[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Good assessment of NARA/recordkeeping



Hello, all!  Here is an interesting and thoughtful assessment of record
keeping challenges from the H-Diplo List.  
Maarja (Maarja@aol.com)
Subj: NARA and record keeping (Mark)
Date: 4/27/2001 4:54:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Sender:    H-DIPLO@H-NET.MSU.EDU (H-NET List for Diplomatic History)

From: Eduard Mark <Aspondos@cs.com>

    I was pleased to note that with Maarja Krusten 's recent posts the
discussion of declassification has turned to an even more pressing problem --
the failure of many (and perhaps all) governmental agencies to preserve their
records adequately. Ms. Krusten quoted some dire assessments of the
situation. Based on what I have observed, I should say that they are if
anything optimistic. I first became aware of the problem of contemporary
record-keeping (or rather the lack of it) slightly more than a decade ago
when I wrote an account of the Air Force's role in the invasion of Panama in
1989. I began making the rounds of offices in the Pentagon within weeks of
the event armed with a letter from the Air Force's Assistant Vice Chief of
Staff commanding all elements of the Air Staff to make available their
records to me. To my great surprise I found that some computers had already
been purged of important records because was almost no awareness of the
regulations governing the preservation and retirement of documents. Except
for isolated islands of responsibility here and there, the Department of
Defense preserves few records except those which are absolutely required for
its functioning -- e.g., personnel and financial records. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that the situation in many other parts of the government is not
greatly different.
    Ms. Krusten is also correct about the fundamental reason for this debacle
-- the demise of the typing pool. As fate would have it, the advent of the
computer as a common office tool in the early 1980's coincided with a drive
to "downsize" the federal government. File clerks could have been kept around
to harvest systematically the documents produced with computers (including
e-mail) but in the prevailing climate of austerity they went out the door
with the secretaries. The culture of maintaining careful records that had
existed since the founding of the Republic went with them. The situation has
only grown worse during the 1990's. Computers have become altogether
ubiquitous and virtually every government employee does his own typing. I
believe that we shall forever know more about the activities of the United
States Government at the beginning of the Cold War than about what it was
doing at the struggle's end. When the government's historians talk shop, a
common topic is, "Whatever will our successors do several decades hence?"
    There is no simple answer to the question, "If everyone knows about the
problem, why is nothing done?" There is, for one thing, a sense of
hopelessness.  The regulations governing the preservation and retirement of
records reflect a time now passed. Though the digital age is barely two
decades old, the government has already employed a plethora of computer
programs. Many are mutually incompatible and some of the older ones can no
longer be read at all.  In theory, all documents could be printed out and
stored as paper. But who would maintain the files? The support personnel are
no longer present, and the creation of proper bureaucratic mechanisms would
be prohibitively expensive at a time when the emphasis is still on official
austerity. Records have no constituency -- an all-powerful consideration in
the American political system. The mind simply recoils from the immensity of
the dilemma.
    The catastrophic situation I have described will not change until there
are effective demands, supported by legal challenges, from the public.
Scholars must take the lead, and I do not doubt that they will when the
realize that the much-discussed problem of declassification is less pressing
than the quite literal "end of history" I have described. Congressional
hearings are in order, and so are national commissions on salient aspects of
the problem. Also required are laws on the compatibility of operating systems
and applications, and the establishment and enforcement  of bureaucratic
procedures for a digital age.

Eduard Mark
Department of the Air Force