One of our major responsibilities at NARA is to help government agencies determine which of their records are worth keeping and for how long. Some records are disposed of within a short time. Some, on the other hand, are so valuable that we take them into the National Archives for preservation indefinitely. We want to make it easier for the public to contribute to these decisions. In March of this year, we began to make those Federal Register notices more informative so that members of the public could determine more easily whether or not to agree with our judgments.
Notices now contain additional descriptive information on records in each schedule.
And the notices list or summarize the specific file series proposed for disposal, the total number of items in each schedule, the number of permanent items, and whether the schedule is applicable throughout an agency or only to files accumulated by a single office. NARA publishes notices at least once a month that certain agencies are requesting records disposition authority through approval of these schedules. The notices may alert the public to proposed schedules for destroying records not previously authorized for disposal, or for reducing retention periods for records already authorized for disposal. NARA invites public comment on these schedules as part of making a final determination. In addition, the public will have more information on which to evaluate proposals and make comments.