Digital Government

National Archives tees up new rules for UFO records

New legislation mandates a governmentwide repository of records dealing with "unidentified anomalous phenomena."

Policy

Maloney introduces presidential records reform bill

Outgoing House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has a new bill meant to beef up compliance with White House records requirements.

People

Archivist confirmation hearing turns to politics behind Mar-a-Lago search

Republicans seized on a traditionally "sleepy" confirmation process to draw attention to the National Archives and Records Administration's involvement in the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Modernization

$13.5M in new TMF awards to NARA, USDA

An award to the National Archives appears designed to reduce a pandemic-era backlog in veterans records processing.

People

Ferriero to retire from National Archives

Archivist of the United States David Ferriero is retiring from his post in April after 12 years in the position.

Modernization

Lawmakers seek probe of veterans' records requests backlog

The National Personnel Records Center is facing a backlog of 550,000 requests that built up over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Modernization

Hurricane Ida knocked out key NARA system

The system is back up and running, but the sustained outage could lead to delays in the approval of annual records transfer requests.

Modernization

TMF could help solve records request backlog for veterans, lawmakers say

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House Oversight and Reform Committee wants the National Archives and Records Administration to apply for funding from the Technology Modernization Fund to modernize its IT systems and clear its backlog of 500,000 records requests from veterans.

Digital Government

NARA seeks DOD's help in addressing records request backlog

Many records housed in a St. Louis facility are critical to veterans' benefits applications but can't be accessed remotely.

People

Few agencies sought Schedule F conversions

In the waning days of the Trump administration, only a relative handful out of hundreds of eligible agencies and department responded to an executive order that looked to reclassify vast swathes of the federal civil service as at-will employees.

Digital Government

They took all the tweets and put 'em in a tweet museum

Twitter cancelled @realdonaldtrump, but the National Archives will bring presidential tweets back via the Trump library website.

Modernization

NARA looks to multi-cloud

The federal government's archive drafting a multi-cloud storage acquisition strategy to accommodate other agencies' digital data.

People

NARA sharpens digital preservation plans

The National Archives released a framework for preserving government information that takes into account the proliferating variety of electronic formats – some now defunct – so that records can be saved in their original form.

Digital Government

Growing pains, successes in remote work during COVID-19

Despite plans to incrementally push workers to return to the office, federal agencies still plan on allowing some employees to continue to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cybersecurity

How petabytes are crushing the security classification system

The official in charge of overseeing the federal government's information classification policy is warning that the current system is beginning to break – and he wants help and money to fix it.

Modernization

Tick tock: NARA's electronic records management deadline is approaching

While agencies have largely passed previous deadlines, this could be the most difficult mandate to date.

People

Public interest in records schedules booms

The National Archives and Records Administration is seeing a spike in comments on routine records dispensation notices.

Digital Government

NARA, GSA team up to promote electronic records management

A new one-stop shop for electronic records management tools is designed to help agencies keep up with the looming governmentwide goal of going paperless.

Digital Government

Taking point on FOIA

Requesters tasked the U.S. with a record 1 million FOIA requests for fiscal year 2018, but while getting in the front door is easier than ever, getting responses is still a grind.

Cybersecurity

NARA is doing great at email, website security. Maybe

An audit finds the National Archives and Records Administration is well on its way to complying with a DHS directive to boost email and website security, but the agency's measurements need improvement.