record over the years of leveraging

private funds, 50 percent generally from private sources, and

matching that and letting the donors of the private funds know

that these are very good projects.

I would like to note that in 1976 the appropriation for NHPRC

for grants was $4 million. That was a long time ago, over 20 years

ago. Now they are up to $6 million. But this small agency that does

this important work has really fallen so far behind from 1976 in

being able to keep up with inflation and do the work. I would followup on the point that Archivist Carlin made regarding the grant

applications.

NHPRC staff works very differently from the NEH staff on working with applicants. NHPRC’s staff are very knowledgeable. They

have specialists in different areas like electronic records and reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:35 Aug 23, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00104 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\64651.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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search. In working with the applicants, if they know that according

to their guidelines, and according to the amount of money there is,

there is really no money for that project, they will convey that to

the applicants. I do not think the number of applications is necessarily an indication of the appropriation level because we know

from the state of State archives and the archives across the country

that there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done.

We would like to encourage increased funding for NHPRC and a

hard look at that small agency and what it is able to do.

In closing, I would just say that the access issues are very varied.

It is not just the delivery of materials to researchers in the research room but the describing of records, the processing of records

that have been declassified, and then through grants to NHPRC

made available for research. So we are hopeful that the Archives

can have some increased staff to deal with these very severe backlogs.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Miller follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. You have made some good suggestions.

We now have Dr. Stanley Katz, vice president for research,

American Historical Association.

Mr. KATZ. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure

to be here. I can be very brief, I think.

I would also like to begin by thanking you and the subcommittee

for undertaking these hearings. They are enormously important to

all of us who are concerned about the National Archives. I would

additionally like to thank Governor Carlin and his staff. They have

an almost impossible task, a huge number of records, technological

problems that now exist, declassification—it is a daunting challenge. Over the last few years, since Governor Carlin has been

there, there have been noticeable improvements at the Archives

and we are very grateful for that.

The one thing I wanted to address myself to is the question of

the revolving fund, the reimbursable fund. Governor Carlin has

spoken to that earlier and we think we do understand the general

intention and value the intention of the Archives in this new

project. We can understand why it comes about. It seems attractive

as a way to relieve the budget of the National Archives. But we

have concerns about whether it could really work in the way that

the Archives hopes it will work.

The simple argument is that we are concerned whether it is consistent with what we take to be general inclination of human nature. We think that there will be a temptation on the part of agencies working within or without the rules to reduce the number of

materials they actually have to pay for in order to store. It seems

reasonable to expect that a rational actor would look for such strategies.

And while we do appreciate that there are going to be undertakings required by the agencies that they or private vendors will comply with NARA’s standards, we are not sure that there is any adequate way of enforcing those guidelines. Indeed, we think that the

problem of the Archives for a long time has been that Congress has

never given it very effective enforcement mechanisms. This is another area that is not the fault of the Archives, but is the fault of

the legal structure under which they work.

We value Governor Carlin’s commitment to effective records

management and to the maintenance of records storage standards.

But it is this question of enforcement that we worry about. So we

hope that in the quarterly reports you are requiring now some

thought can be given to the kinds of information you could request

that would enable both NARA and the oversight committee to

make some judgments about what is actually going on.

For instance, it would be useful to have the estimates of both

NARA and the agencies as to how many cubic feet of materials

they actually have. It would be very good, from our point of view,

to have the baseline study to know what is actually out there—or

as nearly as possible what is out there.

I am sure there are other things. I am not an archivist myself.

I am sure there is other technical information that could be provided and we hope that you would look into that. Our concern is

that records be neither destroyed nor neglected for fear that agency

budgets will suffer.

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I would like to close by simply saying that I think there are some

interesting examples out there of what has happened in other

countries. I visited New Zealand 5 or 6 years ago. At the time they

had privatized their government. I spent a day at their national archives. The archivist was very concerned—every agency was going

on a pay-your-own-way basis—and she said, ‘‘We don’t have much

to sell.’’ I think NARA is in that situation here.

I hope that in trying to make it possible for NARA to use the

moneys it does have better, that we are not going to endanger Federal records.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Katz follows:]

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Mr. HORN. You are quite welcome.

We face a situation here where we have a 15-minute vote followed by a 5-minute vote. So before we hear Mr. Hickerson—it is

going to take at least 20 minutes to 30 minutes—if you don’t mind,

we will try to reassemble here at 12:40 or so, which would give you

a chance to eat a swift lunch in the gourmet Rayburn cafeteria,

which is right below us on the basement floor.

I regret that we have several votes over there, so we must recess

this now and be back at roughly 12:40, I think.

[Recess.]

Mr. HORN. We will hear Mr. Hickerson, then we will have a dialog.

Mr. HICKERSON. Thank you very much, Congressman Horn.

First I want to say what an honor it is for me to be able to participate in these hearings on the critical issues and the success of

the National Archives and Records Administration.

While, as you have alluded to, in the United States the responsibility of maintaining the archival record is broadly distributed

among State and municipal archives, university, corporate, and religious repositories, research libraries, and historical societies and

museums, no institution other than the National Archives is so

central and fundamental to the rights of every citizen and to the

process of democratic governance. So it is a pleasure for me to be

able to participate here.

My professional background includes 30 years of active involvement in archival practice as well as my extensive leadership in the

archival profession, including my current services as president of

the Society of American Archivists, and also my extensive service

at Cornell University both in the area of archival and rare book

and digital collection management and in information technology

management generally. I am also here as a citizen of the United

States.

I could say a great deal about the profession, but I will jump to

those issues that you specifically asked me to address, which are

electronic records and the application of new technologies.

I must start out by saying that I think Governor Carlin has done

a great deal for the improvement of the National Archives’ program

during his time administering this program. I, however, am not

quite as optimistic regarding the state of electronic records today.

I think we do have a crisis. I refer to it as the Y2K that will not

go away next year or the next or the next.

In 1990, the House Committee on Government Operations issued

a report called ‘‘Taking a Byte Out of History: The Archival Preservation of Federal Computer Records’’. In that report, they outlined

the many difficulties inherent in the selection, maintenance, and

use of records in electronic form.

Unfortunately, while that report offered a very perceptive picture

of the crisis of the moment, it was not an action-oriented document.

No new research was funded. No new programs were put in place.

So we do not yet have a scaleable working model of a system for

realistically addressing these issues.

Although NARA has not solved this issue, there are a whole lot

of us that have failed. First off, the technology industry has not

helped us in this area. It has not been in their best interest to

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stress the impermanence of digital records. So it is not surprising

that they have not been out there on the front line. They periodically call attention to the media and the permanence of that media,

but as Mr. Stevens alluded to, that is not the primary issue in

being able to maintain access to records over time.

There is relatively little Government-funded research addressing

this issue. Specific examples include the $24 million that the National Science Foundation and other agencies gave out 4 years ago

in the National Digital Library Initiative, phase one process. None

of the six funded projects explicitly addressed the preservation of

those electronic records. In the latest round for DLI–2, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress

played a more active role in the process and stressed those issues,

but nonetheless, out of 33 funded projects there were only two that

explicitly focus on long-term access and preservation.

I would like to read the comments William Ferris made in talking about the Cornell project. He said, ‘‘NEH, the National Science

Foundation, and other Federal agencies have begun the process by

funding a pioneering, $2.3 million preservation project at Cornell

University. This project will develop a standard way of organizing

computerized collections, preventing data loss in these collections

by alerting managers to the periodic need to upgrade ageing CDROMs and tapes, and making the collections fully accessible on the

Internet. All Americans will benefit because the project will ensure

that computerized materials important for the study of America

will be preserved and accessible for generations to come.’’

While I appreciate Bill Ferris’ kind and generous words of confidence, Cornell’s project will not save the day. It will only contribute to a process that needs many other participants. Additionally

he described it as a ‘‘pioneering’’ project. That is true, but it should

not be. We are all behind the curve on this issue. We are probably

as much as a decade behind where we should be at this point in

time.

Nor in the corporate sector has a great deal of progress been

made in spite of the obvious permeation of this need across the entire spectrum of corporate and business operation. I think one of

the reasons for that is that corporate archivists have often been responsible for paper records, but systems professionals have been

the ones responsible for electronic records. They have not had an

archival perspective on their job. The result has been that when we

moved to an environment in which almost all records are generated

in electronic form—or a large segment thereof—we do not have an

archival perspective or incorporate archival value into the process.

I can see a 500,000-person sub-industry developing around this

very issue in the next 10 years.

So this does suggest that in spite of real headway NARA is making at this point in time—particularly through the San Diego

Supercomputer Project—that we are just now beginning. I wish we

had been here in 1992 instead of 1999.

I would like to add one other comment on technological issues

but let me jump back and say just one thing on the 2000 census

issue. For me, this is an indication that the preservation of records

is not just a technology issue. The issue is: How will the users be

able to use that information? So we have social, technological, and

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economic issues combined in the decisions we are making today.

We have to have some working models in place that actually provide usable records for the user for us to guide us in making the

technological decisions.

I apologize for the digression, but I think it is an important one.

I will conclude my comments by saying that I think that more

of the information from the National Archives that is in existing

paper and image form should be made available digitally. I know

that at this point in time Governor Carlin has chosen to focus a

good deal of resources on the electronic records issue. However, I

think the American public and the global public expects to have access to significant portions of the archival record in the classrooms,

in the lecture halls, in the libraries, offices, homes, and in the wireless generation, every place.

This relates to your reference to cooperation with the Library of

Congress. Perhaps in this process, the National Archives might

work in explicit cooperation with the Library of Congress or with

university repositories or State repositories, using common systems

for distributing access to digital information.

I have extended beyond my time, I suspect, so I will wrap up by

saying that I greatly appreciated the cooperation that Governor

Carlin has initiated with the leadership of the Society of American

Archivists. We have never had such an effective and synergistic relationship. I personally thank him a good deal for that.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hickerson follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, we thank you. That is a very worthwhile presentation.

Governor, you have heard the testimony here. Is there anything

you would like to say to some of these questions that have been

raised? I am particularly interested in what your person power projections are in terms of getting the descriptors that Ms. Miller mentioned and the degree to which scanning technology can help you

in getting the right descriptors.

Mr. CARLIN. As I said earlier in regards to populating the catalog

and carrying out what Ms. Miller is very interested in—as well as

us—I cannot say today what that might mean from a resource perspective. I always believe in maximizing existing resources first

rather than making the first task coming to you and asking for

more. We have done a lot of work and have a lot of people work

in this area in what is referred to as the old way. We are converting to a new way.

We have just hired three data standards experts staff to come on

and help us. We want to really improve our descriptive standards

in such a way that there is uniformity. As you go electronic, you

no longer can have differences. So there is a lot of basic work that

needs to be done before we would be in a position to say that we

need more help.

I can assure you—just as I did when I was sworn in as Archivist—I would not hesitate to come and ask for help when I felt like

it was legitimately needed.

On the second issue you raised, as far as scanning, we have

taken a different approach than the Library of Congress. Our focus

has been to scan and digitize a cross-section of very valuable, often

requested records. The current project, which we completed in the

early part of this calendar year, scanned and digitized and put up

about 125,000 documents.

We intend to then focus, as we are now, on the catalog, which

would be a total comprehensive catalog. We would then link to

these digitized examples so that researchers could see at least a

sample of what they might be able to work with if they were to

work directly with the records. As far as expanding beyond that,

our philosophy is that given focused interest on highly used

records, that we will explore further scanning digitization if we can

also find the resources—or know where the resources are going to

be—to maintain that effort.

Our experience, as well as looking at other research, tells us that

the initial cost of going through the process of selecting, scanning,

digitizing, and putting up on the Internet an existing non-digital

record—but getting it in the digital form—the cost of maintaining

that will almost duplicate the initial cost every 10 years. That is

a scary challenge, which has led us to decide that if we are going

to put more up, we are going to have the maintenance endowed up

front.

If someone comes with an idea of private support, it will not be

just to do the first effort, but to maintain it. I know from experience the excitement of getting up some wonderful collection, which

may raise private dollars, when you talk about maintaining that

collection, there will not be quite the excitement because there will

not be a press release or a news conference announcing that we got

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the resource to keep it up. So we have taken a more conservative

approach out of fear that we could get to the point where we

wouldn’t be able to sustain what we put up.

Now born digital is a whole different ball game. But what we are

really talking about here is the non-born digital that requires extensive work and expense over time to accommodate what is—I

agree 100 percent—there is a great deal of interest and demand

out there. But I also want to respond in a realistic and appropriate

way and not get ourselves into a commitment we cannot sustain.

Mr. HORN. Any reaction by members of the panel?

Mr. HICKERSON. I have said this in conversation with John Carlin. I think that an agency with the role of the National Archives

cannot afford not to make material available via digital networks.

I agree that it is an expensive process. However, I think we really

have to accept that the 21st century is a very different world than

the 20th was and that there will be an expectation that such materials—or certain small portions, perhaps statistically small portions

of them—will be made available. And there is such potential for remarkable use out there in that form. I think it is one of those

things that you cannot afford not to do.

I think the transition—and I can speak to Cornell University’s

transition in moving from a library of 6 million books and 40,000

cubic feet of records to a repository also including 2,000 electronic

resources and 2 million images accessible in networked fashion—

moving the money as well as the conceptual thinking of the staff

and the institutional mandate—to incorporate a very different view

of the way people use information today is a traumatic effort.

Mr. HORN. We have to educate the user as well as the Archivist?

Mr. HICKERSON. Yes, indeed.

Mr. HORN. On the user and the need for the Archivist, what is

your impression—since you are president of the Society of American Archivists—as to how we educate and train archivists? Is it

simply going to library school and then getting what the doctors

might call a residency in a good archive or the National Archives?

And do we have people coming along to fill the bill in this area?

Mr. HICKERSON. I do not think we have enough people coming

along to fill the bill. I had a discussion the day before yesterday

with the executive director of the Council on Library and Information Resources about forming a panel to look at the development

of a new generation of archivists and librarians and what kind of

educational components will have to develop to meet that need.

There are now masters in archival science programs as well as

library science programs that have archival concentrations. My

sense is that in terms of the need that we may have over the next

10 to 20 years—and certainly a lot of the career surveys agree with

me on this—is that we will not produce enough people via that avenue. The Society continues as it has since the 1980’s—conducting

workshops on electronic records. Many of those workshops were

staffed by people from NARA. But we have just created a distance

learning workshop on electronic records. It has been so oversubscribed that we are already booking people for next year.

So I do not have a good answer to your question except to acknowledge that we really have to do some things differently.

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Mr. HORN. Let’s get back a minute to the scanning devices that

can be used.

Where are we in the evolution of computing and what kind of

scanning devices would be helpful? Does the National Archives now

have them?

Mr. HICKERSON. As Governor Carlin notes—and I do not want to

answer every question——

Mr. HORN. No, we are moving around.

Mr. HICKERSON. It can be an expensive process. At Cornell we

have experimented with some fairly high-speed flat bed scanning

where you just put it down and the machine automatically adjusts

to the conversion requirements. You can move it through at a fairly

fast rate. On the other hand, we also do art work in which we use

a digital camera that in full scale production runs about 70 documents a day, 70 pieces of art work.

So it varies greatly. The technology has improved and the costs

are coming down significantly from where they were.

On the other hand, we have the same preservation problems regarding these digital images that we do for the born digital records

in that we do need to have migration paths for this information

also.

At Cornell, we have sought to develop a larger vendor industry

by doing less of the work in-house and putting out very specific

standards, projects, and we hope—as we did with high-level preservation microfilming—to generate a small industry around the need

to do this scanning. We have had some very significant success in

lowering the per image cost as a result of those efforts.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Stevens, are any of the people in GAO looking at

the technical side of what might happen in an archive, be it State

or Federal?

Mr. STEVENS. No, they are not, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. MILLER. On the question of cost, I wanted to add that historians like to look at a whole series of records. So when we do research, we would want to look at a whole box. Frequently, when

the scanning occurs, it is only of selecting particular documents.

Then that alerts historians so that they are aware of those selected

documents and then historians want to go to the archives to see all

the records in the box surrounding that particular record.

But the National Archives estimated—I heard this at one of their

presentations last week—that it costs about $15 per page to

digitize, select, index, and handle all that is needed for every page.

If you go back to that image I used of a shelf of 650 miles, and if

you think of 2,000 pages in a foot, I figured that at $15 per page,

that is $102 trillion to scan the holdings of the Archives. That is

totally out of the question. And even if the price comes down from

$15 to $1, you are still talking about almost several trillion.

So I think the volume of records in the Archives is so enormous

that the scanning will be for very select documents and will probably be used in teaching, but not by college professors who are

doing research, who will really need to see a whole collection. We

are still putting our priority on the finding aids. Just to have a

comprehensive catalog of finding aids on-line would be a wonderful

first step.

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Mr. HORN. Mr. Hickerson, is the high-speed computer at Cornell

willing to tie into the National Archives and run a deck of those

letters through and scan and do that? What kind of incentive

would it take to get you to do that?

Mr. HICKERSON. I think there really are opportunities for cooperative projects. I certainly agree with Page Miller that the expenses

of a comprehensive conversion are far beyond anything I could

imagine.

But there are diverse opportunities to bring materials together

from multiple repositories in digital form that cannot be seen at

any one repository together and these are projects in which we

would work with the National Archives—I know in the case of

records of Japanese-American relocation camps, both Cornell and

the National Archives and UCLA have significant holdings.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful—and these are very heavily used items

if those could be united in a virtual collection in a way that no single user could access them at their physical locations?

We would be very open to such projects. We have contractual relationships with the Library of Congress to make material converted at Cornell available through American Memory and would

be pleased to look at similar partnerships with the National Archives.

Mr. HORN. Dr. Katz, you had a comment?

Mr. KATZ. I was actually going to followup on this.

I think we all agree that is inconceivable to get the whole corpus

up at any time, but it doesn’t need to be because not all documents

are created equal. There are ways of selecting and choices can be

made. I think what has just been said is the key, and that is collaboration. Too often—and I think it has been true of LC in the

past—individual institutional decisions have been made on what to

digitize. But what we need to do with limited resources is to build

coalitions—public-private coalitions—to make some determinations,

depending on the ultimate use of those collections. There have been

some attempts at that. The Digital Library Federation now is one,

a private sector mechanism to do that.

That is where I think cooperation with NARA is going to be absolutely essential because it is inconceivable to do the whole thing.

Mr. HORN. Let me just get to a couple of things that have come

out in the testimony.

The year 2000 performance plan, as we noted earlier, projected

that the National Archives will convert 10 percent of existing

records, series descriptions, or finding aids to an on-line archival

research catalog. What we asked earlier was, Do you believe this

is a realistic goal? Do you believe that the target for 100 percent

completion by 2007 is a realistic timeframe?

Obviously, I think the Archivist thinks it is.

Mr. CARLIN. I think the 2007—I certainly do not intend to give

away that goal. The 2000 goal, as this year proceeds, may look less

and less realistic as we try to finalize that first step. But the value

of that catalog is heavily dependent upon getting it fully populated.

We are well aware of that and see it as a huge achievement that

we have to focus on. It is important to researchers and important

to the mission we have.

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Mr. HORN. Is there a real need for training your current archival

staff because they really might not have been involved that much

in technology? To what degree do you face that situation?

Mr. CARLIN. There will be the need to train so that we are proceeding in a way that is efficient, uniform, that fits the specific

data elements that need to go in, et cetera. That is why we are trying to bring some agency-wide focus to this, not letting it be done

all over the agency in whatever way is customary for them to deal

with it, but to make it uniform. It is one of the lessons you learn

quickly in the electronic age. You must have standards. That machine cannot quite negotiate two different approaches to the same

task.

We are working very hard to get those standards established and

working very hard, as a followup to that, to make sure that we

train the staff across the agency while doing the populating description work.

Mr. HORN. What else could we do in terms of private corporations? It seems to me in business archives there would be a market

out there in scanning business archives—especially when they get

sued—to go through their papers with key word indices to see

where these papers are and so forth. Is there any hope of collaboration with American business in some of this?

Mr. CARLIN. Yes, there is. In fact, there is existing today a considerable amount of collaboration. The focus to this point has been

primarily with the pharmaceutical industry, which has some of the

same concerns we have in terms of long-term preservation of this

new medium because of their liabilities, their focus on patents, and

so forth with the products they produce and market.

So they are a player at the table in one of our major research

projects today. They have been. That project started about 18

months ago.

Mr. HORN. I am interested in the technical side. I do not know

if we have enough experts here on that, but how is that coming?

Let’s face it, the more you get out, the more the price per unit goes

down. Where are we working on this? Cornell? Stanford? Berkeley?

Are they all involved?

Mr. HICKERSON. There are many universities involved in applicable research. Some of the important work focuses on the security,

accuracy, authenticity, and reliability of systems, which applies

broadly both to our defense capacity as well as other areas such as

NASA’s mandate.

So a lot of diverse research is in progress. I am hopeful that we

will turn seriously to the issue of preservation of electronic records

in the research sector. This has previously not been seen as sexy

or cutting edge research because it is not moving on beyond the

next new technology; it is looking back.

But I think we have moved to a point of awareness and soon we

will see resources redirected—and it does apply to business just as

much as it does to Government, and certainly to university administrations and everywhere else. I do expect that the technology industry will turn to this issue and devote a good deal of attention

to it.

Just a quick anecdote, I was speaking with a computer science

professor—a respected individual named Ken Birman—and we

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were talking about this issue in a seminar setting. He said rather

impassively, ‘‘I think that technically and economically and organizationally we will get this solved by about 2015, and probably everything between 1995 and 2015 we will lose most of it. But that

is a reasonable loss for a transformation of this size.’’

I said, ‘‘Ken, I don’t think society has given any indication it

would find this a reasonable loss, but I can’t guarantee you it won’t

happen.’’

So I think we will reach the point of successful management, but

we need to reach it a little faster than we are moving right now.

Mr. HORN. What do we know about the security of these records

in a digital age and how they can be damaged? We all take our

disks out at night so we don’t have to redo everything we have

done during the day. But beyond that, when you have documents

that can be, I am sure, marred in some way by somebody that

wants to make mischief—either a disgruntled employee or whatever it is, it happens in doctor’s offices and hospitals when they

want to get even—so we have all those dangers. How can we protect against it on vital records?

Mr. HICKERSON. As I said, a lot of research DARPA is funding

concerns security issues for systems. But whether that applies to

every individual user out there and when those tools will come into

common availability—I certainly cannot speak to that. I see this as

a crisis because we have made this transition to a largely electronic

world without building very much of the human infrastructure that

really guarantees its usability.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Stevens, given your report, the National Archives’

fiscal year 1999 performance plan indicates that the business process reengineering plan would be complete in 1999. However, the

2000 performance plan notes that the business process reengineering plan is scheduled for completion in 2000. What is involved in

a business process reengineering effort in terms of the GAO? What

do you feel on that?

Mr. STEVENS. There are many aspects to it, Mr. Chairman, and

the archivist has described a number of them. I tend to separate

it in two components. One is the internal and the other is the external.

Internally, obviously the National Archives and Records Administration has agreed they will have work to do to figure out how

it is going to interact with agencies. That means looking at the

paper flow, policies, guidance, training, and that sort of thing. And

that is not a misplaced emphasis.

What struck us when looking at electronic records management

as an issue as opposed to NARA as an agency was just how little

information is available about what is going on in the places in the

Government that really have primary line responsibility for managing electronic records at this point in time, and that is the agencies

themselves. We were surprised at how little NARA really knew

about that as well. They had recognized this issue in past years

and I think quite sensibly had laid on the baseline where-are-wenow survey. We felt that the information coming out of that would

be very valuable—not just for NARA’s own purposes in framing its

policies, guidance, paper flow, business process in general—but also

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for the agencies themselves and noted that in their strategic plan

keeping up with the agencies was an integral element.

So we were sorry not to see that information come available, at

least for a couple more years. It is a matter of timing. I think they

would agree that this needs to be done. We would like to see it

done a little sooner, partly because our focus is a little more Government-wide, a little more issue-oriented, and theirs is more agency-based.

Mr. HORN. Do you think the National Archives’ estimate that the

process will take 18 months to 24 months is reasonable?

Mr. STEVENS. Given our experience in other agencies that are

going through the Government Performance and Results Act, reexamination of their functions and processes, I would say that is certainly reasonable, maybe even optimistic. It is a complicated job for

people to reexamine fundamentally what they are doing and how

they are doing it.

Mr. HORN. One of the things this subcommittee will be doing,

once we get through this Y2K bit and have maybe a hearing on the

retrospect of what went right or wrong, will be to look agency-byagency—and obviously we want the General Accounting Office’s

help on this—to look at upgrading their computing capacity, because that has been one of the problems. Some agencies are three,

four, or five generations behind. The Congress really needs to face

up to that and move ahead on it.

It seems to me that you can build into this the archival end at

the other end of the process, and we ought to be thinking about

that.

Mr. STEVENS. You should be able to do that. Right now, we just

do not know what is happening. My suspicion is that nothing much

is, but we cannot prove that.

Mr. HORN. I think we will give the GAO 6 months to do one of

its wonderful reports as a lead-off witness. So maybe we can work

that out as to the questions that need to be asked. We welcome

from all of you, also, What questions do we have to raise if we are

going to make a rational decision in the executive branch, OMB,

the President, and the Congress? That is where I am headed in

terms of getting this Government up to speed in this technological

age.

Any comments any of you would like to make?

We are going to wind this up, but we thank you for starving to

death through the lunch hour.

Anything else anybody would like to say for the good of the

order?

If not, just write us a note and we will put it in the record at

this point, or if you do not want it in the record, you just want it

for guidance for us, that is fine, too. We would love to have it.

You are all wonderful people and we appreciate what you are

doing. Governor, you are running a great institution there. Future

generations will appreciate it, I hope, just as much as current generations. I thank you and your staff for coming.

With that, I have the staff list as to who helped on this. J. Russell George, the chief counsel, is not here. He is over at the Pentagon going through their Y2K things. Matthew Ebert, to my left and

your right, is the policy advisor who put this hearing together.

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Bonnie Heald, director of communications, professional staff member; Chip Ahlswede, the faithful clerk; and we have two great interns here, P.J. Caceres and Deborah Oppenheim. On the minority

staff we have Trey Henderson, counsel; Jean Gosa, minority staff

assistant.

And we have Mel Jones, who is probably as glad as we are that

this session is over. Thank you, Mel, for reporting these proceedings.

With that, we are adjourned. Thank you very much.

[Whereupon, at 1:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Jim Turner follows:]

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