CD-R, @CD-Rkive, and the American way of records-keeping

Emedia Professional, Oct, 1998 by Mark Fritz

While the rest of the world focuses on Clintonian scandals and the machinations of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, government employees inside the Washington beltway seem more concerned about the decision of Judge Paul Friedman. No wonder. The judge's ruling in Public Citizen v. John Carlin (Archivist of the United States)--which states that no government electronic document may be deleted or in any way destroyed--has the potential to create an information management crisis that could cripple the U.S. Government faster than a filibuster and surer than a budget stalemate. On the other hand, the decision may ultimately prove to be the best thing that ever happened to government records management, paving the way for a glorious new century of electronic efficiency. It may also be the kick-in-the-pants the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) needs to propel it into the Information Age.

For now, things in Washington look bleak. After all, Friedman's ruling affects practically every agency in the U.S. Government. "The Year 2000 problem pales in comparison to this one," says Richard Medina, senior analyst for Doculabs, a Chicago-based independent research and advisory firm. But since CD-R technology will likely play a big part in this problem's solution, the ruling may also generate big business for vendors of storage systems in general, and CD-ROM/CD-R-based storage systems in particular, as the new records management crisis wakes the government from a collective, complacent sleep.

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS GET SOME RESPECT

The Public Citizen v. Carlin case pitted journalists, researchers, librarians, and historians (organized and funded by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen group and the American Librarians Association) against NARA, the government agency responsible for setting policy about how government records are managed, stored, and disposed of. The plaintiffs were particularly upset about a NARA directive known as General Records Schedule 20 (GRS 20), which seems to give agencies carte blanche to delete electronic versions of word processing documents and emails. The plaintiffs contended that hard copy versions of electronic documents could not be searched as quickly, cheaply, and easily as the original electronic versions, and feared that important historical information was being lost--even though the agencies were backing up records on paper and microform.

In a decision handed down on October 22, 1997, Judge Friedman ruled that electronic records have "unique and valuable features not found in a paper printout of the records." The judge's statement is particularly significant because it represents the U.S. Government's first official recognition of the difference between electronic and paper-based documents.

The decision completely nullified GRS 20, decreeing that henceforth, government agencies "may not destroy electronic records created, received or stored on electronic mail or word processing systems" and that they must keep electronic records in their original form.

Naturally, the government's response to the Friedman Decision was horror. Federal agencies have thousands arid thousands of documents, particularly emails, clogging up their magnetic storage systems. NASA alone reportedly receives a million emails per day. It they didn't regularly delete electronic files, they'd be swamped in no time.

Although NARA appealed the Friedman Decision, it never really disagreed with it philosophically. One NARA bulletin even conceded that "fundamentally NARA believes that the Government needs to disposition a better approach to the disposition of records on word processing and electronic mail applications." The appeal, then, was clearly an attempt to buy time. "We want to make that transition in a sane way that minimizes disruption to the Federal agencies and does not set off unintended consequences," Carlin said during a speech in April. To start tile ball rolling, NARA assembled an interagency Electronic Records Work Group to draft new guidelines for dealing with government records in an electronic age. The work group planned to rewrite GRS 20 completely and to present a "final report and implementation plan" to the Archivist of the United States before the end of September.

WHAT IS A RECORD?

The Friedman Decision doesn't cover every document that moves through an agency, only those deemed "records." Unfortunately, however, marry agency documents qualify as records. The Federal Records Act (1950) defines a record as "all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of data in them." In other words, a record is anything that documents an agency's way of doing business. The most obvious and common examples are personnel and payroll records, organizational policies, and fiscal and tax records.