 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our bridge meeting for June. My name is Ariane Ravenbach, and I will be serving as the moderator for today's meeting. As a reminder, the Office of Agency Services at the National Archives and Records Administration hosts these bimonthly records and information discussion group, or bridge meetings, to present information relating to federal records management. Bridge is co-produced by the Office of the Chief Records Officer for the United States and the Federal Records Center's program, and is livestreamed to the audience over our YouTube channel. Generally, Bridge consists of a scheduled program of presentations with an open forum at the end of each meeting to ask questions of the presenters or of any related federal records management topic of interest. Viewers are encouraged to post questions in the chat or by sending an email to rm.communications.nara.gov. Our staff will be monitoring this email box during the meeting. You are also welcome to make comments during this meeting in the YouTube chat. However, keep in mind that all comments are subject to moderation, so we ask that you keep the comments relevant to the topics being discussed. Copies of the presentation slides will be posted on the Bridge page of the Archives website. That webpage is also where you will find links to the transcript of today's meeting when it is available, as well as links and information about previous and upcoming Bridge meetings. If you have general comments about Bridge or suggestions for future topics, you can use that same email address, rm.communications.nara.gov, to pass these along to us. We welcome your feedback. With that, I would like to start by introducing Lawrence Brewer, Chief Records Officer for the United States government, to get us under way. Good afternoon, Lawrence. Thanks, Ariane, and thank you for that excellent introduction. Good afternoon, good morning, wherever you are. I'm coming to you from the Maryland suburbs, where the skies are dark and threatening. Hopefully, we'll escape any electrical storms, which might cause some technical problems for us. I also want to add my welcome to all of you to this June Bridge meeting. It's been a while since we met, but I wanted to talk about a couple of quick things before we get into the agenda. First, on two long-standing items, I do want to say, before the questions come in, that I do not have anything new to report on the status of the M1921 deadlines or where we are with the digitization regulations for permanent records. We're making progress on both fronts, and I'm looking forward to sharing updates on both of those items as soon as I have them. In the meantime, I encourage you to continue all your work and your planning to make progress on being compliant with those deadlines and planning out digitization projects for permanent records and temporary records. And if you have any questions, especially if there are of the agency-specific or unique variety, please reach out to our staff at the email addresses that are there for either M1921 or digitization. There are a couple of things I do want to highlight in addition to what we're going to be talking about later today on the agenda. First, I wanted to cover a couple of things, products that we have released since our last bridge meeting. So first actually came out in March, but we released an assessment of coordination of chief data officers with records management programs. That assessment report was released in March. And then in April, we released another assessment on interagency collaboration and the applications that we all use to connect with each other in doing our regular work. And we looked in both of those assessments at the records management implications, not only for CDO coordination, but for how these applications and new tools and emerging technologies are affecting what we need to do as records managers in our agencies. So I encourage you to take a look at those new reports and then hit us up if you have any questions or if anything's unclear or you just would like to have further discussion between my office and your office into the issues that we tried to surface with those two assessments. The last thing I wanted to mention, as you know, we have been working on preparing our consolidated annual report of records management compliance and activities in all agencies. We are on target to release our annual report this fiscal year, hopefully sometime towards the end of the summer. And I just wanted to throw it out there that we will probably be able to come back at the next bridge meeting in August and give you a deeper dive into some of the trends and themes that we found from all the data that we've gathered through the annual reporting for calendar year 2021. So stay tuned for that. So that is really just a couple of things I wanted to share before we get started. And as always, if you have any general questions that don't relate to the presentations that will follow, please hold them until we get to the end of the meeting. We should have some time for discussion to cover your questions when we do get to that last segment following the schedule presentations. So with that, if we could flip the slide and take a look at the agenda. So as always, we have the representatives from our Federal Records Center's program to provide some updates on where things are with the FRCP. But we're particularly pleased this month to have with us our colleagues from Research Services to talk about some of the things that are going on, some of the updates that you should be aware of when it comes to accessioning and transferring permanent records. So I'm really looking forward to that and seeing what questions you have and hearing from the team over in Research Services about what they are working on and getting out to you in terms of guidance for agencies. So with that, let's flip the slide and I will turn it over to Russell LoCell, National Transfer and Disposition Coordinator for his briefing from the Federal Records Center's program. Russell? Hi, thank you, Art. So it has been seven years since we did a freeze overview and then the pandemic, you know, we were going to do something a couple of years ago and just kind of fell off the radar. But with everyone re-entering the workforce, there have been several questions, communications, meetings with agencies, now that everyone's ramping back up, taking a look at their holdings again, working again with their council's office and, you know, trying to scope down some of these freezes. So we thought it was a good time to have another overview, especially if there are new people in the audience who didn't get a chance to learn about our program and the freeze function. So with that, let's go to the next slide, please. Okay, so what is a freeze? A freeze is different in terms of it's what NARA calls us applying at an agency's request, a moratorium on destruction or a litigation hold. So you have received communications from DOJ or from your council's office saying, you know, we have this lawsuit, this issue, or a business need, and we need to retain the records. The issue is that you have records on site, normally your most recent records, but then you also have them stored in other places, including the Federal Records Center program. And so how you ensure that those records don't get accidentally destroyed since they're not in your physical custody is to send a request in and ask that we freeze the records. Next slide, please. Okay. And so as I mentioned, you're ensuring by creating a freeze that the records they won't get destroyed, and when we create a freeze, it suspends the disposition and all the notices. So they won't show up on your quarterly disposal list, even if, you know, the disposition date has passed, and they're quote eligible for destruction. And so like I said, that is the safest way to ensure, especially in a large organization with multiple field offices, those individuals who may not be as familiar with litigation matters and stuff like that. This ensures that they don't get a notice and then accidentally click, you know, the yes box or give us concurrence to destroy something that you may need at the headquarters level. And then when a freeze is listed, when you notice that the litigation settled, you know, everything's done, that it's okay for the records to return to the life cycle, depending on the length of the freeze, many records would become immediately eligible for disposal. And so we will work with that agency to get them in the next available disposal cycle. Most of you know, NARA does large disposal cycles four times a year. So depending how large the freeze was, the volume that we're having to inject into the disposal stream, which a lot of you know is already backlogged, it may not be the very next cycle, we may make an arrangement with you to bump it out of cycle, but do be assured that once you have concurred with the disposal on those that you will not be charged billing. So it's that the 90 day rule applies, which makes sense because we're the ones who are pushing stuff down down the road a little bit. Next slide please. Okay, freeze versus hold. As you'll see in a minute when we go over some quick stats, the number of freezes is significantly smaller than the number of active holds in moratoriums. And once again, the reason for that is a lot of litigation is on something that just happened that's recent. It tends to be in your active records, which you know are on site at your agency. And so therefore you may be managing locally, you know, 200 litigations and you know discovery requests and stuff like that. But you only would submit a freeze if we have the physical custody of records. So once again, that's a big difference. The freeze is on our side where we have physical custody of your records. Next slide please. Okay, so I said we had fewer than you and we may or may not. As you can see, we're currently managing 246 active freezes for our agency customers not to cross 449 record groups. Okay, because freezes do, believe it or not, get lifted once in a while. Our oldest freeze, people always want to know what's the oldest, what's the biggest stuff like that is the GAO claim freeze related to Native American litigation and that goes all the way back to 1962. So everyone thought, you know, till at you know, when it hit 10 years, they thought that was kind of a big deal, but we have many freezes that are a lot older that are still active. The newest freeze may be just submitted one last month. So we are getting, you know, new freezes in. So the largest freeze was till, you know, you probably tried to forget about the tobacco litigation freeze. But it was the largest and it affected just under 12 million boxes, so 12 million cubic feet of records. It was very large and very expensive. Life cycle related freezes. So in addition to litigation freezes, we can also create what we call life cycle related freezes. You may have heard the term the freeze. That is to distinguish known from other freezes because they're life cycle based. And what that means is if you are doing a reappraisal with your archivist and you want to ensure that the records don't go anywhere because you're changing retention times and stuff like that, or you're doing a review project, you know, DOJ has a large civil review project. And so you can request that one of these freezes get put on it so that the records, you know, aren't approved by others and disappear. So we have a lot fewer of those. So currently we have 21. At one time we had 34. But as usual, just like a freeze when the process or the need for the freeze is gone, you simply notify us and we lift it and the records continue and some may become immediately eligible. So lifted freezes. In the past, and we only really started tracking this since I came on in 2008, but we've been able to lift 133 freezes. So, you know, and some of them are the biggie. Can we get to the next slide, please? Okay, so how do you create a freeze? As I mentioned, you have to tell us that you need the records to not be destroyed. And so you can create a letter. You can send an email. Email is acceptable. It really depends on your internal process. Some people like nice digitally signed PDFs that they email us. Some agencies still snail mail hard copies. It really doesn't matter that the key is you want to direct it to the FRCP director. And right now, with Gordon's passing, we are in a lull that Chris Pinkney, Christopher Pinkney is the acting director, at least on the free side, so you could send it to him. But most importantly, make sure that you copy me on the email or the hard copy to ensure that I get it because I am the one who actually goes in and ensures the business rules get created and gets the freeze in place and stuff like that. So that way, if it goes to my sandbox, Chris has it and he can let me know or vice versa. So it really is best to make sure that both of us are on that communication. And it's as simple as just putting in there a brief description or a justification of why you need the records frozen. A lot of agencies will simply say it's this litigation and then they'll actually cite the Northern District of blah, blah, blah and put the CIV and then the number and stuff. That's great. But even if you just want to describe the freeze, it's misfired torpedo propulsion or something like that. Just so we know what the subject is, so that when we create the freeze down the line, if you're gone or someone looks at the records and they say, oh, there's this freeze on it. What does this mean? They can then request documentation from us. We do maintain a full freeze history file for every freeze that's created so you can see who requested it, who lifted it, any changes in scope, stuff like that. So that really is the biggie is why you need it and then what you need frozen. So it can be specific transfer numbers. If you have a very good records management program and you have box lists and you know what transfers, what boxes need to be frozen, you can do it that way. You can freeze by the record group. You can freeze by record series or item levels. You can also freeze by date spans. So if you have any questions, definitely contact me and I can help walk you through some agencies just here in the last year that, you know, do you have any samples, you know, of other agencies, no letters, you know, so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. They wanted to make sure that they submitted everything that they needed. But once I get that request, I create the three letter codes. A lot of you hear them flying around with the government. So of course, we have to have little three letter codes for everything, like COB, that's the cobell, CAT, the Katrina freeze, TIL, the tobacco industry litigation, and so on. So we'll create a fancy little code for you and they'll let you know what the code is and what the long formal name of it is. Next slide, please. Okay. When you create freezes, you do need to remember that there are impacts. Okay. And that's one of the reasons that we have to have you formally request a freeze because it affects things like storage costs. If you put a freeze and we never get a lift notice until either we reach out to the agency and said, Hey, has there been any action on this? You know, it's been a while. There's been no updates. You know, I try and reach out to all agencies at least once a year. But as you saw, there's tons and tons of customers. So if you have any questions, especially if you're new, you know, do I have any freezes, reach out to me and I'll let you know. And as I said, I can provide you with those, those master free files just in case your predecessor didn't leave a nice tidy file cabinet with all that information for you. But storage cost is the biggie because you're keeping things past their legal retention time, and you're paying that I think 28 cents a month per box. So tail, for example, applied to all records. So some of those records that were frozen under till are still on the shelf now because they had long term retention. But for just those records that were kept past their retention time, the bill for the US government was over $12 million. Just to store those things. So cost is a big impact. And the other thing is risk as records managers, you know, you also want to mitigate the risk by freezing something, you're keeping it. And in a lot of cases, you're keeping it way past its you know, its disposition date. And that can incur, you know, extra discovery costs. It could be the smoking tobacco gun memo that was found that should have been destroyed 20 years ago. So, you know, you really have to keep your records manager hat on, and revisit freezes and make sure that we're not not only costing the taxpayers extra money to store them, but that we're not incurring more risk than is necessary by keeping stuff longer than we legally should. So next slide, please. Okay, so Council's office settles a big case, your lawsuit is over, you get, how am I supposed to do with this? You let us know. Because if you have a link at the FRC, chances are that somebody in the past requested a freeze. So you can reach out, you know, send me a copy of the lift request or, you know, the settlement request that you get from the lawyers in your organization, we can try and match it with any existing freezes. And once we have a match, you will simply send another request asking us to lift the freeze. And once again, we have to have that in the file because you're basically okaying the destruction at some point of those records. So we want your word that, you know, the suit has been settled and we are lifting this freeze on your behalf. So once again, send it to the FRCP director, at least for the short while here, that Chris pink me and copy me. Once again, I'm the one that will be going in and making sure that you look to actions happen. So making sure I'm copied on it. And I'm the one that will be doing all the analysis and matching that we talked about. So please make sure I'm copied. And then once again, if it's not a full freeze lift, once again, you can specify the scope of the lift. So if if you froze, for example, an entire record group, and then you work with your counsel's office and during the discovery process, they found out Oh, it's only these three record series that need to be frozen, communicate that to me and we can do what's called a partial lift and unfreeze everything else and only freeze the potentially responsive materials and not, you know, the whole the whole shabang. So you can do a full freeze lift or partial lift. So don't don't forget that. Next slide please. Okay, every once in a while, there are multi agency freezes or multi record group freezes and in the case of large agencies that have a lot of components. Some freezes may affect more than one agency or record group. For example, the fastest freeze, the cobell freeze, the ind freeze, which we'll talk about in a minute, ita Katrina affected lot, the name freeze, which is a very interesting freeze till and so on. So but those are kind of the biggies that may impact your agency as well as someone else. And the issue with those multi agency freezes are unless it's like the rare instance where DOJ did a blanket list government why they sent all the agencies a letter saying we were lifting till we basically have to get communications from each agency that was affected by it, asking us to lift it. And that leaves us in the case where a freeze can be lifted, but your agency just hasn't taken action yet. Okay, and so some of those, for example, are cobell, many, many departments and divisions within interior lifted the cobell freeze, but there are still some holdouts that we have not received that formal request yet. And so whether they truly need those records frozen because of something else, but we just haven't received communication back. So definitely check your freezes. And if you have any questions once again, what is your agency's active freezes reach out to me, and I can I can let you know. Let's see what else we talked about till. So a good resource is your account reps or myself. As I said, if some of these large freezes are listed that affect multiple agencies, we reach out to those affected. Or in the case of the Katrina freeze, we sent out a FRC communication on it to everybody, letting them know that our council's office had gotten approval from DOJ. And so NARA was going to lift the Katrina freeze since it had been 10 years past the generation of the report for how the Bush administration did responding to Katrina. That was basically the whole reason for the freeze was to review records and do a fancy final report and release it. And that happened. And then the freeze never got lifted. So we worked with our council's office, the White House and DOJ, and it was lifted. So we do try to communicate. But you can always at any time, check in with us and find out what your freezes are and which ones may or may not have been lifted by other agencies. Next slide please. Okay. So this is another breakdown of kind of what I just said. So the aspect is free. This is one that affects multiple agencies. Navy got tired of it. They reached out to DOJ, their Torch branch, and they received communication back that sufficient time had passed for any litigation to have happened and that they could lift the freeze. But what didn't happen is other agencies that were affected by ABS weren't notified during that communication. So if you have records that are affected by the asbestos freeze, please reach out to DOJ. And you can even refer to, you know, you just had a decision for Navy saying that it had been sufficient time. Can we get the same deal? And then let me know and I can list the asbestos freeze off the records. We talked about cobell. A lot of the Department of Interior has lifted, but others haven't. So if you're in the Department of Interior, you might want to see if you still have some stuff frozen that doesn't need to be frozen under cobell. I indeed, this translates and goes back to 1985 when NARA was still part of GSA. There was a GRS change because Native American litigation was starting to really ramp up at that point. And the change basically removed the authority for you to destroy Native American was a general accounting officer file. And so the agencies were sent a letter and said, please go through your holdings, anything that's under this item, you need to reappraise and figure out if they're Native American related or not. If they are, you need to treat them as unscheduled and you can't destroy them. And we still have agencies that have holdings that are frozen under that to date. And all they have to do is go in and verify whether or not their records do have Native American holdings or not and let us know if they don't and then we can list the freeze. We talked about Katrina, NAM, the Vietnam freeze. There was a wonderful article in the post. NARA thought it was a fantastic idea to group all these Vietnam related records and artifacts together. And so NARA created a freeze on a lot of records to create these special collections. And we've been working for several years with our own internal organizations to see if the freeze can be listed. Did the appraisers and archivists do everything they needed out of those records and can the rest of them go on their merry way? So if you have records that are frozen under NAM, definitely reach out to your appraisal archivist and ask them if they need it. Next slide, please. Okay, more information. We had the toolkit which explains our services and how to transfer records, how to request freezes. We have a whole FAQ that discusses what we just talked about, how to create a freeze, how to get a freeze listed, what has to be in it. There's the website right there. And then again, your best person to reach out to is your rep. If you don't know who your account rep is, them and the agencies that they represent on that handy dandy page right there at the bottom. Next slide, please. Okay, and this is me and my contact info. Please feel free to reach out with any questions. I'm fairly easy to get along with, usually very reachable and can steer you in the right direction if I don't know the answer. So thank you. And I think the next slide is for questions. Yes, thank you, Russell, for that presentation. So now if anyone has any questions, please post them in the YouTube chat. We did get one for, I guess, can we share the email address for the FRCP director? I would believe that's Christopher Pinkney's email address. We'll drop that in the chat, I guess. At some point, are there any other questions? We're not seeing any at the moment, Russ. So why don't you stick around? And if any come in, we'll get you at the end of the program and sort of the general block. Now I'd like to introduce Nara's executive for research services, Christopher Naylor, for his presentation this afternoon. Good afternoon, Chris. Thanks, Aryan. And good afternoon, everyone. I'd also like to thank Lawrence for the invitation and opportunity to speak with you all today. I hope that I and the other research services presenters can provide you with useful information and answer any questions that you may have pertaining to accession in your agency's permanent records into the holdings of the National Archives. It's no understatement to say that we've all encountered unprecedented challenges over the past two years. And I think it's important to acknowledge the effect the pandemic has had on our ability to accomplish work and meet our goals. After prolonged closures, archival units across research services do have an accessioning backlog of approximately 41,000 cubic feet. And following our agency reentry on March 28, 2022, we are more than ready to resume physical operations and work with you, our federal agency partners, to start tackling this backlog. I know you all have also accumulated backlogs and are facing competing priorities. I'd like to take a moment to thank you for your commitment to working with us toward our common goal of accessioning permanent federal records into NARA's holdings. And to talk more in detail about our accessioning backlog plan, I'll turn it over to Dawn Sherman-Felds, the Branch Chief of Accessioning, Basic Processing, and Holding Security and Space Management within the Textual Records Division located at our College Park facility. Dawn? Miss Dawn, can you please unmute your mic? Yes, thank you for that. I was just testing you, just making sure you were on top of it. Thank you. Okay, let me find my document that I was looking at as well. And can we go to the next slide? Can we go to the next slide? Thank you. Okay, thanks, Chris, for the introduction. I also echo Chris's thanks to Lawrence for providing us this opportunity to engage with you today. As Chris mentioned, I'm going to provide a bit more detail about our overall accessioning backlog and our initial reduction plan. We're looking at a two-year accumulation, and it may take that long to get through it, but we're hopeful that we'll be able to get through it in less time. Our first slide provides a breakdown of the 41,000 cubic foot backlog that Chris mentioned. And that's across all of our custodial units, including our field operations and within the National Capital Region. Next slide, please. I'd like to start off by talking about our 11 field custodial units across the country, and those include locations at Boston, Chicago, Denver, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Mauro, New York, Philadelphia, Riverside, San Bruno, and Seattle. Collectively, they accumulated a backlog of approximately 12,400 cubic feet of records. They're actively completing accessioning tasks for those records and anticipate accepting physical custody for direct offers or accessioning in-place transfers that are located at federal record centers this fiscal year. So that's really great news, and I wish my colleagues across the country luck with accomplishing that. Here in the National Capital Region, custodial units have slightly larger backlogs. Our special media units, which include cartographic, still pictures, and sound and motion branches, accumulated a backlog of approximately 8,500 cubic feet. They have been focused on reducing their direct offer backlog and processing new direct offer transfers submitted by agencies ahead of the M1921 deadline. Excuse me, I have a bit of a cough, so a little bit of a frog in my throat today. My branch, which is responsible for accessioning the textual records into the College Park Facility and Archives One in Washington, DC, has a backlog of approximately 20,000 cubic feet of records. Like our special media colleagues, we've been focused on reducing our direct offer backlog and processing new direct offer transfers submitted by agencies ahead of the M1921 deadline. However, we plan to conduct a summer move from WNRC of approximately 5,400 cubic feet of backlog FRC transfers. Backlog accessioning activities should be complete by late 2023. That is our hope. That's our goal. It could be optimistic. So I will say, don't hold me to that if things slide a little bit, as we know priorities are ever changing. Next slide, please. Thank you. If you are preparing records to send to us, here are some important points to keep in mind. First, do not send records without an approved transfer request. A transfer request must be approved by NORA before records can be sent and accepted by the custodial units. For backlog direct offers, which basically mean we've already approved those over the last couple of years, we are actively reaching out to federal agency records management staff to coordinate deliveries of records for approved transfer requests. Please let us know if you are unable to accommodate a delivery, so we can plan accordingly. Some emails go into oblivion, and that may or may not be because there may have been a change in staffing, but if you have an opportunity to respond to us, even if it's to say, hey, not right now, we're busy, we do appreciate that. If you have approved transfer requests and are eager to send those records, please reach out to us, to your tech shore, special media, a sessioning POC, or email the appropriate office via the email links found on our winding aids requirements webpage, and we have a link in the presentation for you. Please know that we need at least one week lead time to coordinate the delivery, as we have to reserve the shared loading dock schedule with our motor pool, if necessary, if we're picking out the records from you, from your agency, and work around already confirmed deliveries. For newly approved direct offers, your sessioning POC will be reaching out to coordinate the delivery for those. Next slide, please. As you are preparing to submit your new direct offer transfers, transfer requests, or work on annual move generated transfer requests, please be cognizant of the required documentation. A finding aid is required for each individual record series submitted to NARA for a sessioning, and that's for direct offers and for annual move FRC transfers. And please review our finding aids requirements webpage for more details, and we have that link again. That's sort of the juiciest webpage we have right now. So it has all the information you really do need. And if you are transferring classified or declassified records to us, please include the NA 14-130 Classified Records Transfer Checklist and a COIL LOT statement that can be included on your 14-130 or as a separate memo. Both are required for each individual record series submitted to NARA for a sessioning, again for classified or declassified records. Next slide, please. Next slide. Sorry, I think we'll be a slide behind. The Aronia Shipments records, perfect. Thank you. Okay. So, strangely, in recent months, custodial units in the National Capital Region have received numerous Aronia deliveries for records that should have been sent to the Federal Records Center. So please, if you could work with your internal records management network to ensure that policies and procedures for retiring records are widely promulgated and being followed, we really appreciate that. Coordinating the return of the Aronia Shipments does take time away from reviewing your transfer requests and being able to coordinate and receive shipments for our permanent records. I don't know what's going on or what's in the water, but it's across the custodial units, and it's multiple agencies. So we appreciate your attention to that. Next slide, please. There should be a slide, sorry, for preparing for the M1921 deadline. Things got shaken up. Thank you. Okay. Preparing for the M1921 deadline, please review AC 33.2022, Memorandum to Federal Agency Records Management Context regarding physical transfers to NARA after calendar year 2022, and that was issued on April 28, 2022. That should answer a lot of questions that agencies have been having about the physical transfer of records after the deadline. And if you have additional questions after that, I encourage you to go to the Finding AIDS Requirements webpage and look up the contact, and we can further assist you with other questions if you have any. In addition, don't wait till the last minute to submit your transfer requests for eligible permanent records. Start reaching out to the effective custodial units now to create a transfer plan for your eligible records. My unit has certainly been working with a couple of agencies currently. You have a lot of transfers and a lot of photo footage to get to us to submit the transfer requests for by the end of the year. And we've agreed on a transfer plan, transfer request plan to get us through to December 1st for a last submission. And we're working with other agencies to create those plans. So if you are one of those agencies who has a lot of records that you need to transfer, please start reaching out. We're happy to talk with you and work through a process that works for us. We have, you know, of course, in addition to the backlog work, the new work that's coming up. And so we're just trying to balance that and manage expectations. And if we can start working on a plan together, I think we'll be in a good position to meet the requirements for, you know, both agencies. So just think about that if you would. Next, I guess go to the next slide. I will turn it over to Ted Hall, who is the director for Electronic Records, who experienced absolutely no backlog, a sessioning backlog due to COVID-19. So the future really is electronic records folks. Like, I think that's where it's at. And with that, I'll turn it over to you, Ted. Thank you, Dawn. I appreciate that introduction. And if we could go to the next slide, please. Thank you. So as Dawn suggested, the NARA's Electronic Records Division continue to receive transfers of permanent electronic records from federal agencies throughout the pandemic. One agency alone transferred over 50 terabytes of permanent electronic records over a year and a half period. That in perspective for nearly doubled the non-census questionnaire image volume that we've accessioned into the National Archives since the early 1970s. Many agencies who also had limited access to their physical offices shifted from transferring records on physical media to transfers via secured file transfer protocol, or SFTP. In response, NARA expanded the bandwidth devoted to SFTP services to allow for expanded, if still limited, transfer capabilities using this method. Currently, most routine transfers of born digital records are being handled by SFTP, and we've seen a dramatic decrease in the number of transfers on media. For FY22, we anticipate receiving about 300 transfers, and most of them will be received via SFTP, and we've received a number of positive comments from agencies about using this method. So we're very happy to see the transition. It does improve our workflow. It decreases the amount of media management that we have to do, and it ensures greater integrity and authenticity of the records down the line. So just prior to the pandemic, NARA established a dedicated accessioning branch in the Electronic Records Division with four staff and a supervisor. The focus of that branch is to support agency transfers of born digital records in a variety of ways. One way is to develop information products in support of electronic records accessioning, and the first product issued by the branch was an FAQ webpage addressing common questions about transferring electronic records. So in response to agency questions about supplying metadata with transfers of e-records, during the second quarter of FY2022, we added a tool to NARA's existing GitHub site that can be used to prepare metadata from records, from electronic records. This was announced in AC26.2022, issued on March 30, 2022. This tool, referred to as File Lister, is a tool that we developed in-house to gather technical metadata and a SHA-256 hash, and we use it in the course of our work in accessioning and processing electronic records. So we thought agencies could benefit, also benefit from its use. And so we chose to make it available through GitHub, where there's supporting documentation, and there's a way that we can transmit this to agencies in an easy manner. It's a simple Java tool, File Lister, but you'll want to consult with your IT support to determine whether or not your agency can support its use. I thought I'd just use this opportunity to remind agencies about the requirements in 36 CFR 1235.44a. We receive questions about this quite often. That CFR requires agencies to retain a copy of records of electronic records that they transfer to NARA until we take legal custody of them. So there are a number of reasons for this, mostly in the event that there's some issue that we discover during the course of processing, like corrupted files or password protected files, or any number of reasons that we may discover on our side that we may need the agency to address. So thank you for your cooperation on that matter. And if you are not familiar with who your electronic records contact is, please feel free to email e-transfers.nara.gov and we'll be happy to help you out with any questions you might have. So with that, I will turn it back to Arian. Thanks, Ted, and thanks Dawn and Chris as well for participating. It was great to hear from our colleagues and research services this afternoon. Ted, we do have a question from you. For you, what is the status of NARA's supporting cloud to cloud transfers of permanent electronic records? Okay. Thank you, Arian, and thank you to whoever asked that question. So I will, this is something that we frequently get asked and it is addressed in our FAQ page that I referenced just a moment ago. But just so everyone's aware at the present time NARA does not have an operational capability for cloud-based transfers from agencies and we do not yet have a time frame for when we will implement such a capability. We are in the process of conducting the first pilot transfer of permanent federal records to NARA within the AWS GovCloud environment and we anticipate completing that pilot in mid-2022. So we will continue to test cloud-based transfers to ERA 2.0, which is our preservation environment using our own digital content as well. To make this cloud-based transfer operational requires updates to our technical infrastructure, our system, and our policies and procedures. So as we have news to share regarding our progress, we will share those updates via the records expressed vlog and AC memos. So we thank you for your patience. It is a large technical operation and we want to make sure that everything is working properly before we do a broader rollout to agencies. So thank you for your patience and your cooperation. And Ted, I'm not going to just hold you to a records express post. We'll bring you back to Bridge and have you present as well. Bridge meaning in the future. We do have a question. Is Russell back from his presentation on freezes? So yeah. Thank you. Looking for any other questions that have come in. And if you're, again, if you're watching, please feel free to email rm.communications.nara.gov or use the YouTube chat. We have a couple of general questions that have come in during the course of the meeting for Lawrence and whatnot. Can you address funding issues or lack of funding to support the M19-21 deadline? Thanks, Ariane. Yeah, that's a question. We hear quite a bit and I know there are a lot of requirements. We all have requirements. And while looking for ways to build business cases to support funds for the important work that we need to do and one thing that I think we all know in every department, every agency has its own internal processes for how to submit, review, and approve budget initiatives. We do the same thing here at NARA and the management team gets together and we review each program's needs against requirements and available funding and try and develop a list that reflects the priorities that are important to the agency. So the advice that I typically give when it comes to this question about funding and prioritization of that funding is really you've got to have good relationships with your senior leaders and in particular your senior agency official for records management. Because they're the ones who are going to help you advocate for the funding that you need to support these government-wide requirements where there's M19-21 or anything else that's in 36 CFR related to records management. So what we have learned through the questions that we ask in our reports is that in many cases agencies are able to leverage existing tools and technologies to meet those requirements without getting dedicated funding. A lot of times it's simply a matter of developing policies, directives, and issuing them with appropriate procedures. But there are and certainly are examples of instances where there is an opportunity for an agency to invest in a particular tool, software, or technology that will help the agency come into compliance with M19-21 or any other requirements. So I think that's the analysis that every agency needs to do and records officers and records management programs are encouraged to work with their SAORMs, with their senior agency officials, and other leaders within their agency. And really start thinking ahead one, two, three years in advance of what is going to be needed, if anything, to meet those requirements in these directives. Thank you, Lawrence. Russell, do you want to clarify your response there that you gave earlier? Sure. So it doesn't stop accessioning of permanent records, because of course the freeze can be on temporary or permanent records. The agency can request to go ahead with the accessioning, some do and some don't. But yes, you can accession, which is the transfer legal custody to NARA of permanent records that are still under a freeze. Thank you. Lawrence, here's a question. We know that OMB has not yet weighed in on the extension of the M19-21 deadline. However, given that NARA set the date in your strategic plan independent of M19-21, has our agency, NARA, determined whether we will extend the December 2022 deadline for no longer accepting analog records? So another question about the deadline. Yeah, no, it's a good question. And thank you, Patty, for sharing. As you know, we have a new strategic plan for FY22 through 26. It still reflects the same commitment to going fully electronic. However, we acknowledge and hopefully everybody understands that the deadlines that are in M19-21 were not established by NARA. They were coordinated jointly with OMB and NARA can't independently change those deadlines or those targets. So we are going to continue working through what our strategic plan requires of the National Archives, which is essentially looking at where we need to develop guidance, looking at how we can improve our processes for supporting agencies. But the requirements that are in M19-21 for other agencies to go fully electronic are still in M19-21 until there is further discussion about what those need to be, if they need to change, what they need to change, and where they will end up. So as I've said before, those discussions are happening and we are coordinating with OMB and until anything happens to alter the status of where things are within M19-21, December 2022 is still what we are all striving towards. Thank you, Lawrence. I'm just searching through for other questions that may have come in. Will there be any disciplinary action for agencies that won't be able to meet the 2022 deadline? So that's an odd question. I think whether we're talking about M19-21 or 36 CFR, NARA is an oversight agency and we are interested and certainly take seriously our role in providing oversight of all federal agencies with respect to the requirements that are out there for all records management programs. So whether it's 36 CFR or joint OMB NARA memos, we will continue to monitor where all agencies are and we do that initially through the data that we receive through annual reporting. But we also do inspections, we do assessments, we do other oversight meetings with agencies to ensure that agencies are compliant. And one of the things that I think is really important is that we want agencies to be successful. So we need to know from all of you if you're having issues or challenges that may be shared by other agencies, if there's anything that we can do to help mitigate some of those risks, whether it's additional guidance, clarification of existing guidance, or maybe just directing agencies to resources through our Fermi initiative or other avenues. We do, of course, take this not only seriously within NARA, but we also want to be able to share with OMB, our co-author on M19-21, to let them know where we think things are as far as agencies progress. And we do share that information. So in terms of a disciplinary, I don't think that's the right word. I think it's more our commitment to oversight and ensuring that every agency is successful in making this transition to fully electronic government. And to the extent that we see agencies who are not further along, we are going to want to engage and find out why. What are the reasons? What are the challenges that agencies are facing? And if there's anything that we can do to help, then we want to be able to do that. Thank you. Here's another question that came in on the YouTube. Do you have any numbers of the agencies that have submitted exceptions to M19-21 and how long it typically typically takes for NARA to provide a decision? So around the exceptions process. Okay. So we haven't made any final decisions yet on exceptions. We are sort of working along with OMB and reviewing them internally. And we haven't gotten to a point where we've reached a final decision and communicated that back to an agency. We have reviewed all of the exceptions we've received, but we, to be honest, have not received all that many formal exceptions from agencies. I think we have somewhere between 10 to 12 requests from agencies for specific exceptions that we are currently reviewing. And I expect as we get closer to December 2022, those numbers will rise. And the guidance that we have issued in NARA Bolton 2020-01 does provide further information about how to submit exceptions, what to include, in your exceptions package, so that we can review it and get answers back to agencies before we get into December of this year. Thank you. And just to clarify, the question about disciplinary action came from the leadership of the agency directly. So that's why it was passed on to us in that form. It may not have been the manner of the words we chose to use or not. Yes. Will there be a NARA presence at the NIGARA conference next month? Yes, there will. And Ariane, I think you probably know as well as I do. I know I plan to be there. Our colleague, Mech Phillips, who's our coordinator of external affairs, is also slated to present. And Ariane, I'm not sure. Did I miss anybody else? The answer to the question is is a resounding yes. Yeah, we will be there. Hopefully all things staying the way they are, we should all be or not all. Some of us will be in Salt Lake City next month for NIGARA. It is an interesting time and that conference, I believe, is in person only with no virtual or hybrid offering, which is the first of such things that I've seen in a couple of years now. Fingers crossed. What if your record schedules calls for you to accession certain records to NARA after the records are scanned? Would we have the option of sending to NARA without scanning? Could you repeat that question, Ariane? What if your record schedule calls for you to accession certain records to NARA after the records are scanned? Would we have the option of sending to NARA without scanning? I feel like I need to read that question, but I think it's dependent on what the format is in this schedule. If I can parse the question a little bit more, I think it's getting at the record schedule is calling for the records to be to be accessioned after they are scanned. Could they be sent to NARA without being scanned? I guess it's sort of it does get it does more speak to the format in the record series, perhaps. Yeah, it's I don't probably struggling with the same thing I am is, you know, we would have to see the schedule because it's unclear from me to from the way the question is written. What what the schedule would be requiring there? I mean, certainly we can take one, we can take both. There are arguments around either. So reach out directly to us and we'll be happy to have a further conversation around that topic. Here's a comment that came in through the email. Hi, I'm listening to the bridge discussion as NARA has no capacity for cloud to cloud transfers. This should delay implementation of M1921 since most agencies such as us have all our info on the cloud. So I think that's just that. Yeah. Hi, this is Ted Hall. I can I can take that question. If you have records that are eligible for transfer that are scheduled for permanent retention, it sounds like we need to have a conversation. There are other options besides cloud to cloud transfer available for the transfer of permanent electronic records, including on media such as external hard drives. We accept thumb drives and good old CDs and DVDs and then the SFTP option that I mentioned earlier. So there are a lot of other options available besides cloud to cloud. We're thinking of course for future large volume transfers that may be more efficiently handled in a cloud to cloud environment. Thank you. Here's another question we all may want to chime in on. Is ERA 2.0 operational yet? No. I can start with that. ERA 2.0 is operational. The current focus is on what we call process and discover. They're internally used features by the electronic primarily by the electronic records division and other units who are preserving scanned digital content created by archival units. ERA 2.0 has been primarily used internally as our official digital repository to replace ERA base. I know most agencies are familiar with what we refer to as ERA base or ERA and that is where you create record schedules and transfer requests. The current plan is and I know my colleagues who are in charge of that project have spoken at bridge in recent meetings is for the business object repository features of ERA where you would be creating transfer requests and record schedules to roll out to agencies sometime in 2023. That's the current timeline. So yes the answer to your question is yes. ERA 2.0 is operational. Thank you. I'll put out a last call for questions. I'm searching through the sources we have. I'm not seeing any Lawrence so I guess we can close the meeting. Do you want to close announce the next date? Yeah, be happy to. So thank you all for joining our meeting today. Special thanks to Russell, to Chris, to Ted and to Don for joining us to talk about FRCP and updates on accessioning from research services. We did get a lot of questions and I expect there will still be some remaining questions after we close and I just encourage you to reach out to us. Use RM communications as you can see it up on the screen if you have any further questions. If you have any agency specific questions like the one that we were trying to figure out related to scanning and sending analog you can also especially if it has something to do with a record schedule or it's a record scheduling question you can certainly contact your appraisal archivist and your your POC that you normally work with can answer those types of questions. So with that we'll close the meeting with the slide up here which lets you know that if you're not on summer vacation in the middle of August we will be having our next meeting August 17th, same time, same format and until we meet again thank you all for attending and we will talk to you in a couple of months. Have a great summer everyone.