It also generated roughly 2.6 million new classified pages. That was progress. Before 1993, the agency classified more documents each year than it declassified. But Energy's classified holdings still total about 280 million pages. The National Academy of Sciences recently estimated that it would take nearly 9,000 person-years of effort to review this backlog.
Declassification is labor-intensive and requires special training.
One goal of the openness initiative was to increase Energy's declassification work force, but that was wishful thinking in an era of budget cuts. The current declassification staff is 87, smaller than in 1993, when it was about 130. Changing the rules In December, the Energy and Defense Departments announced they would jointly carry out the recommendations of the Fundamental Classification Policy Review. This study, two years in the making, involved some 60 technical and policy experts from the nuclear weapons complex and other agencies. Under the Atomic Energy Act, data related to nuclear weapons is treated separately from other classified information.