 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our bridge meeting for August. My name is Ariane Robenbach, 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 bi-monthly 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 program, and is live-streamed to the audience over our YouTube channel. Generally, bridge meetings consist 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, please 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 those along to us. We welcome your feedback. With that, I would like to start this afternoon's meeting by introducing Jay Treanor, the Executive for Agency Services. Good afternoon, Jay. Thank you, Arion. And as Arion said, welcome to the August bridge meeting. NARA expends about 45% of its staffing resources to agency services. And we do that through five programs, the Information Security Oversight Office, the National Declassification Center, the Office of Government Information Services, whom you'll hear from in a little bit. And as Arion said, from the Federal Records Center's program and the Office of the Chief Records Officer that sponsor the bridge meetings. We can go to the next slide, please. So for today's agenda, we are going to hear from the Federal Records Centers, along with the Office of the Chief Records Officer and OGIS on a variety of updates. But again, we use these meetings to impart information to you, but also to get feedback on relevant topics. We can go to the next slide, please. So for the NARA updates, while we're here at the August meeting, I'd like to put a plug in for the October bridge meeting and ask you to come to the next bridge meeting on October 18th to hear more about the rollout of VRA 2.0, along with training support products that are planned for the early part of calendar year 2023. We also have expanded capstone bulletin and GRS update and the bulletin on managing records in collaborative environments that are being worked on and will be shared with you in the coming months. We hope to have those issued later this calendar year. We often get inquiries about the agency records officer credential, AROC. In January 2023, we will start the agency records officer credential renewal process for AROCs that are eligible, which is outlined in the NARA bulletin 2019-02. Another plug for the October bridge will have more details about the AROC renewal process during that meeting. One update that's not on the slide, but we do get a lot of questions about, is M1921. NARA and the Office of Management and Budget are in active discussions around the memo. As of now, December 31st, 2022 deadline has not changed and agencies should continue to make plans and work towards achieving the goal of the memo, which is transition to electronic government. These plans will be helpful if the deadline changes because agencies will be able to use, sorry, will be able to confirm whether or not they need to submit an exception request. These plans will be helpful if the deadline doesn't change because agencies will be better prepared to submit exception requests. NARA bulletin 2020-01 contains guidance on how to submit an exception request and what factors to consider. OMB and NARA have not yet approved any of the exception requests submitted. We can go to the next slide, please. And at this time, I'd like to turn it over to the acting director of the FRCP, Chris Pinkney, along with some of his staff for an update around the Federal Record Center program. Chris. Thank you, Jay, and thank you, Marion. I guess for the August update, Art and Jeff actually have most of the neat things to say. So I'll confine my general remarks and keep them relatively short. In light of the last couple of years, I should probably lead off by saying that all FRCs remain fully open and that NARA staff are actively working on reducing any of our remaining backlogs. Our federal staff continue to work over time on weekends and some federal holidays in an attempt to get current. Many of our centers remain in areas where high COVID transmission continues, and at all of our sites, we continue to implement operational adjustments and tend to protect our staff. We, probably like most other businesses and agencies in the country, remain somewhat short-staffed, and it's very important that we keep all of us safe and healthy if we're going to get the work done. To further assist with backlog reduction, the FRCP has brought on board almost 100 temporary contractors at Archives Drive, and more than 50 other temporary contractors have onboarded at our regional sites. Recruitment continues and the contractor efforts remain focused on reducing remaining backlogs. While the FRCP has eliminated many of our COVID-era reference backlogs, we still have many other substantial projects to complete. I would argue that recent progress has been impressive. During FY22, FRCP staff have now destroyed more than 810,000 cubic feet of material for which we've received concurrence. Staff have also shelled more than 562,000 cubic feet of newly received records, and we have another 215,000 cubic feet of approved transfers in the pipeline and headed towards the FRCs. FY22 is certainly not a regular year, but particularly since May, the volumes we're seeing are starting to look more like our pre-pandemic number. And so on that note, I'll conclude the general remarks and I'll pass the baton to Art Hawkins, the FRCP's Acting Director of Customer Relationship Management, to say a few words about his shop's work with the new G invoicing application. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Arthur Hawkins, as Chris just mentioned. I am the Acting Director for the Customer Relations Branch of the Federal Record Centers program. Right now, we are in the process of getting the invoices or actually the IAA's Interagency Agreements out. At this stage, they are called the GTNCs, which is something brand new for us because we're now involved in G invoicing. We met with Colleen Murphy, our CFO, back in June to discuss G invoicing and what are the great things about it and how it's going to really help us move forward and get through this process a lot quicker and a little more streamlined. And since then, the CRM team has had, or the Customer Relations Team, has had numerous meetings with the folks over at the Department of Treasury working to understand G invoicing, working to understand the process and going through the various and different parts of the software to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible. And the great thing about G invoicing in our eyes is it allows us to get the IAA's or interagency agreements out to the proper point of contact within the agencies quickly. Have those agreements come directly back to us in a timely fashion. The entire interagency process is now streamlined because everyone is on the same page. It allows our finance department to have a direct pipeline to the customers, agencies, and to ensure timely collections. Again, the GTNCs are now called the 7 or I'm sorry, the 7600Bs are now called the GTNCs. And again, they began going out last week, I believe, as of August 2 or 3. We expect them approved and back to us from the customers by August 31, at which time the actual orders or now the 7600Bs, which are now called the orders, will go out by October 4 and approved and back to us by October 17. So again, agencies, your customer relations management team is working diligently to make sure that everything gets out to you in a timely fashion. And we hope that you're able to turn those around and get them back to us as well. So I believe Jeff Lunsford is up next. So Jeff over to you. Thank you. Thanks, Art, Chris, Jay, and thank you all for attending today's bridge meeting. I just had two really quick updates. Good news, both of them. One is that the FY 2023 rate schedule has been approved. It was signed by the archivist on August 4, which is easily two months and change earlier than prior fiscal years. We worked very closely with the CFO's office to get those rates, to do all the data collection, to do all the analysis, and to enter into negotiations and meet with the CFO to present the rate schedule to the archivist. We did so clearly in support of transitioning to the G invoicing platform. That was a critical milestone in our march to get there. But also, we heard customer feedback that some of the timing of getting all the pieces together in order to just go through the IAA process wasn't ideal. And we certainly hope that having the rates available to you as early as today, or even back to August 4, makes that process a little bit easier. And certainly, with the other streamlining that we're seeing through G invoicing, I really have an optimistic outlook on getting these IAAs signed and approved and in place in time for the new fiscal year. The other bit of good news, if you haven't seen the rate schedule for FY 2023, is that our prices actually went down. And I think there's probably a sea of cheers that I can't actually hear right now. Our bread and butter rate, our temporary storage rate per month went down by 5%. And if you're familiar with the rates, that price includes all the standard, not just storage, but reference refiles, inner files, disposal. It's sort of everything is rolled up into that rate and it went down for FY 2023. Very, very pleased that we're able to extend that reduction to all of our customers. And certainly plenty of our other rates also saw reductions. It's not just that storage rate, but there's plenty others. So rush over to your G invoicing platform, call your customer relationship management account manager, and check out the new rates. I do want to take a quick moment to thank everybody who was involved in not just putting the rates together, but putting them together in such a compressed timeframe, including all the FRC directors nationwide, arts team, Chris and the leadership of the FRCP, Jay and the leadership of agency services, and of course our CFO with whom we worked very closely online. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much. And I think I'm going to open it up to questions for anything that we covered in the FRCP update section. So I'll turn it over to Arian who can make your comments. Yes, thank you, Jeff. Actually the one question we had ahead of time, it was already covered in the remarks. It was about the timing of the FY 2023 interagency agreements. I can also report there's some positive feedback with emojis and things like that in the YouTube chat with about the new rates. So I think we'll keep it open for a minute here to see if there's any additional questions. As a reminder, if you think of something later you can drop it in the chat and we will address it at the end of today's meeting. Since I'm not seeing anything come through, I'd like to to let's move the program along. I'd like to call on Cindy Smolovic from our records management oversight and reporting team to brief out the federal agency records management report for 2021. It's all yours, Cindy. Thank you, Arian. Hello, everyone. It is that time again for me to walk through what we learned from the annual reports that your agency submitted. Next slide, please. The date covering 2021 activities, we gathered the information from January 10th to March 11th. We had a 96% response rate and I want to thank all of you for making this happen. We couldn't do the report without you responding to our call for all three reports. The topics that I'm going to cover today are the questions that were on the annual reporting related to M1921. Talk a little bit about the impacts of COVID-19 during this reporting period. Information governance and the integration of records management into information technology plans, data management, and overall IT resourcing, which were on the senior agency official for Cindy. Have you lost connection? Cindy, please try to reconnect. We have lost. I can't hear you. Please excuse us for this short technical difficulty. Arian, do you want to move to the next while I work with Cindy? Arian, can you come off of mute, please? Sure. We can circle while you're working with Cindy, Gino. We've got a couple of questions that have come in for the Record Center programs. So if Chris and his team are around, I can ask those. I can ask the one that came in. We understand that the processing of non-G invoicing agreements will lag behind those already enabled in the G invoicing system. Is that correct? And what sort of lag can we expect? Hey, Chris, this is Art. I can answer that question. We don't know exactly how long it's going to take, but yes, we do expect a lag. And that is something that we will still be working with the Finance Department on. But again, we're hoping that all of the other agreements are in by the, I believe I mentioned the 17th of October. And hopefully if it's not by, or if it's not in by then, we will have to address it another way. And we're not exactly sure how much further behind that's going to lag as of yet. But please feel free to reach out to your account manager, or you can reach out to me offline, and I will see what I can find out for you. Thanks, Art. And related to that, when would the rates be sent to the agencies? When can the agencies expect to see the rates? The rates will actually have actually begun going out along with the GTNCs, or should have been as of last week. If you haven't gotten yours, don't worry, they're coming. We have a lot of agencies to get to and a lot of stuff to take care of, but they should be out to you within the next week or two. And how were the G, the general terms and conditions sent to agencies via email to the POC or some other process? The general terms and conditions will be attached within the GTNC. Arian, can you hear me? Yes, Cindy, you're back. I don't know what happened. So thank you, Art. Those were the questions we had for the FRCP, and Cindy, we'll turn it back over to you to pick up. Okay, I had to dial back in. Hopefully the connection will stay this time. And basically where I left off was that the last topic I'm going to talk about is some weak points for electronic records management that came out in the reporting. Next slide, please. As much as you know, the annual reporting consists of three different pieces as seen here on the slide. The SAORM report is the only one that really changes this content each year. The RMSA is older, which is one of the reasons we have three reports. The RMSA is more comprehensive yet generalized with objective questions and not much opportunity for explanation or detail. The maturity models are targeted to electronic records and email specifics that the RMSA can't do by itself in its current form. The SAORM template is an opportunity for narrative and much more detail yet covering more narrow topics and points of view from senior and more strategic level than the other two reports do. Next slide, please. Each year, we look to see if there was anything that stood out from prior years. And in looking at this year's data, that was probably the most thing that stood out was the decline in the confidence in meeting the December 31st, 2022 target that dates from M1921. And the reason for this is pretty much easy to blame COVID-19 for everything, but we really do think that the pandemic did influence the decline in the confidence in meeting the deadlines. For example, the deadlines for digitizing paper records or moving them from agency storage spaces to the federal record centers or commercial storage facility was hampered by the reduction in access to where these records were stored, both in 2021 and 2020. Other reasons that agencies gave us were some of the agencies are continuing to evaluate the cost involved. There are still some cultural change issues that agencies are working through, and there are still some records that will require paper due to laws that haven't been changed that require hard copy or signatures, and there were some other requirements. Next slide, please. We continue to ask about record storage requirements because, of course, M1921 deadline includes changes to our agency store records, either in agency space or federal record centers and move them to commercial storage or transfer prior to the deadline records to the federal record centers. We've been, however, asking questions about storage long before M1921. On the left, you will see most agencies when asked if they were using commercial storage or have agency operated record centers, the vast majority of agencies said no. On the right, most agencies also indicated that they have no intention of using commercial storage in the future. It was also about evenly split when asked if they plan to move records to the federal record center or continue to use agency space. We do want to note that most agencies do not define agency space as an agency operated record center, and there were also a small group of agencies that responded that they didn't know what they were going to do to change their record storage. Next slide, please. We did ask if agencies plan to ask for an exception to M1921, the majority of agencies again said no. They were not going to need an exception. However, of those that said that they did, and that's the area in blue on the bottom part of the slide, there was a distinction in what they were asking for. There is a group they were asking for a total exemption, meaning they feel they can't move totally away from paper or change their storage. There's a smaller group that want both an extension, but most of them in the smaller group said that they just need an extension to the deadline and not a total exception to it. They feel like they were going to be able to meet the goals, but they just needed a little more time. The combination group, which was at 42 percent of the 34 percent, said that they needed both, that they had some things that just needed more time, some things that needed an exception because they wanted to keep them in paper. And this also included a group of agencies that responded, guess, but their comments said that they really weren't sure if they were going to submit one or not, and they just wanted to cover themselves by answering, guess. I also want to state that as a reminder that answering this question in annual reporting does not constitute submitting the exception request itself. You still need to go through that process. Next slide, please. COVID-19 impacts are interesting. On this slide, the table shows the top responses, both for the negative responses where it was a negative impact and a positive impact as a silver lining to COVID-19. In the middle, there are a group of answers where there are more of them, what action was being taken. So we wanted to capture those as well. You can see that there is successful remote access to electronic records, which is in two columns. It shows up under a positive impact. It also shows up in the middle as an action. So it was just interesting to have both of them there together. It's not a mistake on the slide, that was intentional. On the negative side, there were still delays in various activities, evaluating programs, of course, the delays in meeting M1921, a reduced ability to do disposition, and then just some limited access to paper in agency space or in storage. Next slide, please. For this question on the Senior Agency Official for Records Management template, GSA and R are both interested in the use of GSA's special item number for electronic records management procurement. Most agencies have not used it yet. Well, there are some that said that they won't use it. Some were saying they were still going to explore it. There was again a small group that answered yes to using it, but then in the comments they said they have not used it yet. Not sure exactly why, other than the interpretation of the question could have been if you considered using it and then have you used it or not. And so some of them, responses under the 29% who said yes, were looking at yes they considered it, but have not used it or decided not to use it. Next slide, please. Information governance and how well records management is integrated into the framework has been an interest in our for quite a while and we've asked over several years questions regarding this framework within agencies. Most of the SAARMs answered that they were indeed forming partnerships and relationships or at the very least there was communication and coordination going on between records management and other information and data managers. There were a number of agencies that included that they have advisory boards, councils or working groups to bring records management and other information governance parts of the agencies together. There were a number of agencies that included additional information about how they're integrating records management into the framework. Some of them were just simple as meeting and coordinating and talking to each other. A few of the smaller micro agencies said that they were too small and didn't really have an information government framework, but they were at least working with their IT individuals when needed. We make no particular value judgments on all these responses other than it's really good to see that the relationships are building. Next slide, please. This should be a slide that a lot of you are familiar with. We do this each year. This is showing the risk levels and comparing them back at least four or five years. As you can see the risk levels have remained pretty much stable and standard, but we do get questions on what annual reporting risk means. Annual reporting risk is the risk around not being in compliance with regulations and for the maturity models not meeting some of the success criterias for electronic records management and email. When an agency rates itself as low risk we tend to believe this means they have the basic fundamentals necessary to meet the regulations and the success criteria. When an agency rates itself as moderate risk they may have some or even most of what is required but have areas that they are working on. When an agency rates itself as high risk this can mean they need help in being in compliance or are still in early building stages. Agencies in high risk don't always have records at risk particularly smaller micro agencies where the volume of records is very small and it is easy to know where the records are what needs to be done to access and protect them. You have to keep in mind that there are some agencies where all of their records fit into a single file cabinet or they only use one or two computers because they are that small. In talking to these agencies in high risk we've also found that some misinterpret the questions and answer no because some of what we ask is handled by a contract or another agency as a service but they thought that the question is asking do they do something personally. We have tried to tweak the wording of our questions and answer options to address this where we can. We always appreciate the feedback we get on the RMA say that's one of the last questions we ask is how can we improve it and we do try to tweak the answer options where we can. Overall the state of reflects that records management is a continuous and a dynamic process and the state of the records programs and records being managed by federal agencies changes depending on governmental reorganizations technology improvements changes in personnel other resources can change and there are just a lot of variety of factors that can change from year to year. By requiring annual reporting NARA can capture information for a defined period of time identify these trends and common challenges and all of this helps us create policy and guidance training and oversight where it's needed most. Next slide please. This slide compares the maturity models from part one and two email on the left is still more mature than the overall records electronic records management that's on the right but they're not as far apart as they were when we first introduced part one in 2019. The same remarks that I just made about what the risk levels mean for the RMA say can also be made for these reports. Next slide please. Even when the majority of agencies score themselves as moderate or low risk on the maturity models electronic records management data still indicates there are some major weak points. The moderate and low risk answers in the maturity models include areas that are just building towards maturity and most agencies have just not achieved all of them. Of all the points on this slide you will notice that none of them reach 50 percent of agencies being able to say that their program meets these elements completely. Many are still below 40 percent including records management participation in systems development or in the retiring of systems as well as identifying permanent email and transferring them to the National Archives. So it's fair to say that there is more work to be done in this area. Next slide please. The annual report for 2021 that goes to Congress that's based on all of the information that we receive from you has already been released and is available on our website along with all of the individual SAORM reports and there is a spreadsheet for the maturity model that is also on our website. If you're interested in the statistics for each question that the RMSA and the email maturity model and the permanent records maturity model covers there is an appendix in the report that covers each of these. The appendix also is where you will find individual scores for your agency. Next slide please. And of course the cycle begins again. We are currently preparing the questionnaires and the templates for 2022 that will run in 2023. Most likely the dates will be similar to those from the first part of January to the middle of March like we've done for the last several years. But watch for an AC memo announcing the actual dates. As always if you have any questions or updates to your agency annual reporting contacts you can send them to this email address rmselfassessmentallrunwordallruntogetheratnara.gov and of course you can always reach out to me if you have any questions. And that's it for me. Thank you and back to you Aryan. Thank you Cindy. We do have a sort of a comment adding the option not applicable to some of the questions would be a great option. This was under the slide on weak areas, the weaknesses in ERM. So a couple slides ago. Yeah we have not applicable options for the records management self-assessment and we're going to add a few of that maybe to the SCRM template. The maturity models scenarios don't have room for that. It's just you know you either have it have what the scenario says or move on to the next one or the one lesser than what you already have. But we have tried to add not applicable especially for small and micro agencies where we can or when we've tried to clarify the instructions for when something is handled by a contractor or another agency so that it's you know so instead of just playing not applicable. But we always look through questions looking for where we can add that or clarify what a yes or a no answer means. So thank you for that input. And thank you for responding. What we'll do is we'll if we get any more questions we'll circle and answer. I'll ask you those at the end of the meeting. Now I'd like to you're welcome. Now I'd like to call on Kirsten Mitchell from the Office of Government Information Services for the update on RMSA reporting and the FOIA Advisory Committee. So Kirsten. Thank you Arian. I'm Kirsten Mitchell and I come to you today wearing two hats as compliance team lead at the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, which serves as the FOIA ombudsman and as the designated federal officer for the FOIA Advisory Committee which OGIS director Alina Simo chairs. On behalf of agency FOIA professionals and FOIA requesters, thank you all for all the work you do to manage records. It's a quiet job but with enormous implications. As we say here at the National Archives records matter. So today I will discuss two topics very briefly. FOIA questions on the RMSA and the most recent FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations that touch on records management. Next slide please. Thank you. So given the strong tie between records management and FOIA, the Office of the Chief Records Officer once again allowed us at OGIS to piggyback on the RMSA. We really appreciate the partnership because a strong records management program which allows agencies to find records responsive to FOIA requests is essential to a successful FOIA program. So we asked four FOIA questions that were included in the RMSA. Three of them pertained to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and I can't believe I'm saying that two and a half years into this. And then we had one other question that dealt with the relationship between each agency's agency records officer and the Chief FOIA officer. We have not yet published our report but I want to recognize my colleague Daniel Levinson who delved into the results, analyzed them against the observations that we make as the FOIA ombudsman's office and he also wrote the report. So thank you Dan. So you all in the audience have a lot of information coming at you today so I'm going to give you a very brief overview of the results. Next slide please. So with regard to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic it's no surprise that while a majority of the agencies reported no disruption in the ability to respond to FOIA requests. For those that did report a disruption 78% reported that the reason was that paper records were inaccessible due to office closures and this matches very much our observations at OGIS throughout the pandemic. We at OGIS observed that records were inaccessible because federal offices and federal record centers were partially closed. It's really important to note however that the record centers throughout the country continue to process emergency requests for records from agencies. The other thing to note here is classified records of course are required to be stored and handled in secure government facilities and during the height of the pandemic those facilities were inaccessible. Also regarding the COVID-19 pandemic a majority of respondents reported that their agencies worked directly with FOIA requesters to tailor their requests for the most efficient processing during the COVID-19 pandemic and they did this in a variety of ways including providing information about anticipated delays in their communication with FOIA requesters posting notices on their FOIA websites and just generally letting requesters know the most efficient way to make requests. And just a reminder that these results as Cindy noted are from a snapshot of calendar year 2021 so they may not reflect today's environment. Next slide please. So the relationship between records managers and FOIA professionals has been the subject of several RMSA questions over the years and the most recent RMSA asked about the relationship between the agency records officer and the chief FOIA officer at each agency. Those are the folks overseeing their the respective programs at agencies throughout the government. We had some really good news here. A majority of the respondents 56 percent reported that the agency records officer and the chief FOIA officer worked together on information requirements that benefit both programs. That's a four percentage point increase from the previous year and we're just very happy to see that. The other piece of good news was that 50 percent reported that the agency records officer and the chief FOIA officer worked together to identify programs or offices most likely to have responsive records and that's a six percentage point increase over the previous year. So we are thrilled to see these upticks and we hope those trends continue. Next slide please. Okay so I'm going to take off one hat and put on the other switch topics and talk about the FOIA advisory committee. 20 FOIA experts from both inside and outside the government comprise the FOIA advisory committee which studies the FOIA landscape and makes recommendations to the archivist of the United States. The fourth term of the committee finished its work earlier this summer and approved a final report that includes 21 recommendations for improving the FOIA process. You all will be very pleased to know that I will not go through all 21 recommendations but instead will highlight four pertaining particularly to records management. Although the most recent term of the of the committee did not have a subcommittee devoted to records management as the third term did committee members understood that a solid records management program is a backbone to a strong FOIA program. So I'll go through these four recommendations that touch on records management. Next slide please. Okay so regarding FOIA websites the committee recommended that the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice which issues FOIA guidance encourage agencies to post on their FOIA website certain information beyond what is required by law and of the 16 elements that were recommended in this particular recommendation three are of particular interest to records managers. A link to a description of records maintained by the agency as well as a description of records that do not exist at the agency. A link to agency records schedules and a description of the agency's capstone email policy a current list of capstone officials and agency's email retention policy. Now some of these are already contained in such things as the Department of Justice's essential elements of FOIA web pages or on the DOJ FOIA site FOIA.gov that the committee felt very strongly that they should be reiterated and stress their importance to improving the FOIA process. The idea here being that if these things are provided on a FOIA website that requesters will have better information about the types of records that an agency has or does not have and can sort of take steps as appropriate with regard to the FOIA requests. Next slide please. Okay so this pertains to metadata and metadata and the what the FOIA advisory committee recommended is that the chief FOIA officers council should establish a working group within two years to determine best practices for release of records in native format including metadata. NARA bulletin 2015-04 defines metadata as elements of information that answers the questions to what where when and why regarding electronic records and metadata is of increasing interest to FOIA requesters. They're interested in getting the metadata tied to certain records and it's also of increasing interest to agencies as the government receives these requests but also transitions to a fully electronic environment. So among the recommendation that the committee made was that all requesters should generally if they requested receive information such as the file name the record ID number that the agency uses title creator of the record the creation date and so forth. The committee did note that classified records are in their own realm and wouldn't necessarily be subject to this. So just one more thing to say about metadata the procedures and tools often used by agencies to process records for public release under FOIA generally strip away metadata and that's important not just to processing records under FOIA but for 508 compliance which leads to next slide please another FOIA advisory committee recommendation concerning 508 compliance and as many of you know there's a real tug going on between those two statutes the rehabilitation act and FOIA and the FOIA advisory committee recommended that the chief FOIA officers council establish a working group to study and recommend resolutions to challenges between these two laws. This is a as I said a real tug between these two laws I'm not sure there's a federal agency out there that doesn't that doesn't have this as a challenge. Section 508 of the rehabilitation act many of you know this but for those of you who don't it requires among other things that all records posted to agency websites be accessible to people with disabilities unless doing so would pose an undue burden on the agency making a document accessible means that the text be machine readable and that any charts graphs pictures or tables in the document are tagged and described in a way that enables the screen reader to accurately describe the document to a reader with visual impairments. As I said this is an ongoing challenge so much so that OGIS has recommended to Congress three times that it passed legislation to provide agencies with sufficient resources to comply with the requirements of both laws and particularly as they relate to proactive posting of large numbers of records. Congress has not acted and so the advisory committee decided that a working group should study the issue and recommend some solutions. Next slide please. Finally the last recommendation I'm sharing with you today pertains to first-person FOIA requests and what those are is when an individual requests records pertaining to him or herself sometimes a privacy act request sometimes not I won't get into that here but the committee recommended that records relied on by any agency that affect eligibility for benefits or adversely affects an individual in proceedings in agency proceedings should be automatically available and not require first-person FOIA practice so basically at some agencies in order to receive a benefit or to represent oneself in an administrative proceeding one must make a FOIA request for records pertaining to oneself in order to receive that benefit or represent oneself. The committee spent almost two years looking at this issue studied it very carefully and felt very strongly that in such cases records should be made available to the individual without requiring a FOIA request why am I mentioning this recommendation because it has the potential to affect how certain records will be accessed in the future so thank you all for listening today as I said at the start of my presentation records matter and Aria I'm happy to answer any questions listen to any comments so I'm going to throw it back over to you thank you and thank you thank you for that we have a couple of questions that have come in as a reminder to our audience you can leave questions in the youtube chat or by emailing rm.communications at narra.gov so the first one where can I find the FOIA advisory committee's final report and recommendations that is on the OJS website I can there's a link there can you throw that into the into the youtube comment we'll get we'll get that in there at some point okay thanks will there be a records management subcommittee on the next term of the FOIA advisory committee oh that's a great question um tbd to be determined the new committee is just being um appointed and named and so forth and the first meeting is on the september 8th the meeting after that is on september 14th and at that point it's up to the members to sort of decide what what direction they'd like to go so maybe maybe not or in the immortal words stay tuned exactly so when will OJS's report on the FOIA questions in bar msa be published oh right that would have been a great thing for me to mention wouldn't it have um it should be up on our website by the end of the month um it's it's um finished and just going through some final review and our website is archives.gov forward slash OJS so and it's a much shorter report obviously we only have four questions so so I'm going to just read these other ones um and can you take them with FOIA online sunsetting at the end of 2023 and many agencies currently searching for a new system how will records released through FOIA online be available after 2023 well that is something that a lot of people in the government are currently working on um right now the um chief FOIA officers council has a group that is is looking into these things we we at OJS held a um next gen tech showcase back in um february of 2022 with lots of technology um solutions that um agencies can consider so it is something that agencies are considering but too early to tell another one and then this came in right before you talked about 508 so I think we've covered it how is OJS enforcing all agencies release records that are fully section 508 compliant oh goodness well first of all we are not the FOIA enforcers so we don't enforce that um you know and 508 is really not our area of expertise what we're interested in is the FOIA process and making it work as as um most efficiently as possible so um we cannot um we cannot enforce it but we always encourage agencies with regard to these two statutes to talk to their general counsel's offices um to get um to get some guidance from them as to how to comply with these two statutes and this is on the topic of first party requests how is the ID validated or do you recommend does OJS recommend best practices to validate IDs um we don't know we don't recommend best we don't have any recommended best practices on that um but there is a um I know the Department of Justice uses a certification of identity form um if Alina Sema were here she could battle off the number off her tongue I cannot remember the the number of the DOJ form but um DOJ uses it and many other agencies use it as well to verify identity of requesters so I mean clearly that is an issue and I guess finally there was a some back and oh what is the NARA bulletin you mentioned with the metadata requirements oh it's um the number is 2015-04 yeah 2015-04 yeah and when the FOIA advisory committee was they were actually having a discussion about how how to define metadata and they found this um this to be a good um a good definition so we encourage them to use that definition so thank you I think we've uh the rest of the question there were a couple of the comments around metadata that was just interesting uh that for example Adobe Acrobat has a feature to sanitize certain file information and then a comment that metadata is usually key for FOIA searches so some good comment from the YouTube community there yes at this point we'll open it back up to all the presenters for general questions and answers and things uh we may have missed so uh Lisa are you ready to come on board call on Lisa Harris-Lampus director of policy at NARA to answer hi Lisa uh will NARA post any approved exceptions exemptions request for M1921 once one has been approved oh that is a really good question yes and thank you I have to laugh right now for everybody who wants to know I have now taken my hands off the keyboard as somebody who's helping to copy questions so we catch them all and I did say I think I can answer this one so it's a good question I and I have a feeling we're going to be repeating the same thing we said at the beginning of this meeting about M1921 deadlines no people are very interested and once we get our questions about M1921 right behind it those questions about exceptions so our status remains the same we continue to receive exception requests we're continuing to process them but we haven't yet had any exception requests receive approval from both NARA and OMB that is our goal we're working towards it as as best we can as aggressively and as fast and as quickly because we know agencies that are asking continually for questions about exception requests so it was an interesting question that's been asked then it was okay what let's assume some are approved will you be posting those I can say at this point we didn't have any plans to post those online the way we posted SAORM reports or other reports um we those are really going to be tailored to each agency so if you're looking for information like I'd just like to see an approved one so I can know what to put in my request I would say please reach out to our team mailbox rmstandards at nara.gov that's the office that's my team that's helping reply out reply coordinate with agencies on the exception requests we are receiving so if you're asking are we going to post them so you can get help just reach out to us for help if you're like oh no I just want to know what's going to happen next how are you going to post them I can say while we weren't planning to post exception requests online we are planning to take that exception request once they're approved and put them into our current systems and our current case files because we recognize that we need to know what's been approved as well future nara staff who might come in and start working 10 years from now and all of a sudden be like yes that's the time when this exception request would be approved I had requests to continue sending paper copies for you know five or ten years whatever that's going to be so I hope that answers that question Ari and I'll have to let me know if there's follow-up certainly I think I think that covered the question the other question is the one that always follows the talk about m19-21 an update on the permanent record digitization regulations I'm so sorry to sound like a broken record because yes the status is the same we are working on those digitization regulations we are working hard and I hope to have more information to share soon but since I have said this so often I'm no longer even qualifying what soon is other than to say please sign up to receive rm emails or please sign up to follow our records express blog or do both because when we have information to share we will share with those two communication vehicles we will put it on our blog we will send out a rm an ac memo through our rm communications which is the emails that we send out so those will be the two places to stay tuned to learn the very latest the very soonest we have status updates on those digitization regs and again if you have a specific question it's the same team so you can email rmstandards at narra.gov and when we're done answering the exception request we'll answer your digitization regs questions too. Thank you uh this is a question back for Chris Pinkney uh our hard copy Chris are you here? Yes thank you our hard copy unscheduled records proposed for shipment by federal agencies to the FRC's becoming a huge issue or a showstopper for NARA during this period. So the easy answer to that is no um the FRCP continues to accept unscheduled records as well as collections where there's a pending schedule um if they're unscheduled we will treat them as permanent records while they're in our custody and then we'll work with folks to make sure they ultimately do get scheduled um if we have advice it would be don't come eagle try to keep one series per transfer and then you have to remember if it's coming in as unscheduled it could be permanent so we need you to include a detailed box list with that transfer and then the other caveat is Russell Ocel our wonderful acting director of national T&D reminded me that the CFR says that agencies need to notify AC if they're sending unscheduled records to the FRCP just in case they ultimately do become permanent. Thank you for that. I don't I think you're good Cindy are you here? Uh this is a question about the FR the annual reporting. I have a question on Cindy if you can hear me. Yes we can thank you. I have a question on Cindy's presentation on the annual reports. She stated that most agencies anticipate meeting the requirements of M1921. However she then stated that less than half the agencies do not consider themselves being mature in accordance with the maturity model. I don't understand how this could be possible. My agency is rather mature but we will not be able to meet the deadline even though we've had an ERM since 1999. Okay thank you for that. The easiest answer is that the maturity models are based on the universal ERM requirements and the success criteria for managing permanent records and email they really are not related to M1921 deadlines. The maturity in measuring these programs for managing both email and permanent electronic records will go way beyond whatever the next deadline for M1921 you know either this December or whatever happens with it. So uh the difference is you can be working towards having a lot of good electronic records management. You can still have paper that you're waiting to digitize and get into that process to meet M1921 and the two reports are really not related to each other. I hope that makes sense. I think it is. I think it answered the question. Lisa curious comment that said I'm curious about federal agency records management tie-ins with the federal agency chief data officer. Well thank you. I too am very curious about how the establishment and watching the chief data officer community and federal data strategy and all the emphasis that has been placed on data management as a profession has been evolved has been established and evolving and maturing as like a federal entity. So I would just start to say like I'm thank you for the opportunity to talk about that because we're definitely interested and see opportunities to leverage data management and records management or both information management professional communities and we have some similarities. So my comment would be thank you for asking because I'm very interested and my recommendation would say if we can do it I would ask one of my colleagues to post one of our recent assessment reports. We've been so interested in this that my colleagues in our oversight reporting program that Don Rosen runs and Cindy's a part of one of their teams did an assessment for NARA earlier this year and we sort of looked at just some basic facts to see how data management and records management might be working together. So it's not an inspection report it's an assessment report which we share to sort of learn and look for some best practices is there anything we found we could recommend to other agencies. So I would say stay tuned I hope we are able to have future conversations about data management and records management at future bridge meetings and I also believe if I'm looking at my colleagues notes right that Don Rosen will be talking about that report at an upcoming federal records officer network a fraud meeting so for those of you who both come to bridge and go to fund I think you will hear about that later and as I am typing and talking real time I should also mention that Lawrence Brewer who is not here today I hope he is enjoying his August vacation and Alina Simo who is here today they are both ex-officio members of the chief data officer council so we do have an opportunity to elevate records management issues in their space and to invite people to come talk to us in our space. So we've got a couple of connections built to the CDO community and we hope to continue to have more so please keep asking thank you and thank you to my colleagues who reminded me about that last answer. I also Ari and I can come back because I think I see in our chat question I had just talked about the digitization regs and somebody said oh help I my system cut out so I missed what she said the regs have not yet been published the working version is available on the office of the federal register it's what we published in December of 2020 we have made changes to the regulation since that that was the whole point of the process I would say to characterize them we have made the regulations easier to understand we have made them we've grouped things better and we've been more direct because back in 2020 I think we're doing a lot of explanations so those are the changes that we're making but the question is are there any standard or technical changes and from a broad brush perspective the answer is no so what you see posted and then where we say we're going to map to bad g3 star we continue to map to bad g3 star and in fact our standards team has been working with library of congress and the bad g committee we've actually updated the bad g standards a little bit to help map to some of the comments we've received so I think if you were looking for the very latest and greatest again you can email rm standards or you could go check the the latest changes to bad g because you'll see some tweaks there that reflect the things we learned when we are as we go through agency comments so I hope that answers that question thank you patty for asking it so we're working on it you can find there are no technical updates in those standards either are a few updates in the bad g3 star documentation and email us we'll send you some more information which we'll do we'll we'll like I can at least commit to that patty I can send you back some information so Lisa this is a another question that has come in on the youtube chat uh is narrow planning to do a blanket revocation to cover the thousands of league of legally approved disposition authorities that one say to explicitly store temporary records at the wnrc or frc and two invalidate invalidate in all still valid disposition authorities approved pre 2007 the date the media neutral policy went into effect I need to hear that question again I'm so sorry that was a very complicated question if any of my colleagues have thought about this ahead of time please feel free to jump in and help me as I as I go look at that so we're talking about so I think the first question let's break this in pieces the first question is is narrow planning to do a blanket revocation to cover the thousands of previously approved disposition authorities that say it did explicitly say store temporary records at the frc right so we are you asked the question could be is let me take it to this is narrow planning to do any blanket exception requests the answer is no is narrow planning to do work on our end to revoke the authorities which no longer work that is a very good question and I'm not sure that answer so I'm going to have to find a way to get that answer in another vehicle because I'll have to go look at that into some depth make sure I understood it make sure I give you a factual answer so I think the answer is no to the black I know the we're not doing any blanket exceptions at this time there's one exception in particular that might fit under that that we're aware of an issue and we're working to address it and that is the employee medical files emfs that are part of the official personnel files opfs because that's one where it's not a schedule that would be in conflict with the the direct the directive it's a regulation so we have one regulation that says employees must are federal agencies must send employee medical files to the WNRC I'm sorry I said WNRC to the national personnel reference center and then you have this other stance that says we're not taking paper and right now that is that is the one area that has to be resolved federal wide so I know that one is an issue that we're working on but I don't have an answer as to what that what that position is going to be so that is the all the blanket exceptions I can say very confidently there's no blanket exceptions except for employee medical files which is an issue that we need to resolve so that all the regulations and guidance are that OPM gives agencies a line with the guidance that works for NPRC and I would say if any of my colleagues from NPRC or the records center would like to clarify anything I may have misstated I'm happy to be back checked in real time so that was the first part of the question you said oh thank you Chris so I was just going to say no fact check required I mean I think there's a very nice summary of where we're at with the employee medical files so that's difficult and I think I think Lisa the question down further right Arian was there more to that well but I think it was sort of related it was it was all about invalidating the some related to the media neutral and I know Darrell asked that question on the YouTube chat and I would also suggest that she reach out to us directly if we need to clarify that a little bit more for her yeah here's another comment that has come in I'm guessing this speaks to confidence levels in the M1921 from Cindy's report and we can all kind of discuss this one I'm guessing another reason the confidence levels are down is that organizations have moved from good intentions plans education etc to the reality of funding and deploying actual systems yes so thank you and I think that was the YouTube comment from John Mancini and always nice to talk to you John even though we're doing it a little across both space and time because I'm a little bit I think with the YouTube lag I'm trying to make sure I stay stay up and have a good session that's somewhat back and forth so yes I you know we've saw the similar trend in 2016 and 2019 so when I hear Cindy talk about what have we learned we've learned the same we've seen the same pattern happen again and again agencies are reasonably confident they're going to make it and then when it gets right to the deadline there is a lower of that confidence and that is a pattern that we've seen so it would be expected that the closer we get to the deadline but more agencies will say well the pieces that I had to take action on may be delayed a little bit I look forward to hearing what the RMSA collects next year that's right we're already on already jumped ahead to uh next year when we'll start through data collection again in January and see what happens once we've actually passed that deadline unless that deadline moves again so I'm still interested to hear what says so thank you for that and here's a here's a related comment from John or another comment anyone else worried as digitization regs are being finalized as fadgie three that fadgie three compliant claims from cell side friends will multiply with no real clarity of what this means in actual operations or at scale yeah thank you john I what a very well worded question and I appreciate it are we concerned we are that is why the standards themselves they're broken and I said we reordered them to help make it a little clearer so what we want agencies to see and vendors who offer these services to see is there will be here's the general requirements here's what you have to document here's what you have to do for quality management here's what you do technically and here's what you'll do for validation because it's how the standards are applied and validated how quality is run that gives the technical standards any merit otherwise you can issue technical standards all day long but you have confidence that they've been applied well so I'm hoping that the wise heads when they read this regulation and see how we related out with the general requirements of documentation requirements the quality requirements the digitization the technical requirements and then the validation will say off I can do this this part can be automated this part has to be done done with like the way the contract is put into place so we're hoping that the quality management strength of the rags will help agencies who say you know you don't have to just take somebody saying oh I can do Faji three star we can ask can you comply with NARA's regulations and the way they have done quality management related to the Faji three star we also intend to work with our colleagues at GSA and I thank our Arian he's helped us for those of you who know who are firming initiative we worked with vendors and who are on GSA lists to create systems that are compliant with our standards we are really looking forward to working with our colleagues in GSA again to do something very similar to make sure that vendors who are on GSA's lists as offering digitization services will understand and be able to say yes I can meet all of NARA's requirements not just the technical pieces so I'm looking forward to having these continued conversations over the next several months thank you Lisa another question is and this is maybe for Chris again and his colleagues in the FRCP is the FRCP advising federal agencies customers to think twice before making a permanent withdrawal of records from the FRCs due to OMB M1921 hi Arian this is Art I think I can take that I think not but but if you have permanent records in the FRCs right now it might be advantageous for you to just keep them there fair enough and straightforward thanks Art another question and again I'll probably call on Lisa or maybe one of my other colleagues how soon will will we be accepting the new updated capstone lists due in January 20th of 2023 and how quickly will they be approved so I will also start talking and give my colleagues a chance to jump in if they have anything to say so in general as to give context to this question we at the National Archives have said there is a new requirement for agencies to certify I'm sorry to resubmit the capstone forms starting January 23rd and I'm doing this uh I say I wish I could I should have gone and read this so I can be sure I'm giving you the correct information and not something that I haven't looked at recently so January 23rd is the date that the we are saying this is when you should start submitting requests so our advice to agencies was if you've got an updated capstone list you're ready to share you might as well hold on to it um till January 23rd because we didn't want you to have to do the same work twice that being said I think we gave a little more leeway and said it's probably more I think like October 1st to December 31st you may not want to do it so I would say in this case probably need to go talk to your appraisal archivist say okay I've got this updated list and they can talk to you about when um it would be best sent and how they what process they will want to approve it I would just say again in a broad brush stroke if there aren't many changes hopefully that means it'll go through the process relatively quickly I would say in a broad brush stroke even if you do have a lot of changes it's still going to go through the same process and it shouldn't take as long as um shouldn't be that long to get them approved we think we've got the capstone schedule process we know what we're doing we've got it practiced we know how to how to post those on the federal register how to get the public comment how to work with our our teams so be they big changes are small I'm sure they're gonna they will be acted on as um as quickly as possible but there's no there's no I'm trying I'm trying to say is there's no separate process for handling capstone forms that I think I'm aware of it still goes through all the same steps unless I'm wrong which can somebody please so this is another question that's come in through email the delay in publishing the new standard and the delay for vendors to ensure they are compliant will greatly impact agency's ability to meet the M1921 mandate to only manage permanent records electronically don't you think agency yes I'm sorry I went off camera for one second thinking somebody might jump in just in case Ari and you were that was for me yes I agree that is a comment thanks for sharing I'll put it we're running close to three o'clock so I'll put a last call in for comments and questions uh I note that John Mancini says thank you Lisa for a great answer refadgie about the fadgie question so thank you John oh and how here's one so I'm looking to obtain a copy of the latest digitization standards or bulletin how would Lisa how would you advise somebody to find the latest the latest information on the digitization standards that are publicly available is the December 2020 version that was federal register for public comment everything else that we've been working on to address those comments they're not publicly available we wouldn't share them because until they're approved they're they're not they're not worth sharing that said if you have a question about something you can email our standards and our team would be happy to talk to you about what we're intending so if you had a question about like your your 2020 regs said this is this what you really meant by that hopefully we'll have clarified it and can answer a question that way or we'll be able to share um like no that that is the latest information like I said we are working on those regs and I hope to have them publicly available soon so we can do some really deep dives into digitization standards for permanent records hopefully soon and Aryan if you want to ask another I'm going to stall for time to try to make sure I've got the correct information about the january 23 due date for the capstone resubmissions I will totally admit I just came back from vacation for being off for two weeks and I'm concerned I might have missed something I've been looked at email and I want to make sure you have the best incorrect information so I'll be right back so while you're looking that up Lisa uh we'll tackle another question that's come in how long does NARS permanent records capture team take to approve direct officers of heart direct offers of hard copy permanent records from federal agencies and I think what we'll do Tommy with that question is bin it and get somebody to answer that and get back to you directly I also want to point out that uh we did mention the fraud meeting the federal records officer network earlier during this call thanks to Matt for posting the date and time that meeting is Tuesday September 13th from 1 30 to 3 as well so if you're interested in the front that's when that meeting is okay I'm back with one quick clarification and I will ask one of my colleagues if they could please drop a link to our website where the AC memo 40 22 is uh if you could post that link because that is where we started talking about the capstone resubmission cycle and we said in that bulletin and I'm sorry if I confused you anybody with the comment earlier we suggested that we pause accepting submissions of new capstone forms starting August 8th so we really are trying to help agencies not have to do double work and help us not have to do double work so we are going to require agencies to submit new capstones in January of 23 I believe I asked my colleagues do you mean is there like a what date in January because there was no day associated so I think that remains um sort of January of 23 is open you can send it on January 3rd I think it's the first Monday and not January 23rd 2023 I think that was me getting my numbers in my head uh slightly confused so the memo says I'm sorry the memo yes the AC memo which is our communications to records officers and records contacts did not say what date in January of 23 just that that was the time that we're going to start working on capstone resubmissions okay thank you Lisa I've dropped that memo in the in the youtube chat thank you uh and so has the GRS schedule for destruction of source documents for permanent records been approved and signed yet we are waiting to destroy the source documents for permanent records that we have made electronic thank you for your help no it has not been approved yet so thank you for your question I believe that is still going to the GRS review process and I know we're getting close to three o'clock so I probably don't have time to look it up but I can say again stay tuned to our blogs and our records emails we will share that when that schedule is out for comment so yes since we're we're at three o'clock I'm going to call it here can I have the next slide please the next slide is our next meeting for more bridge the next meeting of the bridge is October 18th at 1 30 p.m so thank you all for attending today thank you all for the questions and comments and with that enjoy the rest of your day thank you