BRIDG Meeting 10/20/20

today for our third 100 percent virtual bridge meeting i'm ariane ravenbox policy and program support team supervisor and the moderator for today's event we are hosting this bridge meeting today using google meet which we will be live streaming to youtube you can download the slides from today's presentation by clicking on the link displayed under the youtube video you may enter your questions for our presenters at any time into the chat box to the right of the youtube video if you're unable to log into youtube for any reason to post your questions please use your email to send us questions at rm.com nara.gov as a friendly reminder please keep the questions polite professional and relevant to today's discussions if at any point you experience technical difficulties please email that same email address rm.communications.nara.gov and a member of our production team will be happy to assist you now ladies and gentlemen i'd like to introduce our first presenter lawrence brewer chief records officer for the u.s government thank you rn so good morning everyone uh from the home recording studio i hope you guys are all staying safe and healthy and enjoying this great fall weather especially here on the east coast so it's been a crazy year very challenging and it's about to get even more challenging as we head into the holidays so while i have your attention if anyone has any ideas on how to do a coveted thanksgiving with a large family let me know offline so before we get to the agenda and flip the slide um i have a few quick announcements i want to share with all of you um first staying on the covid theme this morning we posted an update to our covet and rm faqs that we initially posted in april we made some recent changes to it to note that we are looking at the grs to cover some of the records agencies are now creating that are coded specific so some minor changes um to the language in there so i encourage you to take a look at it and if you have any questions about the details of what's in the communication please get in touch with the grs team second also related to covet i wanted to give you a heads up on the communication that we are going to be sending out tomorrow we have been getting questions from some agencies asking us to do on-site appraisal work and at this point with nara and most agencies in the early stages of reopening we are not scheduling any in-person agency visits so our focus right now is on doing this work safely using the tools at our disposal to conduct this work virtually so in tomorrow's communication you'll find further details on our approach and we also are including some tips on how you can prepare for virtual meetings for appraisal and as we continue to work through this together so if you have any questions about that communication i encourage you to get in touch with your appraisal archivist and then we will be happy to discuss where we are finally uh just a quick update with some reporting news since i'm sure you're aware last month at the end of september we published our annual records management report i particularly want to thank all of you for collecting the data and sending your reports in on time at really a time that was i'm sure inconvenient for for all of us so thank you for uh for doing that and getting us the data but you know as you know and i'm sure it's the same in your agencies as well the work continues so right now we are already working on the templates and the questions that we're going to be using for the reporting period next year at this point we expect the reporting window to run from january through march um and we'll talk a lot more about that and the plans for reporting at our next bridge meeting in december so if you have any questions on on any of this um please send them in at any time um in the chat and we'll discuss in the general q a at the end of the meeting so let's keep things moving and take a look at the agenda so we have a really good program um and you can see from the agenda we have quite a bit to cover so we could go back one slide thank you so i just want to do a quick run through first we have gordon and jeff we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on with the frcp then i will be back to talk to you about two bulletins and then turn it over to lisa who will talk about transition which is a big topic right now and then we'll close the meeting with a presentation on our cognitive technologies white paper which we posted yesterday so it's very timely we'll have a chance to give you an overview of content of that white paper and then hopefully after that we'll still have some time for some general q a and we can handle any questions that come in via chat so with that i will turn it back over to our thank you lawrence this is a reminder to our viewers that if you weren't able to if you're not able to ask your question in an individual q a session we will have a q a a close-out q a session with all the presenters from today's program now please welcome gordon everett and jefferson lundsford who will be presenting an update on the frcp program thank you aryan good morning i'm gordon everett director of the customer relationship management for the federal records center program and i hope everyone is doing well and staying safe in our current environment but as we continue to gradually and safely open the 18 federal records centers around the country you were able to get some real-time info uh if you were to go to frc.gov and you click on operating status and it advises all of our agency customers what phase each of the records centers are in as of this morning we have nine cent i'm sorry eight centers in phase one nine in phase two and one center is currently closed uh due to the covet metrics in that county in illinois so please keep in mind that 10 to 20 percent of our staff are working during limited hours in phase one and 25 to 50 percent of the staff are in those buildings during phase two so and also customers before you send any records to any of those centers please make sure you communicate with that record center uh to see if they are able to accept records and what amount of records they're able to accept safely i know we have many in the records management community on the line today but for our federal records officers in a recent letter from our acting director of the federal record center program stephanie hutchins you received a letter from her with your interagency agreements for 2021 and you noted in that letter uh is where we're establishing a new rate structure and billing timing to ensure the federal records center program recovers all costs as required by law so this morning with me is jeff lundsford who is the financial analyst from the federal record center program who will speak more about this good morning to everybody as gordon mentioned on in late september the interagency agreements were distributed to our to each of you it does reveal and does include news about the new fee structure for the record center program it's a major reorganization of our fees and we believe it will simplify and expedite the interagency agreement process as well as billing so under the new structure the fees for most standard services including transfers most types of dispositions reference and refiles are included as baseline services within the storage fee set another way and to amplify that there will not be a separate charge for reference refills transfers and most disposition um the fees that will remain in effect and will be built separately from storage include but aren't limited to truck service labor rates permanent withdrawals and special projects like scanning and some consulting work so the fee structure uh is is in effect beginning october 1st and you should have a copy of those uh 2021 rates um that were attached to your interagency agreement um we do want to point out and highlight that there is not a separate fee that's being charged for the disposal of records and um we hope that that will encourage the time or disposition of eligible records which will elevate the entire records management records life cycle process we have gotten a few questions and what i did want to cover today um sort of the the legal framework under which we can make these changes and i want to draw your attention to the enabling legislation for the record center program for the revolving fund it was included in public law 106-58 that was passed september 29 1999 that law actually is just the omnibus um uh appropriation uh for fy 2000. but it included a little section that established the record center revolving fund um and it's codified actually in 44 usc section 2901 um but in paragraph let me look it up in paragraph c uh there's a section about user charges um and it actually was sort of its foundational legislation for us um and it was really written in a very coherent and cognizant way in terms of how we um would come to delivery quarterbacks in a reimbursable basis uh to each of you so the the legislation uh indicates that we we as a as as a program and the revolving fund shall be credited with user charges um from other federal accounts to cover our costs um the payments um it can be made in advance or by way of reimbursement and the rates charge will return the full expense of the operation um that's that's actually a really key sentence right there there is a law out there on the books that require us to charge rates um to cover the full expenses of of our program um that includes not just salaries and rent um but it also includes accrued annual leave depreciation workers comp shelving i mean depreciation of it systems and software so so truly we are required by law to recover all of our costs through our fees which is no small feat i do believe that as we combine our federal funding into a single consolidated program that delivers value for all of the entire government because we are able to focus on our mission um and relieve the responsibility of storing and servicing your own records another key component of this legislation is in section d in paragraph one under section b um it does require that i require slash allow it allows the record center program to retain up to four percent of our revenue in excess of our expenses as an operating reserve or to replace or acquire capital equipment um but in a quick read you might think that that sounds like profit we're not actually allowed to make a profit um all we can do is um sort of create a budget so that we can maintain our equipment and keep our systems modern um so that we can deliver high-class services to you um so that in essence means we are an at-cost operation there's there's no profit involved so it those two sort of paragraphs within our opening within our enabling legislation require us to be exceptionally efficient we have to cover all of our costs but we can't charge you more than four percent over our our operational costs um so the the new fee structure i say all this to say the new fee structure is quite consistent um with our enabling legislation and our practice for the last 20 21 years 20 years it's our 21st year um so i guess we're we're legal now um so so we were very careful when we when we took a look at restructuring the rates to ensure that um again we the rates only cover our costs and do not and we don't charge you any more than our cost so the other change you'll you'll notice um which hopefully is just sort of a an accounting name that that won't sort of shape anybody's world is that um we changed the the timing of our billing cycle so that our bills will um will will be billing in advance as opposed to in arrears so the october bill that you receive you'll receive one one bill in october that will close out september so that's that's all prior fiscal year but beginning in october of fy 21 the bill you received in october will be for october um so we're going within that the month that services are being delivered um and that that advanced billing if that's what you you want to call it advanced billing will continue um throughout the course of fy21 and warrant so those are the the two major changes that we've introduced with this interagency agreement cycle and with that um i think i can turn it back to gordon um and maybe open up the for questions okay uh do we have any uh questions coming in yes we have at least two questions from the audience the first question is since the new rate structure is related to the covig-19 pandemic will the rates go back to the old structure once the pandemic is over jeff i'd like you to take that okay um we do anticipate that this will be a permanent change to our rate structure um that is our intention um it it does offer um a lot more um freedom and flexibility in terms of um not only our billing processes but um also it removes sort of any financial um dynamic when it comes to making decisions about disposal or transfer or that sort of thing it it it allows records management records managers to manage records without sort of the weight of um finances um so uh we believe it's it's it's going to be a good thing for everybody it will be as we anticipate a permanent change and it's actually in in looking back through our history it's um consistent with the way the funds started back in 2000 we only had one rate actually and it was just sort of a box rate that included everything so this this sort of uh tickles the back of my brain a little bit in terms of uh coming full circle um with with the way restructuring rates and one of the other things too is we also believe this will allow us to get our agreement information out to you much earlier than we historically have so we think this will help okay thank you gordon the second question is if most of the basic services are no longer being billed for will we still be able to track the volume of requests yes there there's a plan when the customer sees their invoice they still will see the number of requests and widgets uh on the invoice uh there'll just be a zero uh dollar amount to that so that information will still be captured okay we have an additional question has come in uh just asking for clarification did i hear correctly that no separate charges for destruction will be charged this year formerly the d1 chart that is correct effective as of october 1st all destruction october 1st moving forward is covered uh under the storage charge now so there will be no there is no um fee for destruction it's covered in the storage costs thank you gordon i don't i i don't see any further questions from the audience uh but a reminder if you have any please drop them in during the meeting and we'll ask we'll answer them at the general portion at the end and there now i would also ask if any customers there have any particular questions around that also they can get to their account managers or myself and we'll gladly follow up on those questions around the uh agreement than the rate thank you thank you aaron thank you thank you again now please welcome lawrence brewer back to the to the presentation as he will be presenting an update on gnar bulletins 20 2002 and 2020.01 thanks arien and thanks karen um i already got an email uh on suggestions for how to do thanksgiving and karen i see what we're thinking alike uh i i see that you're planning on doing it in the garage with outdoor space heaters and you know we may be going down that path as well so anybody has any other original ideas on how to get through the holidays safely uh send them on in so at this point though let's not talk about uh covet and the holidays and focus on two bulletins that that we issued at the end of september so we we were working very hard to try and get um both of these bulletins out before the end of the fiscal year so we could start the new year fresh with new guidance so really happy to be able to talk about talk to you about both of these today so the first one we're going to talk about is nara bolton 2020-02 next slide please so you can see a few bullet points on the slide about what is covered in guidance on scheduling the early and late transfer of permanent records this should look familiar to all of you as it supersedes what we used to call the 15-year bulletin that was covering early transfer so that requirement still stands however what we've done in this bulletin is now included provisions for late transfer so it's it's essentially uh we've got the book ends in place 15 for early 30 years for late and this the provisions for classified are are still in place so instead of 15 for classified it would be 25 and we have kept those provisions as well one of the things that that we also um have kept in place uh are the checklists for early transfer and then we've added a checklist for you to fill out for a proposed late transfer so it's a pretty straightforward bulletin it includes our rationale for why we are providing this guidance around both early and late transfer and again the checklists are there for you to review the cases where you think an exception may be needed and then you can get in touch with us via your appraisal archivist and review those specific situations so again fairly straightforward glad to get this out i mean this is one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we covered because while we had the early transfer we didn't really have anything in place for late transfer so we wanted to make sure we covered both ends next slide please so this is one that i know we've been promising for some time and i want to spend uh quite a bit more time on this bulletin as we've had many questions about it so next slide as you can see questions questions questions and and really what this gets to is when uh the memorandum came out in 1921 back in june 2019 there was language in the memo that said that nara would provide further guidance so we've been working on it and it's taken us some time to to do the coordination not only internally but also with omb but one of the benefits in the time that has taken us to get this out is that it really allowed us to hear more from you about what your questions are so we were able to fold those questions in to this guidance that we issued last month just to make it that much more responsive to the questions and concerns that you have so uh really what we're trying to do if we can go to the next slide is cover a number of things in in the bulletin we have uh separated it out into four general categories some general questions that we received um some clarifications that that agencies have requested and then we focused quite a bit on the exception process and not only what those exceptions must include but the process for how to submit them and then we address some questions that we've been hearing around storage facilities and scheduling and transfer next slide okay so um i want to start with some of the general categories that are covered um in the new guidance um as i said while the clarifications and the general questions are important much of what is in the bulletin covers the exceptions that were identified as something that we would work on with this guidance related to m1921 so there are a lot of specifics in the bulletin which i'll get to in a second but going back to the m1921 memo there were three general categories where agencies should first evaluate the impact of the memo on their compliance and these three categories are here you know whether or not complying with the bulletin and going fully electronic would impose a burden on the public on whether the cost of doing so would exceed the benefit or if there was some statute regulation that would prohibit that transition from analog to fully electronic so those are general categories and then we start there and then move on to the specifics so we should be on slide 12 other considerations thank you so in addition to the general categories that were in the memo we added to um the new bulletin some more specific categories um one of the things that we felt was important and wasn't highlighted in the memo is that records with potentially intrinsic value is something that we wanted to have the ability to discuss with agencies so you know we wouldn't want an agency to digitize and dispose of historically valuable analog records without getting in touch with us there's also more information in this bulletin about classified records and um obviously we're going to need to deal with some of those issues on a case by case but there's a general uh placeholder in question that that just calls that out and highlights it as an issue that's something we're going to have to work through in some cases and then fragile records where digitization is cost prohibitive we heard that as a question where agencies may have some older records or records on fragile media that would not be appropriate for scanning or cost prohibitive to scan so there are there are other areas where you know we we've heard those questions and we know there's going to be a need to have conversation about how to move forward in those circumstances next slide please so let's talk process a little bit there's quite a bit in the bulletin that does get to what agencies need to do and how they should submit exceptions one of the things that we are asking agencies to do to the fullest extent possible is to develop a single comprehensive request so we know that there are going to be a number of requests coming in from agencies and we want to try and work through those as expeditiously as possible and i think it will be helpful not only for us but for you if agencies take the time to sort of pull them all together and submit them as one request so it's part of part partly a reason to try and and keep things sort of focused and moving along but we also don't want to have to deal with you know onesies and twosies you know as we go through the next couple of years so we understand there's always going to be exceptions to that and and situations are going to arise that you may not anticipate we understand that but to the greatest extent possible we do want agencies to do one comprehensive request if possible so one of the things that we also want agencies to sort of connect in these requests is how does the specific request and the records that they relate to relate to sort of the strategic plan that the agency has in place for moving fully electronic so we want to try and connect the operational to the strategic and hopefully that will be borne out in the reasons that agencies need to to tell us about as they submit their request and it should cover things like um and i'll get into a little bit more detail on this but it should cover things like you know how long they need the exception for um and then any plans that an agency would need to come into full compliance so uh in terms of submitting uh we are saying in the bulletin that the request should be signed and submitted by the agency senior agency official records management and then we have set up a dedicated email box where you can submit your request to us next slide so in in how you're thinking about submitting your requests i mean we we encourage you to think about how you would build a business case to support the exceptions that you need so we said we wanted to be comprehensive we said we wanted to be strategic but we wanted to you know have all of the factors that sort of underline the business needs for why you need to have this exception so that we can verily very clearly see and evaluate why it's important for you to um to get an exception to m1921 so there are a lot of elements that i'm sure are going to go into your business case um we expect you to identify all of those elements and be able to connect them and some of those things are on the slide that we would be looking to see in any request that you send us descriptive information including the the approved disposition authority for the records in question the volume of the records that are affected um the costs that you are going to incur to digitize or provide reference and of course if there are legal issues around ownership or access we will want to know that as well and then the last one is an important point too time estimates on how long an exception would be needed and this is where we sort of get into that distinction between an exception and an extension we have heard from a number of agencies where they have a plan to go fully electronic but they can't get there by 2022. so they are telling us that well we can do what the memo requires but we cannot get into full compliance until 2024 for example so that's a situation where uh we just need to understand and know the circumstances uh the the plan the project plan that you have in place to make this transition and then reviewing reviewing a request that's an extension is in my view a little bit more straightforward than reviewing an exception where something may be needed indefinitely so if that is the case for a particular record series please let us know give us your project plan let us know when you can be in full compliance next slide so i didn't want to uh close before talking a little bit about what nar is going to do once we receive your request for an exception or an extension to the requirements in m1921 so there is a process involved obviously we are going to review it internally it is going to be through internal nara stakeholder units for their comment and their feedback the custodial units who who have a lot of information and knowledge about your records and then we also do need to coordinate externally with omb um we haven't done this process before so there's a lot of unknowns in terms of how this will play out as i noted we are going to work through requests um as we receive them as expeditiously as we can but at this point we're not setting a time frame for how long it's going to take to resolve the requests because all the requests are going to be different they're going to have their own levels of complexity and we can't really predict how the coordination is going to go with omb and how streamlined that process is going to work so there's a number of factors that we need to figure out and work through the process a couple of times and then we'll be able to provide more input and feedback back to agencies after we receive requests on how long we expect it to take so at this point we're kind of leaving it open and working through it a bit a few times and see how it goes and then we should should have a better handle on how this is going to go going forward one thing that i did want to know is um the recommendations on whether to approve or deny um a submitted exception um ultimately it comes down to not only o and b and and the feedback that we provide to omb but also to the archivist of the united states who from nars side of things will be the final decider on the ultimate disposition of an agency's exception request so it is a rigorous process where we are going to be working through this not only internally with omb but also with all of you and you should expect that we may have some questions and want to get back in touch with you to get further information and details as we review each request that we receive so with that i will pause and see if anyone has questions about either of the bulletins thank you lawrence we do have a couple of questions that have come in uh the first one have there been any discussions in regards to having the 2022 deadline be extended so there have not been any discussions yet and we did address this in the new bulletin one of the things that we have been saying all along is that right now we are all focused on covid making sure everybody is safe and healthy and um in developing our agency plans on how to reopen and get people back in the buildings and that really has taken the time and really the bandwidth of the senior managers in our agency and i'm sure in yours as well so we have not yet because of that and our focus on that issue than able to have any discussions with with omb at this point i can assure you that we will get there and we will have those discussions but at this point with the deadline still two years away we feel like we have some time to sort through it get through the pressing need to keep people safe and reopen our buildings now and then we can have those discussions so i think uh as you go forward you should consider that as you're developing your request and assume that the targets are not going to be changed and then we can work with you on your request and if they do get changed then perhaps if all you're requesting is a short extension could be obe at that point so i would say just stay tuned we will get there we will have those discussions we're just not at that point right now and thank you and the the other question sort of dovetails off your response there shouldn't covid19 the pandemic be an exception so the memo is about going fully electronic and that goal that target hasn't changed we still in spite of the the pandemic need to continue to the best ability that we have to work on moving fully electronic yeah sure covet is going to affect that and it may it may impact in certain circumstances our ability to digitize records or do the work that we need to do so in those cases that may be true that covet may be a reason why an agency needs an extension so i think that is where i think agencies need to evaluate the difference between an exception and an extension and i think in those cases i could certainly see that as being a reason for needing more time to get the work done but still in order to request an extension because we need to get through covet we still need to understand the plan the series of records that are going to be affected by this extension and the details um underlying it so i think that is probably the best way to approach it i think if you're looking for an exception it's really uh immaterial from covid if it's the kind of you know general uh exception that we discussed earlier code is not going to have that kind of impact but for an extension it may be something you need to talk to us about first and then we can work together on what you would need to submit to us for review any other questions ariane i don't see any coming in at this moment as a reminder to our participants you can ask your questions in the youtube chat or you can email them to rm.communicationsnara.gov okay well then i will say you can uh certainly uh send in a chat and if we uh time at the end of the meeting we can certainly take up your question then or uh send an email to uh rm communications as you see on the slide and we'll be sure to get an answer back to you with that i'll turn it back to you aaron thank you laurence now please welcome lisa haralampas the director of records management policy and outreach who will be presenting on transition and federal records management hi thank you very much so welcome everybody to this uh my portion of today's bridge meeting i'd like to talk a little bit about transition and federal records management so if we can go to the next slide we will start at the beginning so i always um i know that there are many members of our federal records management community that have been through transitions before and they sort of know the ropes but i thought that for those of you who are new who may be new to federal service and new to federal records management we can start at the beginning and just cover a few basic things so bear with me if this is a repetition for you so first i want to talk about what is a presidential transition it's words that may have been thrown around quite frequently or you hear them in the news and we talk about transition but i'd like to point out and talk about what it is specifically it's the process for planning for a new presidential term you'll also hear me use the words presidential transition or administration transition the administration and presidential are our synonyms because what we're talking about is the process of preparing for a new president to enter the office or for a president to start a second term it really doesn't matter who is wins the election because as far as we're thinking about it from a federal records management perspective perspective there's always a transition every four years there's a transition and it's something that we need to plan for and prepare for i've also put on this slide for those of you who want to uh look at a little bit more information i'm calling it my legal footnotes on the bottom um there are laws that govern how transition works it's not something that we make up every four years um there's a process there are uh steps in place and i could think that i would say from my 30 years of federal experience that i've watched each transition sort of get a little better and the reasonable good effective and efficient government part of this process is always looking at ways to do transition a little bit better and that is why you can see the laws have been updated from 2000 to 2010 2015 and even uh 2019. one of the changes that happened in the past 10 years is that to support transition there is a bylaw a center for presidential transition that is being run by the partnership for public service or pps and for those of you in the federal space pps might be ringing a bell that is the same organization that runs the employee value employee viewpoint survey the evs and the best places to work in government they're a non-partisan nonprofit organization and what their role is in transition is creating a center for presidential transition and pulling together all sorts of sources of information and resources and being a place that can communicate and can focus on transition without having either of the parties or administrations having to focus on that from the perspective of their running campaigns so you don't want to run for a campaign and perhaps focus on the administrative parts of a presidential transition i'll also highlight as i said we're starting at the beginning so if anybody is new to transition and they wanted to learn more about what transitions are like i recommend going to their their website they have a wealth of resources and in fact on the next slide slide 19 i've put a screenshot up of the um of the of their website as you can see they're focused on information and resources for campaign teams for transition teams for congress in the media and i would say if you learned this is a good resource if you're new this is a good resource to use to learn and one of my favorites is not only do they have a blog but they have a podcast and i too have been listening to the podcast and just in general thinking about um how transition works so that's a resource for you on the next slide i'd like to talk about the legal requirements for agencies so if you delve into the center's work or you delve into those laws there are certain legal requirements that each agency and the white house need to do for transition the first is that each agency must designate a senior career official in charge of transition planning briefing and succession planning on september 4th omb issued a memo which we all love our omb memos this is m 2033 and it directs agencies to designate those career officials as the law requires um it says that every agency must have this designation this person in place and that includes every component agency for a department and even major subcomponents that they all need to have their transition officials by by now there also are two councils that are formed um by law and supported by uh the center one is the white house transition coordinating council and the other is the agency transition directors council as i said if you're interested in these councils or interested in more there's resources for you to go look but what i wanted to point out from this perspective for our federal community is that there are groups and there are people who have been working on transition they've been actively uh developing the succession plans and the and the briefing books and thinking about how to do transition and as part of their roles they have been thinking about records management how do i know they've been thinking about records management if we could go to the next slide please we'll come back to i'll answer that question in a minute because what i wanted to talk about when not only the legal requirements that the pps help set up but also nara's responsibilities so as an agency we have three major responsibilities that come that are related to transition the first one which is really interesting and i'm always excited and interested to see what our colleagues are doing on the other in another part of nara is that we're responsible for transferring presidential records from the white house before a new president is inaugurated as you may know nara runs the presidential libraries the presidential centers and so like i said that is a huge part of nara's mission and very interesting exciting and unfortunately for you not what i'm talking about today i'm also not going to be talking about item number three because we also are an agency and we have to prepare for transition just like every other agency does we have our coordinator and we put together our plans although we are very um as you know nara is a medium-sized to small agency and we actually only have one political appointee so we're we're in good shape as far as that goes we're we have a little bit of an easier path when it comes to preparation as an agency and what i want to focus on today for this uh bridge session is talking about that second point that we have a responsibility to provide guidance and support to help ensure that incoming and outgoing officials follow federal records management requirements we at the national archives are one of the four support agencies that help support transition there are three other agencies as well and those agencies are opm the office of personnel management which helps focus on you know hiring and getting people in place it also is the office of government ethics oge they are oge is responsible for helping incoming officials get through the ethics review and get through the vetting to do um to be confirmed in their appointments and then the fourth agency so opm oge nara and the fourth agency is gsa and gsa i would say is the lead federal agency that helps work with the center and work with these councils and is supporting um transition they also have the role that gsa always has of sort of finding places and finding things so they are gsa they help agency transition teams find space and agencies to help make sure they have equipment that's necessary for for transition support so if we could go to the next page or the next slide please so i wanted to highlight and go gsa's role and answer the question i just posed to ourselves ourselves a minute ago how do agencies transition teams know that there are records management requirements well gsa has put together a transition directory once again this is a picture of a screenshot of a website so you can go look at the center's web page or you can go look at the gsa transition directory when you get there you'll see again a wealth of information relating to what federal agencies and transition teams need to know about transition and you'll see that i have expanded their left hand navigation to point out that in the directory there are specific records management guidelines where we talk about federal records and presidential records and have resources available so we know that agencies who are using the directory and the councils and the atd directors are referred to this directory and we know that we've sort of linked from the center site to the gsa site to nara's site to provide resources so if we could go to slide 23 please i'm going to talk about what those resources are and i wanted i'm sorry i did want to also share we are made these resources available and we have and i and my team we have both briefed the agency transition directors and we've been working with the partnership so we know that the agency trans transition directors and those career officials who are supporting transition are getting their awareness of records management requirements and we know we've been making this awareness available for agencies as well we have had on our webpage for a long time a web page we call documenting your public service when we first developed these this information and i think we've been doing versions of this for the past 20 years we had a guide that we would hand out to for incoming officials that said or made available for other agencies to hand out as a publication here's what you need to know about documenting your public service so we always left that on our web page and what is here is a series of resources to help agency records officers and federal records management staff be prepared and think about the things they need to cover for federal records management requirements during transition because there's always areas of emphasis we want to focus on i'll also point out on this page that we have a short i think it's about a five or six minute video that we created in 2016 and it has the archivist talking about the importance of records management during transition that's available if you want to use that in a um a a transition briefing we have a video that we want to share and if i were to give a short two sentence summary of why we're doing this work and what the video is about it's that every time there's a transition we're making history it's just the nature of transition something in you know is happening within the federal government either a one-term or a two-term president that makes history and what do we do with the national archives we preserve history so we are looking to work with agency records officers and transition staff to make sure that we have good efficient and effective government structures in place so that the history that's made is captured and eventually comes to nara okay let's talk about the next move on to the next slide please so while there are traditional records management activities that happen during uh transitions i wanted to bring up four areas of focus that we've sort of noticed trending over time and and hopefully we have resources available that will help with those of these areas so the first area of focus i want to say is email email email email i was going to say it takes about a hundred percent of agency officials that are impacted by a transition are capstone officials but um you know there's always one little exception that proves the rule so i'll just say 99.9 of the times uh when you're talking about transition you're talking about capstone officials being impacted or affected and this is important for um good records management so that when there are incoming officials uh coming into um federal service or outgoing officials as they're getting their entrance and exit briefings that they'd be clearly informed that their emails either have are or will be preserved depending on how the agency's policy and practices are going for implementing uh capstone policy within their agency and i think the idea that email is historical the idea that their email needs to be done on official business systems that you can if you end up for whatever reason using a personal account to conduct official business the policy does not forbid it it strongly discourages and the law says officials have 20 days to forward that to their um official business accounts so when would these uh incoming officials learn about capstone hopefully they'll learn about that during the entrance and exit briefings the other area of focus for us are entrance and exit briefings we do have a resource of course on our web page we have some model checklists we have found it's really important to brief incoming and it's really important to brief outgoing officials as soon as possible because sometimes uh officials who are leaving will think that i'm going to take series of records with us you know i need this for my my future career and of course as we all know there are rules about records and record keeping you can't take records but you might be able to take some copies of some records if they are appropriate for release so there's often a review period that has to happen through legal and through records to make sure that there's any outgoing records being taken by an outgoing official are either their personal papers which they kept um on in the government offices and systems or they are uh copies of non-records that are releasable under under our records and foil rules i'm also going to highlight the last two areas that are new new areas of focus and by new i mean we've really started focusing on them in the past 10 years which is social media records and web records i just want to point out that you know many social media accounts they are considered to be federal records especially they may be copies or their social media accounts are used to amplify um other records management or other briefing information and we want to point out that social media accounts generally are used by agencies are stay with the agency so outgoing officials they they lose their followers when they have to go back to setting up a new you know twitter account or a new social media running a new blog that's related to their work once they leave federal service and i'll also highlight that web records is an area that we're starting to pay more attention to when it comes to transitions because often when there's a transition of an administration and new officials come in there will be a new emphasis on the web page maybe there's something that reflects a new organization or a new focus for that new term and i just want to highlight that if web records are if web records are scheduled they need to be managed and maintained for the um as according to record schedules which often could mean uh replacing information as it's needed but then knowing that as an agency that you know what you had on the website recently and making sure you've got web content in place so that you can know what was said in the past as well as what you're saying currently and i'll mention these four areas are something that we're focusing on and i'd like to highlight our records express blog in our records express blog we're doing a series of blog posts to go into these four areas a little a little more um we've two of them have been sent out two more may be coming over the next week or two as fast as aria and i can can get them written and get them out and so if you're looking for resources you not only have the centers page the transition directory page from gsa nara is documenting your public service page you might also find the records express blog is just written in a way to help focus on these areas and provide some more context for you so with that i'm going to close on my final slide because this is where i'm going to say for those of you who said yeah yeah yeah i've tried i've tuned out a little bit because i don't really need to pay too much attention to um transition until there is a election result and then we'll figure out what we really have to focus on i wanted to share this slide which comes from the partnership for public service it comes from the center one of the resources they made available was data on turnover rates for when a president goes into a two-term a second term and here you can see the data for clinton bush and obama and you'll see that once there was the election they divided this up over a nine month period how many cabinet officials resigned and transitioned between election day and inauguration day how many left between inauguration of the first three months and then again how many how much turnover there was between the three to six month term so i'd like to say that records management records management never sleeps records management never stops we are working on to make sure that we're prepared to save and preserve uh permanent records created by senior executives or making sure that they know their responsibilities as they transition in or out of a position and regardless of who wins the election there's going to be turnover and there's going to be transition so i hope these resources will be available and help you as you are thinking through the ways to prepare or perhaps have already been preparing and are familiar with our work here so with that i'll ask if there are any other questions related to transition anything i can help with sure thank you lisa we do have at least one question the first question is my agent agency currently does not have a agency records officer how can our management office know the process for helping our political appointees get their records handled before their departure would nara give us some assistance since we are short staffed well for assistance we'll do what we can i'd like to ask that person to send an email um an email to me directly or i'll follow up from the records communications email if you asked it that way because we have to find out who is acting as records officer and i could see if we could make some connections to the transition team that's in place at your component and maybe we can make the right connections and make sure that the information the briefings are getting to the right person at the right place that's a great question but one i don't have a general answer for and i know we always have a little bit of a lag so i will let the dog out of the office while we're thinking if there are any other questions that's how you know this event is live and during coven thank you lisa i'm sure he appreciated that at this point we have no further questions all right well then thank you i know if you have any other specific issues or questions about transition and you don't find an answer in any of those resources please feel free to reach out to our office and we'll be happy to to help you any way we can thank you thank you lisa now please welcome marcus most an archive specialist who will be discussing our new cognitive technologies white paper that we posted yesterday on records express thank you arien uh i wanted to take a couple of minutes this morning to talk to you about a cognitive technologies white paper uh that just went up yesterday next slide please this la this paper uh covers these four technologies and uh for purposes of this paper we collectively refer to these four technologies as cognitive technologies um we uh we cover not only the kind of the the definitions of the technology but also um some of the supporting infrastructure that these technologies rely on um and we also take a look at some of the cultural and society implications with the focus on biases and ethics within the artificial intelligence field the audience for the white paper includes records managers appraisal archivists and folks interested in the intersection of new technology and records the records management analysis focuses obviously on records and data management policy and standards and really what the implications of this tech of these technologies are for appraisal scheduling and transfer uh next slide please uh here's a quick snapshot of the definitions to perhaps entice you into reading the paper iot is really any device that has a microprocessor and can and can communicate wirelessly we have rpa and machine learning and uh artificial intelligence ends up being more of an umbrella term that covers algorithms methods or technologies that are employed to make a system behave like a human next slide please uh so you can find the white paper here the paper was written by uh sharmila bhatia and myself and we also wrote it with kyle douglas who is now over at the national science foundation and in this same section of the website there's also a white paper about the records management implications of blockchain in case you're interested in that also so that's really the quick snapshot of what we had aryan are there any questions thank you marcus we have not yet received any questions uh from the audience but if you have again if if you have them please leave them in the chat or you can email them to rm.communications nora.gov so at this point we'll just move on to our general q a sessions with all the presenters from today's program we do have a few questions that uh have come in and we will make sure uh we'll circle around and get to those now i'd like to start uh with gordon please uh we have a couple questions about the frc and the frc rates the first where can we get a copy of the notice about frc changes that was sent out in september that was sent to records officers with their interagency agreement packages i want to say september 29th but they can reach out to their account manager and if they for some reason didn't receive it lost in the mail if they'll reach out to their account manager we'll get it resent to them okay thank you we have another another question if and or when nar is four percent is exceeded how or does gnar re return the excess to agencies so well gordon um so the um enabling legislation actually requires us if we do exceed uh that four percent revenue over expenses we are required to return any excess to the treasury the sort of the united states treasury not the trophy department but the big part of money in the sky which serves to offset the national debt um which i think is in the 28 to 25 trillion dollar range i haven't it's been a while since i checked so if uh if you know if we go over four percent four percent right now is about eight million dollars so if we hit five percent that means we have an extra half a million dollars we're required to send that half million dollars to offset the 25 trillion dollar debt so it kind of vanishes into thin air but unfortunately there isn't um a process by which we we sort of divvy up the money and send it back to customers okay thank you both i think we'll move to lawrence and some questions around the the nara bulletins the first one is must the exception request come from the department level saorm or can it come from a bureau's aro yeah that's a good question um yeah we've spent a lot of time thinking about the process and how it should work and one of the things that we're we're trying to do with the bulletin is really trying to make that connection tighter between the records officer and the same arm and in this particular case we feel it is appropriate for exception requests to come from the senior agency official for records management because it relates to very important strategic initiatives and requirements that agencies are working on to transition to fully electronic government so we understand that bureaucratically this does present some additional challenges and i think this is also an area where i think if you do spend the time at the operational level within the records management program pulling together that comprehensive request sending it to the same order for a review and sign off that should hopefully streamline things on your end but at this point we put it in the bulletin that way because we want to make sure that these discussions are elevated within agencies because they are most certainly going to be elevated within our agency and with omd so we wanted to make sure that connection is leveled in parallel okay thank you uh another question that had come in does the exception process shown on your slides apply tape for agencies seeking an exception for closing their federal agencies record storage facility so a short answer is yes um the the guidance that we issued um should cover and is expected to cover any type of exception to m1921 that agencies would be requesting and obviously there are requirements in 1921 that relate to uh record storage uh agency operated record centers uh and a number of other things so the process should work the same way and it should cover those issues as well as other issues related to digitization of analog and so on so short answer yes so thank you and i think these are paired questions so does the december 31st deadline 20 does the december 31 2022 deadline bernard no longer accepting transfers of permanent or temporary records and analog formats also apply to analog personnel records sent to the national personnel records center if not will there be a similar digital digital modernization effort for personnel records in the near future so that is a good question and and not sure how we are working internally and with agencies around those records i think um there are certainly some very specific complex issues around um personnel records that that we're going to work through so we may need to issue some further guidance or have some discussions about those records as well and i guess this is a semi it sounds like a related well here's another question what are the plans for accepting direct offers after the 2022 deadline in paper from an agency that has already housed them at the frc so if this is so obviously if records are in the frc system and they're permanent they would come to us through the annual move through normal processes and if they're in our custody there's no impact if they are outside our physical custody and within an agency and legal transfers being made outside of the normal process for the annual move then that would be affected by m1921 and exception would be needed okay thank you uh lisa this is an another question that has come in that is putting on your other hat i guess when does nara anticipate releasing the final digitization standards well thank you for asking i was wondering i probably should have brought that up in the beginning and asked myself that question um our current status with the digitization standards in regulation for permanent records is that we sent it um we sent it back to omv last week so omb has had it for one week we are waiting to see whether omb would like us to do a third round of agency comment or if they will approve us moving forward and posting those regulations on the federal register for public comment so i can't quite answer the when because there's still that key decision but once we get those regulations posted on the federal register you'll know two things one we've begun the 45 day comment period and two there'll be a chance to sort of see um publicly for the first time which direction we've been going and talking about those digitization regulations so not knowing the answer to the first question not knowing how long it will take for the regulations to get posted in the federal register because you may be aware those of you who come from the regulations world that when there if there's a transition of administration if a new um if it's not if it's a one-term president not a two-term president there's additionally a hold put on regulations until um the new administration takes place so my answer to the question when do you anticipate final would be um first a second quarter fy21 so i'm thinking we would hopefully get them posted get comments out and then um between january and march be able to resolve those comments and get a final i hope it will be faster if we can if we can move faster and if we don't then and that's the time thank you for asking and thank you for letting me explain again our process and the steps okay thank you lisa i think this one i'll direct you gordon and jeff it's an frc question the fy 21 cost structure represented a 38 increase for our agency 52 increase for one center did nara consider going to congress to explain the covet impacts and ask for relief forgiveness of the shortfall rather than springing in agencies on agencies such an overnight cost increase in the year for which we submitted a budget over a year ago thank you for that question um we um there is there was a request that went to congress for relief for the record center program it was not acted on i don't know if it's still being considered the impact of provide on our revenue is it basically cut our revenue in half and uh did not cut any of our expenses at all um so we we struggled with that internally and in developing the rate structure we did um take a look at the impact of of our fy21 estimates for each of our customers and we made an attempt to balance that understanding that some customers invoices would go down and some customers invoices would go up um it was a challenge because we don't we don't like the idea of bringing that kind of major financial change on anybody um and it's disheartening to hear that your agency was impacted that that much um what i can offer to you is to please contact your customer service representative on gordon's team and um i i don't know what we can do but i know we have had some conversations with other customers who are expressing the same component so we are working offline on individual cases in the very least if what needs to happen is the supplemental budget request to omb and congress we can certainly provide the data and the support that you would need um to justify that request but i would encourage you to go through gordon's team first to see if there's anything that we can do internally thanks i'm waiting to see if any more questions show up um here's one that has come in around annual reporting uh what what what or when was the opening date and the closing date for the 2020 annual reporting rmsa email and sao rm reports so it's interesting i'm going to answer that question as best i can because it says when was the 2020 reporting as you know we're starting we do our data call and then we look back so for the year 2020 when we do our annual reporting we will release that report and we're still planning on running that report from january to mid-january to mid-march so we expect to have the reporting window open the way we traditionally have if you're asking what did we do for the 2019 report in 2020 we issued it in um that we opened the reporting period mid-january and then due to coven we gave two extensions so it went through uh it didn't close until may um so i hope that answers both questions and what i think you're asking about so i'll just reframe it again is if you're asking will there be a delay for the rmsa reporting period due to covid in 2020 we are still planning to have a regular reporting cycle with the rmsa the sao report the sao for records management reports and the email and electronic permanent records report out in january and i hope we'll be able to talk about what's coming a little bit more at our december bridge so stay tuned follow the blog follow the uh the ac memos that we send out and we'll provide more information soon thank you i'm going to circle back to marcus um how about one of the what is one of the interesting facts that you learned as part of the research into cognitive technologies thanks arien um yeah i think the fact that my refrigerator talks to my phone got me thinking that um that there were going to be some records management implications for federal agencies around this and um i think what blew me away is just the volume of connected uh devices and the volume of data that's being generated um you know there is an estimate there are going to be 75 billion devices connected to the internet in just four years um and that for example um some airplane uh engine manufacturers um now track something like 70 trillion uh data points per year for their engines um and that that kind of volume was just kind of a it's just a different scope than i've kind of traditionally thought about records management so that was one of the neat things that really came out for me thanks okay and i'll just point out that you've got a fan already on the youtube who's going to go read the paper so thank you that's great uh this is a probably at least a question in life in light of the covet 19 pandemic relative to the agency continuity and thereby essential records management does nara plan any revised 2020 annual reporting or new rmsa questions or separate essential records reports similar to the e-records and email report thank you for the question and i will admit i was chatting with don rosen our director for oversight reporting to make sure i had the correct information to give you and and light of covid and again that's kind of what i wondered if the question the earlier question was referring to as well for the 2020 rmsa in the non-scored questions we were planning to ask some questions related to covid and records management again the rmsa is such an important part of feedback for federal records management because it's the data that we learned in the rmsa and these reports help us make determinations on what new training is needed what new policies are needed so yes we are planning to include some coveted questions on in the non-scored rmsa port we also will probably be asking about covid impact to agency strategic plans for records management as we know in some areas for uh analog and digitization if you're not physically present that's had a harmful effect on what agencies are able to do with records management and on the other hand for agencies that have been trying to transition to electronic records the pandemic ended up being a spur and some plans were put in place uh to move to electronic faster than the agencies had so we sort of were going to use the 2020 repair porting period to learn about the stories and learn about the impact of covet so we do plan on doing that and we again to reiterate we are still planning to have the same reporting period so we'll be asking from january to mid january to mid-march and i also want to share for those of you who are interested i i neglected to mention that we did just release the fy9 i'm sorry the 2019 annual uh report our federal agency's records management report was put online and i believe that was just two weeks ago so you'll be able to read what we learned last year and that will also help inform the the questions that we'll be asking next year or this upcoming year so and again if you have any questions about reporting that i wasn't able to answer you had something more specific please send them to me and i will get the the right people to send you the right answer thank you okay thank you lisa sorry for jumping around but uh we've got a very active vibrant community on chat today um this is a question for gordon and the frc folks will nara terminate the covid19 surcharge either as a separate charge or baked into a bundled fee once the pandemic ends make sure it came off a mute i am off a mute the uh the covet charge was uh through september 30th uh we have now as of october 1st all of the rates for 2021 are out or have been distributed to customers so there's no kovic surcharge baked in these are the rates for 2021 right for for physical 2021 right now and i hope i answered that pretty clearly for them but again the surcharge ended on september 30th and now on october 1st you have new rates which are for uh in our new structure for fiscal 2021. okay thank you and here i think that's oh i have a question on technology what examples and maybe this is for marcus or we can lead the discussion here what examples of records management processes does naras see as being amiable to robotics robotic process automation wow so the um a lot of what we a lot of what we teased out is that um there is a pretty good records management and data management infrastructure um you know statutes regulations policies that that agencies can fall back on um as they're thinking about what to do with you know the volume of data and kind of how it impacts their business processes so i'm not sure specifically about rpa um and the connection with the records management systems marcus um this is lisa as someone who both read the paper and the the wonderful opportunity to edit i'm not the researcher so marcus will have to back me up here but i'd like to answer the question that rpa robotic processing automation refers to software so it's what software tools can be put in place to handle administrative or support the humans who are doing the work of trying to manage records management so we didn't find too many use cases or examples of rpa being used in agencies for records management but we think that we saw some cases of rpa being used for broader information management so answering questions right that might be uh canned questions to an agency workload's office that every time somebody sent you a question there was an automated reply potentially with more information or examples of like these are the types of questions i'm getting as an agency records officer or records program there might be ways for rpa to help us do better at uh managing incoming requests and then we're still looking at ways that rpa might help us do better work relating to other areas of records management from creation maintenance and disposal so the widely repetitive tools that can be automated with software is something we're looking forward to seeing and hopefully we'll have another bridge topic on as agencies come forward so marcus and if you want to riff on that but that's where i would add no that's great i mean yeah it would be great if we could create a a chatbot for records management where people could put in their questions and they could get a chatbot response so something like that that's what i was thinking thank you yeah i just didn't that our that marcus i don't know if you got that rpa chat question off the off the youtube but it's it's there so we've we've captured that at this point i'll do a sort of a last call for questions a reminder you can still email them or drop them in the chat we'll take a few moments to see if any come in so so i think we've covered uh all the ones um i think we'll move it i'll start wrapping it up uh thank since there are no more questions we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for viewing and your active participation in today's bridge meeting we'll also like to remind you that our next bridge meeting is wednesday december 16 2020. if you still have questions please still use that email rm.communications.nara.gov or visit our bridge page at the url thank you everyone and have a great day you

Channel: US National Archives

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Length: 88min 44sec (5324 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020