David S. Ferriero

“ Not only does information become more pervasive through multiple distribution systems, but—thanks to us—it becomes more persistent. That is to say, over the past century and a half, historians and archivists have done an excellent job in demonstrating the value of historical records of all sorts. We have created the age of the archives—the ways and means to save more stuff and for longer periods of time. ”

“ The challenges of paper records and those on obsolete media pale in comparison with the whole question of electronic records. They answer the question of "space" by compressing data into ones and zeros, but at the same time—and perhaps as a consequence—electronic records are even more likely to be saved than paper records. They answer the question of technological obsolescence by being hardware independent, but at the same time, electronic records are just as likely to be lost if maintained solely in their proprietary formats. ”

“ The AHA had been focused on federal government records since its founding in 1884, and for decades, the association and in particular J. Franklin Jameson, who at the time was with Department of History and Political Science at Johns Hopkins, badgered and cajoled and argued for some system and order to be created to preserve federal records and make them accessible to the citizenry.
Jameson wasn’t the first advocate, though perhaps, he was the most ardent. The history of the idea of a national archives is as old as the nation itself. ”

“ Web 2.0 is a wild and crazy place. Let’s just look at just one part of the new social media dynamic: Facebook. Some 300,000 businesses in the U.S. are on Facebook, including the Federal Government. The White House has nearly 500,000 fans, the National Guard nearly 400,000, the U.S. Army 200,000 and the Centers for Disease Control over 54,000. Facebook is spreading quickly. It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million; television reached the saturation point in 13 years; the Internet in 4 years; and the iPod in 3 years. In less than 9 months, Facebook added 100 million users. ”

“ It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future. Among democracies, I think through all the recorded history of the world, the building of permanent institutions like libraries and museums for the use of all the people flourishes. ”

“ Compression is obviously a great space-saving idea. Microfilm also allowed for access to fragile materials and is a stable archival form. Preservation-standard film has an estimated life of about 500 years under appropriate storage conditions. It is an analog version of an analog original, requiring no software to decode the data. One only needs magnification.
Problem solved. Raise your hands if you prefer sitting at a microfilm reader over sitting in front of a computer screen. The disadvantages of microfilm are also fairly obvious. ”

“ While the quantity of information saved has increased dramatically over the centuries, the durability of media has decreased exponentially. That is to say, the clay tablets from ancient Sumeria can still be seen today, medieval manuscripts on animal parchment are perfectly readable, and paper correspondence from the Renaissance is still in good condition. ”

“ While none of us, I would guess, want to go back a century and live without the extraordinary tools and communications delivery systems—off the grid as they say—we must acknowledge that the data smog requires some filtration. The best filter is going to be our own individual capacity to turn off and tune out occasionally, but we need as well as information filters such as search engines, libraries, museums, and archives. ”

“ There are huge risks and challenges associated with what archives are doing. Particularly in the digital environment, where everything is saved yet little is preserved. Clearly we need to save better and preserve more (and not the other way around) . The National Archives can play an important role in the evolution of the digital archives environment, with ERA as a cog around which much additional research and experimentation can grow, including R&D from the academic community. ”

“ To ensure that Executive Branch interests are adequately protected, the Select Committee has agreed to treat entries associated with appointments designated as national-security sensitive (NSS) or otherwise-highly sensitive (OHS) as confidential and to refrain from sharing or discussing such entries outside the Select Committee without prior consultation. Moreover, to ensure that personal privacy information is not inadvertently disclosed, the Select Committee has agreed to accept production of these records with birthdates and social security numbers removed. ”

“ We must be mindful of the special needs of electronic records, just as for paper and special media, which require both access and protection, the preservation and conservation routines which care for the physical object to extend its life, usually through providing an appropriate storage environment. ”

“ Making it easy for researchers, students, and the general public to learn about and make use of the billions of items in our collection is clearly a challenge. Free and open access to the records of government will always be the work of this agency. ”

“ QZone—the equivalent of Facebook in China—has 300 million users.
More than 1.5 million pieces of information are shared on Facebook each day. Generation Y—who just this year blew past the Baby Boomers in terms of overall population share—uses this stuff the way our generation relied on the daily mail and the newspaper. The whole commerce of information has changed permanently. The transactions between organizations—including the federal government—and users will continue to spread and grow. ”

“ There are a quarter million optical discs—the cutting edge technology of the 1980s—that depend on software and hardware no longer on the market. All of these technologies are less than a century old, and yet, the materials may be gone. ”

“ The backbone of the Administration’s Open Government initiative is effective records management. There is a disconnect between those responsible for agency records and the information technology folks in those same agencies. The CIO Council, composed of the CIOs of all the agencies, need to work together to develop the IT tools necessary to manage electronic records in a cost effective way. ”

“ After consultation with the Counsel to the President and the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and as instructed by President Biden, I have determined to disclose to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“Select Committee”) the Vice Presidential records from our December 8, 2021, Notification that you identified as privileged in your letter of January 18, 2022. ”

“ When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had completed its work, delegate Rufus King of Massachusetts suggested that the Journals of the Convention be either destroyed or deposited in the custody of the President. He thought "if suffered to be made public, a bad use would be made of them by those who wish to prevent the adoption of the Constitution." ”

“ If the past teaches us anything, it is that challenges persist. A century ago, J. Franklin Jameson and the American Historical Association were crying out for the establishment of a National Archives, for we were losing our national memory. ”

“ Publish Government Information Online — particularly high-value data and through an open gateway for agency activities. 2. Improve the Quality of Government Information 3. Create and Institutionalize a Culture of Open Government 4. Create an Enabling Policy Framework for Open Government We are working through the mechanisms at the National Archives to embrace these goals and principles, and we will release a first draft of our plan on April 7. At the heart of the plan is a flagship initiative to develop web and data services that are worthy of the American people. ”

“ Black-and-white photographs may last a couple of centuries, while most color photographs become unstable within thirty or forty years. Videotapes deteriorate much more quickly than does traditional movie film. ”

“ And we must be prepared for the new ways in which government and citizens interact and the new kinds of records created through social media. Two years ago, President Obama and his campaign staff began the first truly Internet campaign, and now the Administration is using social media and new communications techniques to reach out to citizens in ways once inconceivable, especially from the federal government. ”

“ All over the country, archives are reuniting citizens with their rights and helping historians research and tell the American story. Through the work of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we’ve helped fund documentary histories of Americans from Benjamin Franklin to Martin Luther King, from the records of the Florida everglades to the civic history of Los Angeles. ”

“ Our ability to capture text, video, audio, and electronic communications is unprecedented. This new power has also raised questions about security, privacy, relevance, access, selection, cost, and long-term preservation. ”

“ Certainly if you look at the national network of archives—the records at the federal, state, local and academic levels—you would count well into the billions. Electronic records are only going to blow the top off. ”

“ But we need the best minds at colleges and universities and the private sector working in concert to develop new ways of not simply saving the records, but preserving them and figuring out ways to make sure they are accessible. ”

“ In 1926, Congress finally acted and authorized the construction of the building, which began in September of 1931. President Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone in February of 1933, though there was not yet an actual agency to be put in the building. ”

“ And that is especially true in our own land, because we believe that people ought to work out for themselves, and through their own study, the determination of their best interest rather than accept such so-called information as may be handed out to them by certain types of self-constituted leaders who decide what is best for them". ”

“ According to the Report of the Committee on the Records of Government, a bipartisan federal committee working with the scholars, "The United States is in danger of losing its memory." The federal government and state and local governments have huge quantities of paper records at risk. ”

“ A 2008 survey by CREW, in fact, could not find a single federal agency policy that mandates an electronic record keeping system agency-wide, rather a "print and file" system is pervasive. A system that is highly selective and serves as a serious memory loss vehicle. ”

“ This is an inter-agency effort, led by the Archives, to streamline declassification processes, facilitate quality assurance, and provide training for declassification reviewers.
Ultimately, the Center will usher in a new day in the world of access, allowing us to make more records available for public scrutiny much more quickly. To give you a sense of the task ahead, there are now some 2,000 different security classification guides at work in the government and more than 400 million pages of records awaiting declassification and public access by December 31, 2013. ”