 Good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Gordon Everett. I'm the Director of Customer Relationship Management for NARA's Federal Records Center Program and we welcome you to the October Bridge Meeting here at A1. We also have folks coming in via YouTube. We welcome you all this morning. We hope you enjoyed the coffee and pastries that we have and each bridge meeting we do have a coffee hour that begins at 9 a.m. so we welcome you all to come out and enjoy the pastries as you meet with the different folks from the Federal Records Center or within the NARA's Chief Records Officer Program. Today we're going to have a few presentations for you. We have Sam McClure who will speak on ERA 2.0. He's the Electronic Records Program Director and David Lake, the Program Manager for ERA. They both will present today. We have Lawrence Brewer, the Chief Records Officer of the United States who will present the NARA Inspector General Report. Don Rosen, our Director of Records Management Oversighting Reporting, will speak on the Federal Agency Records Management Reporting. We also have Matt Edson, the Supervisor for Permanent Records Capture Team and he'll talk about the 2020 annual move. And then Jeff Lunsford, the Chief Financial Analyst for the Federal Records Center Program, will speak a little bit about the anticipated 2020 rates which have just not been signed off on yet but we'll talk about that a little bit. This afternoon you will have the, I think it's appraisal group 3 will meet upstairs from 1 to 3 o'clock and if you're an agency that falls under appraisal group 3, please come back after lunch if you want to meet with your appraisal archivist or anyone on that team. So without further ado, we'll get right into the program and do we have Sam and David? We're going to come up. Thank you. Good morning. Anytime I start a talk, I start off by saying good morning. I'm Sam McClure then it sounds like I'm Troy McClure from the Simpsons and it totally throws off all the gravitas I'm trying to project so we just started off in a deficit. As Gordon said, I'm the Electronic Records Program Director for the National Archives. It's a fancy title for being the person who ensures that the system we're developing meets the needs of our users both inside NARA and from an agency perspective. With me by phone is David Lake. David, do you want to introduce yourself and do a quick sound check? Sure. Good morning. My name is David Lake. I'm Program Manager for ERA. I've been with ERA since about 2004, so no one can question my loyalty and dedication to challenging causes. But it's been about a year since we've spoken with you, so it's nice to be with you again and to at least share a little bit about what we're doing to work on some changes for the record scheduling and transfer piece of ERA. Thank you, David. So as David said, we're coming back with one of these periodic updates. He came last year in October to provide an update as we were just starting the development effort. I spoke I think in June before that to say here's some of the outcome of the business process review we had done that was going to inform the development effort. So this is the next stage. You'll see we have a long way to go and what we're showing today is not going to be terribly interesting. From a visual perspective, it's not that interactive, but to give you an indication of where we are in terms of developing the succeeding system to ERA-based. So a preview of the structure, we'll talk about some of the next steps, and we'll begin with some, I mean, lots of words from me. So as David said, the main point of this is to develop the new record schedule and the new transfer request form. We need to get out of ERA-based. We know we need better forms. We know we need to be collecting more relevant information for those processes, and so we're working to do that. Along with that, we're working to provide more of a positive work ecosystem for people. So in the idea of being able to assign work to people within your organization, both within NARA and within the agency, and then to have a better handle on the tasks that are associated with your work with those forms. We're adding a small number of other forms to the system, including the NA-1005, the capstone form, and some of the internal appraisal jobs that NARA takes on. So we can try to support all these appraisal jobs in the system from here. And as Matt will describe later in great detail, right, we need to provide better support for the annual move than what we get out of ERA-based, and so we're working to provide a more humane TR and better visibility into the forms that are presented to you as part of the annual move. We just talked about better visibility, so you can see where your forms are in the life cycle, trying to take on some of the reporting burden that NARA has had in trying to give you updates so that would be available on your dashboard, and that you can also take on a little bit of a workflow within the agency side. We've heard from a number of people from agencies who want more support for their own processes in this system. David will show you in a mock-up, an aesthetic mock-up, the way that we're trying to accommodate some support for that in this first release, and hopefully that's a starting point to providing a better work environment for people who are coming into our system to do our forms. Search has been a major pain point in ERA-based that goes without saying, but we say it every time. So we have better search with fielded search that will be coming to provide better visibility into the forms that you're both working on or that you want to have access to. And as part of that, we're getting rid of the concept and base where if you had worked on a schedule and there were five different versions of that particular form in your process, you'll see the one with a history page that shows you all the different key milestones that have been met in that form. We don't have a mock-up of the results for search in today's demonstration or in today's overview, but it is an attempt on our part to make that more humane. And as part of this, we're looking to redesign the user access concept. It's been governed by record groups that's been painful in a number of different elements and a number of different ways in a sustained way. We're looking to do this by agency names rather than by record groups. It's more meaningful to people in the real world, and it's a way for us to be able to govern access appropriate within your organizations and on our side as well. It will still require a good deal of effort to keep updated, but we hope that by making this more real world, it will be something that is easier to maintain and makes more sense going forward. One of the big things is that we have all of our information maintained electronically, the information you've uploaded for your forms will remain visible to you. That's been one of the major pain points in base, we know. So part of this is trying to erase negatives as well as advance on some positives, but getting rid of pain is something that we're keen to do with this particular system. Modernizing the user interface, so that's pretty easy to say because the old interface is old. So we'll have a different way to present the information we want to collect as part of a record schedule or a transfer request, and you will get a sense of it from a structural standpoint in the screenshots that David will talk to about. We definitely have to improve our accessibility from a section 508 perspective. So looking to include more alt text that's useful, watching for the contrast on the fields we're presenting and making sure that our information collection mechanisms support all the different sorts of accessibility means that we know are in place. The output from base has been awful for some time, meaning for all time. So we're looking to make better formatted PDFs, the document view of what comes out of the system, and it's part of this more useful output for things like the records control schedule. Our colleagues, your partners in the office of the chief records officer have been working very hard to make the RCS a more useful portal. We're looking to support that as best we can by providing a more useful output from the system that would be more searchable and more easily found and used from the RCS. So with those words, I think we change over to ERA base, the current ERA. You know it and you love it. I will turn it over to David Lake to do the descriptions. Now that sounds like I was saying ironically, but that and then David hurts a little bit since he's worked on this for 15 years. So David, we'll talk us through some of the structural changes that are coming. We started with status quo just to give you a short sense. So David, let me know when you're ready to advance. And I will turn it over to David Lake. Hopefully on the slide that shows the current ERA base screenshot. So we're gonna start here just kind of show you where we are. I'll remind you of what you had to enjoy using over the last couple of years. And I want to show you some preliminary kind of static screenshots of what I can't emphasize enough is the work in progress. We'll just show you a few screens showing some key features, discuss a few of them, and at least give you an idea of where we are at this point. They're they're a bit skeletal at this point, we haven't put kind of all the meat on the bones here. But at least it shows you kind of where we're headed, general look and feel of things at this point. As I said, we were trying to moderate things trying to make this much user friendly than the current system we have now. So this is all the work in progress development is happening as we speak right now. So you can go to the next slide. So on slide nine here. So for each of these, I'm going to show kind of a clean view of each feature. And then next slide will kind of highlight some of the key aspects of change. So here's kind of a key piece that we see for the system going forward. So this is what's called your your dashboard. We know lots of issues with the current task list and notifications list that you have in the array base. The idea is to really make this much more user friendly. Show all the work relevant work items to you and not to potentially, you know, dozens of other people that the way that the user groups work. So hopefully, as you set up your agency groups, your schedule and your roles will provide you with only the relevant work items that that is important to you. They can toggle between record schedules and transfer requests in your dashboard. As you can see, we have some of these are going to change, but the basics will stay the same, right? You'll have that key number for say transfer request or record schedule, the scheduling group, the status and then over on the right, actually, you can go to the next slide. Sorry. So slide 10. So you can toggle between two major business objects here. You'll see at the top, we have the ability to search will kind of the omnipresent. And especially on this screen, so you can do a keyword search for everything. You can obviously choose whether you want to search for transfer requests versus record schedule. And then on the top right, you see the advanced search box, that's something that we're building out right now. So the ability to kind of put search criteria in particular data elements on the forum that you want to search for in combination. So that we're working on just something else to point out on the right side for each object here or each form. You know, you see that symbol, the I symbol, so that's to view whatever record schedule or transfer request you want to select. And then also they'll be next to that, those three dots will indicate pull down for a number of actions that you can take, such as view something downloaded, things like that. So this would be kind of the first thing you see when you come in. Again, we're still working on this to make these user friendly as possible. But this is at least giving an idea of what we're trying to do in terms of a dashboard that will be more usable than the tasks and notifications list that you currently get in your database. Moving on to slide 11. So here's kind of a clean view of search in a dashboard so you can pull down on the top left there and do a all field search for either transfer requests or record schedules. And then select fields there and then you always have the the advanced search on the upper right, which will give you access to virtually all fields in these business objects to search individually within a specific data element. Going on to slide 12 here. Again, pretty much talked about all these field based search and then advanced search, field based search for the most useful field. So the ones that you most commonly would use. And we can update that over time as we get more feedback from users about what really should be within that and potentially being able to customize that based on your particular. Moving on to slide 13. So this is kind of our skeletal view right now of what you would get to when you want to create a record schedule. This is kind of the clean view here. Obviously, at the top, noting the key pieces of information about each record schedule, the number or the agency and the status, at the very least. You go to slide 14. Something to point out here is trying to improve the navigation within the sections of the form. That goes for both record schedule and transfer request. And so our thing we've been working on in some user interface work is to we set up this tab navigation so you can navigate to sections or tabs within that particular business object. The key areas and we'll be working on kind of fine tuning how that's going to work when you move from one tab to another. Do you the system automatically save once you leave a tab to another or do you have to save and sort of move on? But at the very least, at the end, when it comes time to submit something, all the field validations will be done and we'll point out any errors or missing information that you might have throughout that business object before submitting. Some of that exists in your database. But we're trying to make this more intuitive and to make it a little bit easier to move around within the form. Moving on to slide 15. So this is kind of another part of the record schedule. Sam just touched on this briefly. And this gets into something that relates to some feedback that we heard over a year ago, what we got together with many of you that attended a few sessions to discuss potential changes to your database as we move forward to your A2.0. One thing that was I think a prominent team from all of you was that may requested on their side to have some type of workflow at least to allow for some review within your agency before record schedule is submitted to NARA. So moving on to slide 16. So this is the idea that within your agency, you can add some users within your agency group, you can add users that commonly review record schedules before you want to certify and submit it to NARA. So say you have someone from your general counsel's office that needs to review it, you can designate them as an additional reviewer for record schedule. And then that person would get a notification and show up in their dashboard to do a quick to do a review of their schedule and provide their concurrence. Due to the many different types of workflows that might exist in all the agencies, it's not a restrictive workflow. This is more informative. So if someone doesn't concur, that doesn't necessarily stop you from submitting it, but at least someone who is going to submit this can wait for concurrence and have that captured in the form from anyone in your agency that that you would like to review a schedule before turning it before sending it on. So this was kind of a new feature we wanted to add to provide at least some level of workflow for getting concurrence on schedules within your agency. And Sam will talk a little bit about opportunities for getting feedback as we move along in the development. And this is, you know, an area that we hope folks are happy with and will use and maybe provide feedback on how we could. With that, that's kind of we just picked out some key things to show you here, at least hopefully you have an idea of what the look and feel is some of the things that we're trying to improve. So with that, Sam, I will wrap it on to you. Thank you, David. So as David was saying, we need to find opportunities to get feedback from agency users to try out the capabilities that under development get feedback, what's working well, what's working as expected, what could be done better. I will note this is zero two point Oh, obviously, it's twice as better. That's in the name. But it's not a repeat of the same level of resources we had to build the original era. This is a much more on a shoestring budget in terms of both the development budget and all the other funding and resources within our that are going into the system. So our approach for development and deployment is much more measured, gradual than we were more than 10 years ago with the original system. But we it's critical and it's a priority for the Archive of the United States that we find opportunities to get input. So we will be finding a way to do that. One of the key issues that inhibits just opening this up for for broad feedback is the authentication into our test environment. You get into the security aspects of this. It becomes very complicated very quickly for people who are outside of NARA to get access to our non production environment. We're looking to find ways to mitigate that. And as we have chances for opportunities, we will we will make those known and we'll try to get as much feedback as we can. In terms of where we are in the development and deployment, we're continuing and develop into the next calendar year. We will try to get to our goal is the minimum viable product. What can what is the basic capability that allows us to do record schedules through the workflow as well as transfer requests and these other forms. We will have lots of room for improvement. We know from the moment we go live with this system, but we will be working to get to that point where when this is deployed, you can take on those functions and we'll stop work with base and we'll cut over. Development training content is going to be key. We'll be doing this in a manner consistent with the records management training strategy that NARA now follows in terms of web based content. And we'll have more information on that coming in, especially in calendar year 20 as we move closer towards having a useful product. Key for all of this is moving the content that's in the array base. The existing disposition authorities, the TRs, everything that's there. That's an effort for which we have no funding at this point. So I can't give a schedule when we say we'll be done with the migration of that content. We're working on the planning for this effort now so that when funding is available, we can act on it as quickly as possible. But this is a key blocker towards our movement to using this new system to fulfill these processes. If you can't get to your items, it's very difficult to supersede them or do any of the other great things we're looking to provide in this system. For us, a key driver is timing this so that we can support an annual move in its entirety. We will not be supporting the annual move that Matt is going to describe that's underway now. We're looking to have this where we can support the next annual move that remains to be seen. It may be the move after that where we can take on the full loading of the data from ARKIS, the creation of the TRs and the providing of those out for agency consideration. And then globally, as I mentioned, for the training environment, for the non-production environment, authenticating to our system is a key IT security issue. And so our CIO shop and those in senior leadership are developing a strategy for how we will provide access to all of our external facing systems. And this will be one of those we have to figure out how we're working best with that authentication piece. So more details to come on both the capabilities, the training that will go with this, the availability of the new system, the cut over from one system to the other. I don't have a time frame today. What I will commit to is that you'll have at least a year's heads up before we move to the next system. So we'll be able to communicate through all the regular RM channels in terms of when we can anticipate deployment, when we can start the plan on cut over, when you can adjust your work plans, all of that. We know it's a big burden on you with some of the substantial reappraisal jobs that are either underway or about to get underway. So we want to give you at least 12 months. And so that's what we will commit to. We'll come back to this forum as many times as necessary to to provide more immersive, more intensive and interactive demonstrations. We'll find other opportunities for input and we have more information to come. But we did want to come at this point to give you some sense of where we're going and to be able to answer any questions or taking feedback that you have at this point. So from an agenda standpoint, I don't know if we do comments and questions now or if we do them later. If you have some now we're happy to take them. Yes sir. My name is Eduardo Uribe. I'm with the records management consulting services at agency services. And my question was, is the newly formulated functionality and innovations the same for all the agencies? I asked this question because I know that the training is agency specific. But then will the ERA, the new ERA design also be agency specific as well? So we're looking to deploy general capabilities that would be in use for every agency more or less in an inconsistent manner rather than something tailored. As David said, with this chance to add a baby workflow piece, there's a chance to fold an agency specific workflow around it. If you want to route a form for review and concurrence, not a formal approval before it's sent to NARA, we can support that in the tracking of those sort of very simple decision making. We don't yet have a capability even in planning right now to be able to customize an agency specific workflow around this. So we're looking to deploy capabilities for the record schedule process, for the TR process, and that this could be support. This would support an agency's workflow, but we're not doing a lot of tailoring for a specific agency environment as part of that. I hope that addresses the question. And anywhere I steer wrong, they will start going, oh, what Sam meant to say was. Good morning. This is Tommy Lee from the Air Force. A few questions. I want, has there been any consideration for implementing some type of a PIV or PKI login into ERA 2.0 like OMB Max? That is exactly the point of issue that we're at. How can we support a PIV and HSPD 12 compliant authentication module for both this system and any other systems that NARA needs to present to agencies? So NARA has to develop its enterprise approach and ERA has to be consistent with that approach and then we would be out there for PIV authentication. That's, that's, that is the direction they're looking to go. Okay, very good. Report generation. Was there any consideration about enhancing report capabilities in ERA 2.0? So that's an area where we will have a starter set of capabilities. One thing that will be in our favor here is better search in terms of, if you want to find forms in a particular spot in your workflow, acted on by a certain person within a certain amount of time, you can get those results in a more useful way. We are looking to deploy a series of canned reports as well that will be more useful from sort of basic workflow tracking perspective. We will obviously need to iterate on that in terms of being able to provide a more of an ad hoc reporting capability from there. But some of the feedback we'd like to get as we get this closer out as to what kinds of reports would be useful from at least a canned perspective. We know that's a major requirement for everybody who uses a system like this. So it'll be a mixture of better search and that export of results were necessary and then from a some useful set of canned reports that they can make this a useful start. But we know it's only going to be a start. Thank you. It would be great if we can somehow export these search results into an Excel spreadsheet or something like that. Yes. Export to CSV is definitely one of the things we're looking to have at the beginning. Okay. That should support that. One thing that has bothered me about your rate one point. Oh sorry. Sorry. Yeah I just wanted to ask what Sam was saying. Which is exactly right. I think this is where we will have that canned report start out with. But I think search is kind of the area where that should really help with reporting in two aspects. So one is what Sam talked about is being able to get that for search results. I think that was one of the best improvements that we made to the RA base and we weren't able to do much enhancement to the RA base once it was launched. But one of the things that we did do was being able to download search results. And I know that we've helpful out in federal agencies as well as with NARA users. So we will continue to do that. One thing we are adding is the ability to save searches. So for those searches that you might want to run regularly almost like in report fashion. What we're working on is the ability to save those searches and then run them as you want and then get the results and download those. Great thank you. I'll say two more things. One thing that's always bothered me about ERA 1.0 is the small size of the text. So hopefully 2.0 will have a way to just make it easier just to see the text in the working environment. And fourthly, I'm very pleased that the internal agency workflow is being considered into 2.0. That has a potential replacing some of our, you might say, internal unstructured data file processes that are doing that work currently. So thank you. Sure. Thank you. There is a question from YouTube. Will there be an update so only needed users receive emails and not every user account in the agency receives notification of an action that needs to take place? Absolutely not. One of the strengths of ERA base is that everyone knows everything at every time as long as they turn on notifications, right? Information is power. Everybody should know that's absolutely one of the things we're looking to do is to streamline notifications based on your user profile and the actions that you take or that your work group takes. It'll be some notifications take the form of updates on your dashboard. Other things may come out as email notices, but we will not have the blanket broadcast notices for every person in every role that the system takes. So we will fix that. I knew that was going to come up. So we have a busy agenda. We're still here. We can take questions at the end of this if there's time. We're also available to follow up by email. They know where to find us. So we're happy to take any other questions that or comments or observations. If you really love the broadcast notifications, we can talk afterwards and find a way to support that once we go live in the new system. Thank you for the time. Good morning, everyone. So I really messed up in my preparation for this briefing and one of the things I probably should have looked at a little bit more closely is that Sam and David were preceding me in this presentation. So one of my rules is never follow Sam because it's such a tough act to follow. And unfortunately, what I'm going to be talking about is a topic that doesn't really lend itself to humor. And I'm sure most of you can relate to what I'm talking about if you've had engagements with your own Inspector General. And we love our Inspector General. He does a great job. He's very interested in records management. And we actually had a good engagement where we were able to make some improvements. And one of the reasons why I put it on the topic on the agenda to talk with you about today is because a lot of what is in the report affects federal records management programs and more specifically our oversight of records management programs. So before I start and get into the content of the report itself, just wanted to see if anybody has looked at the report or read the report. It's posted up on our website. Just curious by a show of hands just here in the room. If anyone has had a chance to look at it. I see one NAR person has looked at it. That's good. I don't see too many hands. So yeah, it's kind of what I thought. So I think it makes sense for us to talk about it here because you can see it was issued way back in June. It is on our website and it has five findings and 10 recommendations. And some of the findings and recommendations relate more to what you do every day in records management and others are really more for the National Archives. But I think you'll find them interesting as we go through them all to find out where the Inspector General and our agency is coming from and what we're going to do working with them to implement some of these recommendations, several of which will have an impact upon you. So let's just dive right into it. Here is finding number one with the recommendations below it. And this is probably the most straightforward of the areas that we discuss with the Inspector General. And it's something that we were already working on. I mean obviously one of the things that we need to do and Don is going to talk about it after this part of the meeting, when we have to send all of you the links to complete the RMSA and the reports, we have to know who to send it to. So we need to know what are all the federal agencies out there that are subject to the Federal Records Act that we have oversight of. So it's kind of a basic starting point question. And the issue is there are a lot of sources from which we can evaluate what is that number. And we spend a lot of time talking about amongst ourselves with our oversight program and of course with our Office of General Counsel who gave us some legal interpretation based on statutes on who would be subject to the to the FRA and who is not to help us come to the number. So if you when you're looking at the report there's quite a bit of discussion about various sources such as the Federal Register, the Government Manual, Forbes list, I mean it's all in there and the numbers are all different. So what we were asked to do and what we agreed to do with the OIG is come up with an authoritative list of all of those agencies subject to the FRA that we have oversight of. So as I said we have been working on it and a couple of things that we did connected to this is developing a procedure for us to periodically review and update the list. And we agreed on a requirement to actually investigate other sources and make sure the list of sources that we're going to review to make sure the list is accurate is as comprehensive as we can make it and so that the list can be as authoritative as possible. And then following that there is a targeted deadline that for the next RMSA and annual reporting period next year that we will rely on this authoritative list. So a fairly straightforward one doesn't have as much of an impact upon you unless you're one of those agencies where there might be a legal question as to whether or not you're subject to the FRA and then we might have to have some discussions but overall fairly straightforward finding a recommendation. So the second of the five recommendations a little bit more complicated and the issue of the universe of electronic records is one that goes back many many many years. There was actually an audit that dates back to 2010 which preceded the one for which this report was issued where similar topics were discussed and it was about oversight of federal records management. That report was then folded into this one and going back to 2010 and before that there were a lot of discussions about what the universe of electronic records are and we ended up with the OIG sort of narrowing the discussion down to what you see on the screen which is what is the universe of scheduled electronic records that are not identified. So it says in the report the discussion is there and really what the conclusion is is that NARA should have a comprehensive list of all active permanent disposition authorities. So essentially this is a gaps project and one of the things in terms of the approach is making sure that there is intellectual control and tracking and monitoring of the scheduled electronic records authorities and making sure that they're then in the electronic records archives so that we can expect transfers against those authorities. So that is essentially what we agreed to at a high level with this discussion around this finding and then you can see the specific recommendations here and these are for NARA to do. So we are going to validate and continue the entry of disposition authority data into ERA in a timely manner and there are some targets around that. And taking that data there is a separate recommendation within this finding to identify records that are overdue for transfer based on that getting control of those disposition authorities. So it's sort of two-fold. One, what are the gaps? Get intellectual control over those gaps and then do the analysis to see what transfers are overdue and then make them happen. So related to that the third finding is specifically about gaps in permanent electronic records accessions and it does follow on from the previous finding and this is an area where it's primarily assigned to not to the opposite chief records officer but to research services where if you look at the discussion in the report it talks about reviewing the technology for identifying gaps in ERA and then seeing if there's something more that needs to be done. So there may be a need to request additional funding for ERA and working with Sam and David to see if there's functionality that needs to be advocated for as a result of this finding to improve the ability to identify and mitigate gaps in accessions of electronic records. So the other part of that is for that program to also develop and update internal controls for reaching out to agencies you know who have transfers that are overdue and then trying to put that active work with agencies together with whatever needs to be done internally to make sure that ERA from a technological perspective meets the needs of the National Archives. And this one I think you might find of interest. So this one does have an impact on agencies and all of you in records management programs who are responsible for scheduling. So this is there was a lot of discussion with the OIG about this and you can probably imagine how that went. So as you know currently in 36 CFR 1225-22 there are the requirements for when record schedules need to be revised and updated. And it goes something along lines of you know when the when the purpose content or function of the records change then agencies need to submit revisions and to the National Archives for new schedules. And that's the way we've always approached it. I mean we've always always you know sort of had this understanding from NARA and from an agency perspective if you've got a schedule could have been written in 1985 but it covered a process or a function that hasn't changed over time and in that case the record schedule would still be applicable and still useful. So the discussion around this particular area involves sort of the changes and how we're working as a government as a society as a culture with you know electronic records being the way we work it really beg the question as to whether or not a schedule that was approved in 1985 for paper records could work the way the way we work right now from a digital electronic perspective. So one of the things that that we agreed is that schedule should be reviewed. So if you had a schedule that was done in 1985 maybe it still works but it probably bears some looking at to see if it's still working the way it's supposed to be working if the process has changed or the application of technology has changed the process to the point where you really do need to have a new schedule. So we sort of agreed with them on that and you know one of the things that that we are going to be doing as we look at changes to sub chapter B the records management regulations is to codify in the CFR how often schedules must be reviewed. So the same principles the same principles you know content function you know those change but we're going to include a requirement that agencies periodically review and that's what we have to figure out what that period is all schedules. So that's sort of the going forward approach that you know as we perceive when the regs are released and going forward there's going to be a requirement to review all schedules to make sure they reflect current practice but there's also this discussion in the report that really takes more of a look at it from a legacy perspective where you know we recognize that schedules can be out of date so we sort of said that we would communicate with agencies a need to look at schedules that are 30 years old or older so that's what you see in the second recommendation that we will communicate with agencies about a requirement to review schedules that were approved before January 1990 and see if there is a need to submit a new schedule revise those existing schedules so this whole finding area is really about outdated record schedules both prospectively and retrospectively and making sure that the schedules that you have for all of your agencies meet the needs of how we're working today and then the last finding is actually an area that we've spent a lot of time and resources to really improve over the years and that's oversight so as you know especially those of you that we've worked very closely with on inspections and assessments in the last couple of years we have increased our capacity to engage with agencies to determine how well you're doing in your operations of records management so the discussions with the IG in this particular area were actually very good and you can see in the report they acknowledge that we have done a lot of work to improve oversight from our perspective of doing inspections and reporting so really what this item is about it's more about a concern from the IG's perspective of scope and scale with the resources that we have and that Don Rosen has to inspect and assess agencies we are essentially getting to 10 to 12 percent at least at this point of engagement with agencies so you know it would take a while for us to get to every agency in the government and it's sort of you know a process that's going to take many many many years and that was their concern that what we are doing is adequate and sufficient but we're not able to scale it up to a point where the IG was satisfied that the impact that we're having in doing our oversight is getting the results that they would like to see from an oversight perspective so our discussions around this finding area were really well what can we do to sort of broaden out the lessons learned and the best practices that we are documenting with those agencies that we are doing inspections and assessments of so essentially what we agree to do in the recommendations here and it's not as clear in the language but it's clear in the report that we are going to spend more time communicating what we are learning out of the engagements from agencies so if we if we for example we meet with or we do inspections of you know eight to ten agencies in a year we are going to publicize promote advocate and train what those results and best practices are with other agencies so they can then learn from those lessons and make changes and improvements within their programs so in addition to the things that we are already doing like posting inspection reports to the website doing briefings here at bridge and other agency meetings also documenting in the annual reporting you know some of the lessons learned we are going to and what we agreed to do is issue a semiannual report to all agencies and posted on our website that twice a year will summarize those best practices and lessons learned out of the oversight engagements that we've had with agencies so you know that is sort of the way that we are going to approach addressing the the scale issue that the the IG pointed out and that we are going to leverage the results that we've gotten and communicate them out more broadly and I believe there's also targets around all of these including for this one and probably sometime middle of next year we'll be issuing our first semiannual report so you can see what that looks like so that's it those are the five findings those are the recommendations I encourage you to go back and look at the report just to see the kind of discussion see what's relevant for your agencies and also I think it's important for us to talk about it today just so you have a heads up that there are going to be some things coming changes to the regulations communications about about outdated record schedules and other things that we're going to have to talk about and more detail in the coming months and work together on so that we can meet these requirements that the the IG has determined are areas of risks that we need to mitigate so with that I'll take some questions if we have any about the report a one over here Hi Christina from the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board we've seen a lot of difficulty in engaging with our executives in terms of the internal controls which you touched on very much as far as making that broader impact with inspections it seems like nobody takes it serious until I've got somebody on my door saying I want an inspection and then it's like oh surprise no this is an internal control this is a requirement has there been any thought towards potentially including in the CFR or some other form of regulation to include a records management affirmation as part of that internal control that an agency had goes through the list of things that are affirmed as under control and in good standing within the agency to specifically include a records management component I know we do it for IT I know we do it for several mission items but that might include quite a bit of visibility to those agency heads I mean I get occasional questions from them on whether or not we even count as an internal control to the agency so something like that could support that my second question has there been a thought towards in order to make those inspections more meaningful each year to potentially look at certain results from the self-assessment to identify some of those higher at-risk areas and at-risk agencies that could benefit the most from your presence yeah so let me let me take your second question first because that is something that we do so we do collect the data from everyone we use that data every year to inform our work plan for the next year so we do look at the the RMSA we look at the SAOM reports and we do mine them for for example topics that we might want to do an assessment of in the following year and of course we look at them for you know identify agencies where they're they are higher risk based on the RMSA and we haven't done an inspection yet so we had for several years you know methodically been going through department by department we've now completed the department series so going forward we are looking more closely at the data to help us prioritize how we're going to reach out to agencies and engage with them from an oversight perspective so for your first question regarding internal controls yeah we we think very highly of internal controls it's in the regs and when we do inspections it is an area that we do look at and there I agree with you there should be a way of sort of you know either doing a records management sign-off or records management integration with the program to to provide that sort of risk mitigation of you know whatever that particular area is so how it gets operationalized in agencies I think is up to agencies I mean the requirement is it is there in the CFR that there should be internal controls as a way to mitigate records management risk the microphone is traveling to the middle of the room hi I'm Brett Abrams I work in the electronic records division at NARA so we have records we have a database that basically tells us what agencies owe us what as far as eventual transfers of records and the dates that we expect these transfers to take place I'm curious with so for all of you to think a little bit about whether you actually have spreadsheets or some record of the systems that you have and whether they're permanent and what type of data they are and whether that data and when that data is available for transfer or whether the the controls are a little off because maybe you're not connecting with all the programs and understanding what all the programs are creating and whether or not those records are scheduled or not so something to think about that was just the microphone traveling back I thought there was questions somewhere over there any questions on YouTube chat no okay well I will be around this afternoon if anybody has any questions about the IG report or our approach to oversight happy to talk with you about that and and as I said more later so with that I will bring Don up here to talk about records management reporting for next year all right good morning everyone so I'm gonna talk a little about where we are with in reporting for next year just before I do just to kind of piggyback a little bit Lawrence was saying about some of the inspections oversight so we are posting those on our webpage and we actually just posted several in the last few weeks that we had completed from this past year I think there are eight up there overall for FY19 and two assessments are up there as well one on FACA records and one on email management so I encourage you to take a look at that I think in total we did worked with over 30 agencies this past year we're looking forward to working with more moving forward so lots of good discussion of that and more to come and especially on that and reporting that Lawrence talked about as well our team is thinking about ways we can do that and communicate it and get and share those lessons learned that we're finding with everyone in the community what I want to talk about for a few minutes this morning is reporting so the last time I was here we talked about the results of FY18 but now we're already working on 19 it's hard to believe that it's right around the corner so I just want to share where we are thinking in terms of the dates and what to expect for reporting this coming year so again we're going to be asking for several things the first thing is the well first I should mention the reporting period this year is we still learned the last year January time frame I don't have the Pacific date yet but probably middle of January got to work with that out and then gives you to likely to march similar time frame the big things we're going to ask for again is the records management self-assessment working on finalizing that template but likely the questions the scored one should remain the same we want to keep that that consistency for year over year for you evaluate yourselves we might have some additional questions around storage we never really asked that every other year so that's something we're likely to put back in there and there might be some unscored questions around ERM and email the thing here at kind of center that is new is of course when we're going to do the email management self-assessment maturity model again but we added a new tool we need to find out more information about permanent electronic records for that 2019 goal coming out of M12-18 and now an M19-21 hard to believe that is here that December 31st 2019 goal so one of the things in addition to just asking did you meet that goal is how you're managing your permanent records so using a maturity model approach based on the success criteria that we've put out previously we're going to be asking some questions around that so we have a tool that'll only be an email maturity model but also permanent electronic records maturity model that is going through its review right now hopefully to have that out I'm thinking likely in November and then we will I'll come back in December bridge to kind of do a detail walkthrough of how that'll work it should look very similar to the email one itself but it's a way for us to get more information for you to measure where you are and managing those permanent electronic records so not just doing that yes no did you meet that 2019 goal but also let's take a thoughtful look through it but in preparation for it just familiarize yourselves with the success criteria for permanent electronic records that's what it's based on so if you've seen that there should be really no surprises to what what this is going to look at but that is new and I wanted to highlight it and as soon as I can release it we will it's going through our internal review right now what's that's done we'll get it out and we'll make sure we communicate it whether we do something outside of bridge where we're still sort of kicking those ideas around but at a minimum I'll talk about it in December and make sure and of course our team will be around to answer any questions and the last thing of course is the SAORM our focus this year will be likely on M1921 the director that was put out in June asking you how you're making progress towards that also again that big deadline December 31st 2019 how you met that goal that yes no thing that we've been asking for the last few years I will say when I got the data from last year I think 98% said yes they're our target to beat it so it'll be interesting to see how those numbers play out so those would be the three things we asked for in the reporting piece well actually four I guess if you add in the ERM maturity model but it'll be packaged as three pieces the email and the permanent records maturity model will basically be one thing that you have to complete but everything else should be very familiar to you for reporting so those are the main pieces again once we have everything finalized and I get all the templates approved through the concurrence process we will share them around and make sure that you have plenty of time to review it and ask us questions just a quick question questions we do get is what we do with these reports actually that came up with Lawrence was asked a question previously what we do with them these are some things that we do do we do gather information uniform manner we look at it to identify any emerging trends it helps us decide topics especially when we do our assessments and other types of inspections we do go through the data pretty rigorously we share it around not only within our unit but also across NARA so those are interested in it helps us make our determinations we do look at those agencies that are in high risk we also look at those that are low risk too because there could be some good best practices that we can share with everybody else and that's a big push again with our resources we want to make sure that we can if we're seeing things that are going really well that we can push out to everyone we want to highlight those versus we know to highlight the challenges as well so we do use the data work out in lots of different ways and of course so what can you do use the data as well also how you can use it in your own programs to help yourselves share it with your leadership I've heard many times or last nine, ten years I've been working with the ARMSA data that it's helped people get more resources just help bring awareness to your program so I think the data it's been used a lot of different ways when we put out these reports it does get attention we do send it to Congress we do get articles from those groups that follow our work those publications as well so lots of different ways that this data can be used not only by us but you guys but also those that follow our work so let's keep that in mind too the other thing I should want to mention is of course this all information is all online we do post all the essay reports and they're up there for you to see and I encourage you I mentioned it last time to look at it share it lots of information find out what your other colleagues are doing and other agencies especially the challenge or electronic records we also post those email management maturity models as well and we'll be doing something similar for next year's set of data and in preparation for reporting as Lawrence mentioned you know where we might be have more agencies taking self-assessment this year we want to make sure we have the right contact information it's critical so we send out those links using our tool so RM self-assessment at nar.gov so if you have not done that if you have a change a new person let us know contact us Cindy Smolovic and her team are there to help you answer any questions especially if you're new and going through this reporting process for the first time our staff really is ready to help and answer questions as we prayer for it and we'll have more communication coming out prior to it and then once we actually kick off reporting in January we'll be sending out AC communications you'll be getting links from us and then we'll be working with you throughout the period between January and March so that is where we are with reporting more to come probably in December when we get that maturity model finalized but just wanted you to give you a kind of where we are as of today as we move forward and close the book on last year's reporting and really pivot towards the next reporting period so happy to take any questions on where we stand and what's coming next any questions online all right well if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me or Cindy or send a note to our self-assessment and I'll be back in December to give you a deeper dive thank you all right my name is Matt Itson I supervise the permanent records capture team and part of my team's responsibilities is to coordinate the annual move across the different parts of NARA that did work on it and today I have brought with me Derek Kennedy who's in the audience too he's the coordinator for the annual move and but I wanted to start out by saying that I'm here to to not only talk about the steps of the annual move for 2020 but also to give a word of thanks because the annual move is one of the activities that you guys work on that really support the mission of the National Archives and without it without your help I don't think we would get as much things coming in and transferred to the National Archives so a word of thanks for that okay just to recap on the annual move it's for records that are eligible in 2020 that are in the Federal Records Center program so we also would load up five years back of five-year interval data if it didn't get approved in prior annual moves we'll load back some of the some of the data from Arcus that are eligible as well the data is extracted from Arcus and loaded into ERA but before we talk about 2020 I want to talk about what happened in 2019 and so in 2019 we have some stats here 63% of 2019's transfer requests have already been proposed by agencies you can see we loaded 6,000 over 6,000 TRs in ERA back in October of 2018 for the 2019 annual move and the reason why I wanted to say look at 2019 first is because you're about to go in and take care of 2020 if you have excuse me there's 37 still in draft status so while you're in there you know a plug for 2019 you know take care of some of those as well so here's a timeline for the 2020 annual move in July actually for the 2020 annual move we got started on the NARA side in October of actually November Derek yeah of last year so we get started quite a bit early it takes us that much time to prepare for an annual move but from your perspective in July we sent out the candidate list the candidate list was to say here are the transfers that we see are going to be eligible take a look and let us know you guys did a great job of reviewing those lists and sending us updates where needed but really the key dates here are October the 1st through December the 1st and this is the campaign where you have the ability to go in and propose your TRs and ERA base and so by December 1st the deal is if you propose them by December 1st we will move them in spring as you can see NARA has an approval decision deadline by the 15th of January and then in spring from January to April we're going to move the records from the record center to it so it's all it's all connected if you don't make the deadline you know it's kind of dependent on NARA resources when we'll be able to move the records but you can see there's a second chance we call it the late summer move here in D.C. for the Archives Archives 2 and Archives 1 moves that you can take advantage of but really the big push is from now to December 1st you may hear from us we'll send a reminder out we'll call some of the agencies that look like they could they could use some help getting if you hear from us you I expect some of that so 2020 here's what it looks like and if you would call back from 2019 we loaded 6,000 something TRs and this is a rather larger annual move almost nearly 10,000 TRs did we load and so I'm happy that we didn't break ERA base loading this many TRs at once and everything's going fine with that we tested it out records cover 172 agencies with the oldest record dating back to 1867 and on average an agency would have about 40 TRs to work on some quite a few more and some just just want to do so here's an overview of the top 10 agencies who have written their breakouts of TRs okay steps to getting this done the first thing that I recommend you know when you log in of course after getting your your ERA account active again and your password up to date in case that has expired that you would do advanced searches using the keywords 2020 annual move and this is where you can also look for 2019 transfers that are still in the system that are in draft status you could use the same kind of keyword criteria 2019 annual move and I ask that you do this rather than rely on the system notifications to tell you what you need to do those are helpful but this will guarantee that you you see everything that you're supposed to see review the TRs make any necessary changes if there's a change in the disposition authority that's one of the areas where we can't currently change and you need to contact us if you see an issue with the disposition authority that was loaded okay and the the complication here you just need to realize that some records officers might have dual roles where they would need to submit the TR twice if you're the agency approving official versus the transferring official some agencies will have different people reviewing the transfers and just just realize that that you might have a dual role and if you only hit if you would only submit it once it's not fully proposed and you need to to submit it twice so we see quite a bit a couple of slides ago we saw that some of the 2019 TRs were still in submitted for agency action and the submitted for agency action is an indication that a TR is still awaiting the final approval stage okay lastly the what I would say is you know the best guide for when you're doing this is to pull up the user guide so while you're you know having you're in the screens the user guide is going to provide a step-by-step process and one of the questions we get asked quite a lot is what way how do I work these access fields and restriction fields what do I do and the user guide will tell you exactly what options are needed and if you're looking for the user guide if you go to archives.gov in the records management section on the ERA home page you'll see the user guide PDF there and so that's what you'd want to consult all right other than that if you have any questions annual.move at nar.gov is the email to remember and I'm I'm ready to answer we're looking forward to ERA 2.0 and when when that supports the annual move and all the good things that will come any questions I think if you're if you're coming to the appraisal group meeting after after lunch we'll be there you could ask us questions there as well but thanks good morning my name is Jeff Lunsford I'm the chief financial analyst for the federal record sending program and I'm here to talk to you about the FY 2020 rates as Gordon said at the outset the FY 2020 rates are not yet approved so yeah I don't even know so I want to talk to you a little bit about the thinking that goes behind goes into developing rates and really what drives a lot of decision making for us and also really cuts to the core of the program itself efficiency is really baked into our DNA and by by that I'm not sort of being metaphorical it's actually written into our enabling legislation there are three key pieces of our enabling legislation that really force us to become the best value for record storage and services for the federal government one of them is that our customer base is limited to federal agencies private record storage providers can compete for federal business but we cannot compete for private business so it's not exactly a level playing field in terms of the marketplace but it really does tend to focus us on our mission it forces us to be very in tune with the federal records management community and to be very responsive to your needs so the other thing is that also part of the legislation is that we are completely reimbursable we receive no money from congress we don't have any external funding sources and in fact I'm going to quote here a little bit we're authorized and required to charge fees that will cover the full expenses of our operations including reserves for accrued annual leave workers comp depreciation of capitalized equipment and shelving and amortization of information technology and software and systems in other words we are completely unfully funded if we were to shut down tomorrow the government would not have any sort of liabilities hanging out there so the funds the fees that we charge the funds that you pay us do completely cover our full cost of operations the key piece of this legislation that set us up as a program is that our expenses have to has to match our revenue within four percent in other words we can't just sort of make profits year after year after year and amass this sort of huge cash balance and live large we have to be very very serious about every dollar that we spend we have to be very serious about the fees that we charge so that we don't collect too much money and that that sort of came to head for us in 2019 it was a challenging year for everybody especially considering the the shutdown but when I proposed our 2019 rate package our rate packages include an expense budget and a revenue budget and then and then the rates that sort of lay on top of that the 2019 budget was break even our revenue our projected revenue matched our projected expenses until the shutdown occurred and as you all know all federal employees got paid the full amount and we still had to pay rent on all of our facilities but we suffered five weeks of what's the phrase we coined permanently deferred service revenue as a result we estimate that we lost about three million dollars and our bottom line for 2019 reports reflect that it's a challenge we are able to sustain that loss because of prior years when we when we did earn within that four percent window a little more than we spent so that really sort of defines the parameters under which we propose rate increases we do so we take that responsibility very seriously we understand that we touch each and every one of your budgets and we want to be responsible stewards of that so that we can deliver the services that you require part of the efficiency that's that's built into the program is reflected in the fact that the majority of our employees work under production standards they are expected to produce a certain number of widgets every hour or day and most of them can earn incentives if they if they produce more than their production standard and most of our employees do most of our employees are able to be more efficient than what the standard is and that's reflected in the high quality services that we deliver so I can't say too much about the 2020 rates as much as I would like to but what I can say is that we had initially proposed significant rate increases to cover some fairly sizable expense increases that we were anticipating after reviewing the numbers submitting the package to the CFO working through some of the data and identifying areas where we could cut the programs or defer expenses we were able to scale back the rate increases that we had initially proposed one good example of a rate category that we had proposed to increase that we later backed off of was storage the current rate package does not include a storage rate increase good news we're having some fairly sizable challenges with the paper disposal market and the recycling market so we anticipate that disposal charges may go up but overall we do not anticipate that any single agency will be affected by a sort of a greater than inflationary increase I can't speak specifically to individual rates or individual agencies but I can do I can say with certainty that the current rate package is in the final stages of approval we think that it's at or near the archivist's desk for signature so we should be able to see final rates in the next day to three we'll get those out to you as soon as they're approved through Gordon's customer relationship management group so we can start finalizing interagency agreements and get on with the fiscal year so that's all I have to say about 2020 rates I know that's a lot of words to sort of say nothing doing my best here are there any questions and any clarifications yeah Jeff time from the Air Force question about yes the December 31st 2022 deadline has your team did some additional modeling and simulation that hey this really is going to happen and how that will impact rates 40 future years thank you yeah that's that's going to be an interesting transition for us you know part of part of the way we see the future obviously we're not going to be able to take in any new records so transfer activity will sort of turn off on on on a you know as that day passes so our holdings will become sort of a reference and disposal operation at that point our holdings will decrease it's it's hard to say what the rates what will happen with the rates you know will be required over time and we're talking 10 or 25 or 40 years to dramatically decrease the footprint of our facilities and we'll have to we'll have to do that we'll have to seek to maintain our efficiency in a in a program with a smaller scope and a smaller footprint hopefully that means that rates will remain static or decrease sort of you know the cost of storing one box in a very small facility may not be 24 cents but as long as we sort of have a a critical mass where we can store in service federal records in a in a meaningful sort of footprint I don't anticipate that there will be significant budgetary changes for you guys anything else time for an early lunch then thank you guys before we close out many of you may have met or dealt with Leigh Ann Townsend Cerrami who is our director of operations who unfortunately passed back in the spring there's been a new selection for director of operations and it is Christopher Pinkney who was the director at the WNRC Chris couldn't be here today because there's a narrow coop operation taking place this morning so he couldn't be here he'll be here at the December meeting but I wanted to make you all aware many of the folks do know Christopher he'll head up all of the federal record center operations across the country for the federal record center program okay without that with that we just want to remind folks of this afternoon from one to three upstairs will be group three if you're a part of the appraisal group three the folks will be there for any questions and answers any last minute questions anything we need to follow up on for anyone Tommy hold on just a second Tommy so we can have a mic so everybody can hear I'm sorry yes Tommy from the Air Force yes I'm going to keep pressing about the OMB M-19-21 in terms of any status or progress on the frequently asked questions the waivers the exceptions and also at the August meeting with the SAORMs it was mentioned that the office of management budget would issue some type of survey or a data call to federal agencies of financial budget offices to see what are the obstacles to going electronic for record generation okay so thank you I'm assuming you want to take that one no I'll let you handle it wouldn't like my answer so that's a good question Tommy and I'm sure it's uh it's on everybody's mind where we are as far as what we talked about in previous meetings is what we're doing with M-19-21 so I don't want to talk about the the budgetary side of thing I don't have as much insight into that and I think that's something that agencies can then talk about you know with their own connections over at OMB I don't have much insight that I can share on that side of things as far as what we do control here within the office of the chief records officer which is policy issuing a policy and then the tools and resources to help you work through some of the changes to meet those targets you're correct the two things that we are focused on is clarifying FAQs and the piece about submitting exceptions related to the paragraph in section 2.1 of M-19-21 and we are making progress in both areas we actually have a piece up with management review related to exceptions which we're going to be discussing with the archivist and other senior staff so expectation is that that will be released shortly and I'm not going to define shortly any more precisely than that I will say that the FAQs should be the next thing out and it's something that where we have a draft and we have a lot of questions that we've received which we are sort of addressing in the FAQs so we need to figure out the best way to release that so it's not really you know a laundry list of a million questions we were trying to identify sort of themes, categories and the most critical questions that you would need that we could then update over time so that is a focus now the other piece which you didn't mention which we are working on diligently are the standards for digitizing permanent records we were able to release those standards and regs related to digitizing temporary records with an eye towards disposal we are slowly, but surely coming to agreement on a draft that we can then post for interagency review and through the normal regulations process don't have a time frame for that although with the holidays coming I would love to see something available for your comment and feedback before we really get into the holidays but again but again can't define it more precisely than that but thank you for the question those are the things we're working on and we'll be in touch with all of you and communicate as soon as we have something more firm to release and then provide follow-up training meetings et cetera on the products that we do get out is it working I can hear you okay Christina with the CSB again one of the things in the M19 that has stayed consistent and we're seeing it in a lot of the aspects of how NARA is conducting business is the role of the SAORM in many agencies it seems like pretty much a conclusion and that adjustment has been made and I'm seeing that in the totals with the self-assessment does NARA have a plan for addressing the lagging agencies that are struggling with that requirement still considering the significant impact it has on programs and keeping that visibility and cooperation with executive management to include things I heard kicked around for a little while as far as changes in the education program and the training that NARA was bringing forward in the future to include standards for potentially either NARA training or online training or training standards for within the agencies like we have for regular records management awareness training on the annual right now for specifically our executive leadership position to raise that visibility raise that awareness and really kind of cement for them what NARA's vision of their cooperation with their programs should be so these are all really good questions for which I believe I have answers so engagement with Say Arms is something that that we really have been focused on for the past several years it's a difficult area because there's quite a bit of turnover at the highest levels of agencies especially with Say Arms and you know they have large portfolios and getting them sort of focused on records management and working closely with records officers is a connection we're trying to facilitate but it's a challenge so we we have been working internally on an engagement plan for for interacting with Say Arms all Say Arms as you know we had a meeting here in August 1st just trying to initially touch base with Say Arms about M1921 but we expect to do much more including not just face-to-face meetings but some virtual meetings just trying to build a community of practice specifically for Say Arms and having an opportunity to discuss some of those strategic challenges within agencies so something that you're going to hear more from us about another thing that we've been doing and I'm sure a lot of your agencies may be aware of we've had whenever we we see notice of a new Say Arms we've been sending a welcome email with resources and guidance to those new newly designated Say Arms and requesting face-to-face meetings within those agencies and we've done quite a few of those meetings already this year and we expect to do much more and related to that your question about training is something that we are exploring not just for Say Arms but for political appointees and senior officials and agencies so I know Gary Ralfus before he left Michelle Bradley's now here she's raise your hand Michelle she's now acting for Gary we are very interested in getting feedback from all of you on what that what what the needs are and basically doing some focus groups and some needs analysis around what the content should be for political appointees and officials like Say Arms and we hope to have something very specific for Say Arms now we all know the challenges you're getting a Say Arms to sit down for training and take training is not something that's going to be very easily accomplished so we're trying to figure out the best way to engage with Say Arms to provide them that information in a way that would be useful to all of you the records officers and the practitioners within records management so that is another area that that we are working on and really trying to to improve that engagement but I really would encourage you to not only reach out to Michelle Michelle.Bradley at narrow.gov if you have suggestions or ideas about training briefings whatever we want to call it for senior officials and I would love to hear from you if you have any ideas from your perspective in an agency on how to really better engage and make those connections with Say Arms that will help you in in your daily records management any other questions about M1921 or otherwise Yes, I'll take that. I think the policy is it going to be very firm language or is it going to be these are the hard and fast rules and this is what you all need to do for what's your take on that? So the question for those of you may not have heard it online it was how are we going to approach guidance related to exceptions that are mentioned in M1921 so the memo is what the memo is so it does say there are a number of categories within M1921 where NARA and the administration expect to receive requests from agencies for exceptions to requirements of the memo so what we've tried to do with our guidance is kind of flesh that out and make it a little bit easier for you as an agency to provide us what we need to be able to adjudicate your need for an exception so we've tried to come up with questions areas categories things like you know well what is the the disposition authority for the records in which we are accepting requesting an exception those kinds of things are not in the memo so we're trying to get it down to a lower level of detail to help agencies provide us with the information that we need so we have said from the very beginning that we expect exceptions to be rare and limited that has not changed however we do understand and recognize as it says in the memo that there will be areas based on the categories that are outlined in M1921 where we will have to review exceptions but we're going to rely on agencies to provide the justification in a comprehensive way with with cost benefit analysis supporting documentation and so on for the exceptions and that's what we are trying to pull together in our guidance so that you know what you need to do in communicating with us about the need for a particular exception and there'll be more to talk about once we are able to get the guidance out to agencies there's a question from youtube has there been any progress on fast tracking of updating in bulk non-media neutral schedules to media neutral for those schedules for which there are no other changes so that is an issue that is being actively discussed and is ongoing and I can't talk about you know how that's going to play out because we are actively trying to figure out the best way to approach that for agencies and obviously we want to to be in an environment going forward that that make sure that the interests of the agencies and our interests from an oversight perspective in the national archives are aligned that's what we are trying to figure out and we know ultimately we're going to have to as I mentioned before update the regulations where it talks about media neutrality so all of those things have to come together we do expect that we'll have something sooner rather than later on that particular issue but as I said those discussions are ongoing and as I said I'll be here this afternoon if anybody has any follow-up questions about M1921 or anything else that we've talked about today but with that I will turn it back over to Gordon to close the meeting thanks I do have one other one final thing we have all of our account managers here today and I just want to remind folks as Jeff said earlier the Federal Records Center program is a fee for service business and there are things that we can do for your agencies we do more than store and destroy records we digitize records we help you with some of the intellectual things you need to do records through our records management consulting business so just reach out to your account managers if there is some need for our services and even packing records and moving them to the FRCs for you so just want to keep that in mind all right that's all we have for today and we appreciate everyone coming out the next meeting is Tuesday December 17th 2019 okay thanks very much