House Democrats introduce records preservation bill

A House bill introduced on Tuesday would require the National Archives to set stricter standards for preservation of White House electronic communications and agencies' federal records.

The bill comes in the wake of a series of hearings held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to look into millions of missing White House e-mails.

The Electronic Communications Preservation Act, introduced on April 15, would require the national archivist to "establish standards for the capture, management and preservation of White House e-mails and other electronic communications...[and] certify annually whether the records management controls established by the president meet those standards," according to a summary document released by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the oversight committee. Waxman introduced the bill with Reps. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., and Paul W. Hodes, D-N.H.

The bill would "modernize the requirements of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act to ensure…records are preserved for historians," the document stated.

Investigations into how the Bush administration managed its e-mails began after a 2005 analysis identified more than 700 days when the number of e-mail records were either unrealistically low or nonexistent. In addition, Congress has raised concern about high-ranking administration officials potentially using Republic National Convention e-mail accounts to conduct government business, despite the lack of archiving procedures that comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act.

Beyond preservation of presidential records, which include any record of activities, deliberations, decisions and policies that reflect on an administration's performance while in office, the House bill seeks to strengthen requirements to preserve electronic federal records produced by agencies outside the Office of the President. Currently, those agencies archive information on a rolling schedule, transferring records of historical relevance when they're no longer necessary for daily operations to a center that the National Archives maintains and operates. By Sept. 30, 2009, agencies must have National Archives-approved life-cycle schedules for all records in electronic information systems that have been operational since Dec. 17, 2005, to determine which will be transferred to the archives and when.

"Stricter requirements for federal agencies to keep their electronic records are long overdue," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for The George Washington University's National Security Archive.

In 2007, the group filed a complaint in court, claiming the Bush administration failed to replace an electronic records management system when it switched e-mail systems in 2002. "Historians are going to look back at the early 21st century and either wonder what happened or find a dearth of sources to accurately recount the actions of government officials," Fuchs said.

Under current law, federal agencies have broad discretion to determine how electronic records and communications are preserved, according to the summary document, with many filing only paper copies of electronic records. The bill contends such practices to be unreliable, and directs the national archivist to issue regulations requiring agencies to preserve electronic communications in an electronic format.

The bill requires regulations to cover at minimum the capture, management, preservation and retrieval of electronic communications, with established testing and certification standards for electronic records management systems implemented at agencies. The bill provides the archivist a year and a half to release the regulations and agencies no more than four years following enactment of the act to comply.

House Republicans have not yet released statements responding to the legislation.

"[Our office] just learned about it late [Tuesday]," said Brian McNicoll, spokesman for Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member of the committee. "So it's a little early to be talking about support or oppose."