 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our bridge meeting for December 2023. 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 host 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 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 participate by asking questions, by sending an email to rm.communications.nara.gov. Our staff is monitoring this email box during the meeting. You are also welcome to ask questions and make comments during this meeting in the YouTube chat. However, keep in mind that all chat messages are subject to moderation, so we ask that you keep them relevant to the topics being discussed. Copies of the presentation slides used today will be posted on the bridge page of the Archives website. That webpage is also where you will find the 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 Lauren Spruer, the Chief Records Officer for the U.S. government. Good afternoon, Lauren. Good afternoon, Ariane, and good afternoon, and good morning to everybody. Welcome to our December Bridge. And I'll have to tell you, I am really looking forward to today's meeting. I have been looking forward to this meeting for quite some time. And it's not just because it's the last bridge meeting of the year, and I'm looking forward to a little bit of leave at the end of the month. No, I've been looking forward to this meeting because as you've seen from the agenda, we are honored to have with us today Dr. Colleen Shogun, Archivist of the United States. So Dr. Shogun joined us earlier this calendar year. She is the 11th Archivist of the United States and the first woman appointed to lead the National Archives. She is a proud Pittsburgh native, and she is a recognized political scientist with expertise in the American presidency, political rhetoric, women in politics and Congress. Prior to her appointment, she was the senior vice president and director of the David M Rubinstein Center at the White House Historical Association, and she served as a legislative assistant in the United States Senate and as a senior executive at the Library of Congress. Dr. Shogun was the vice chair of the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission and the chair of the board of directors at the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Colleen Shogun, Archivist of the United States. Dr. Shogun, thank you so much for being a part of our bridge meeting today. Well, thank you, Lawrence. It's great to be here for my first bridge meeting and have the opportunity to introduce myself to the federal records community. Of course, the National Archives is our nation's record keeper, but the records start in your hands. You and your work are critical to our mission, and I want to make sure that we strengthen our partnership with you in every way possible. As you may have seen, I sent an introductory letter to the senior agency officials for records management earlier this year, in which I noted we needed to work together to strengthen our federal records management community and to provide strategic direction for your records programs. This is especially critical as we accelerate the transition to a fully digital government in the 21st century. Next spring, I will convene a meeting with the entire Salem community to discuss plans, progress and issues we are facing as we improve our processes and practices for managing electronic records efficiently. I am committed to strengthening NARA's ability to receive, preserve and make accessible historically valuable records. I will also maintain our leadership in government transparency and public engagement and promote the high standards we must meet collectively together under the Federal Records Act. Now I'd like to turn the meeting back to Lawrence and his team. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today. Enjoy the rest of the meeting, and I wish you the best in this holiday season. I look forward to working with you in 2024. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Shogan, and thank you again for joining us and happy holidays to you too. So with that, we will turn to our agenda. As you can see on the slide, we have a number of things to talk about and some really meaty topics to share. So I know the holidays are coming up and it's December and a lot of people are winding things down, but not here at the National Archives and certainly not in the records management community either. So before I get to the main agenda, as you can see, we will have our usual briefing from the Federal Records Centers program. We'll be talking about digitization guidance, annual reporting starting in January, and a briefing on safeguarding NATO equities within the Federal Records Center. So that's what's on deck. And a couple of announcements before we get into that. First, I wanted to acknowledge the Federal Records Officers Network, the FRON, celebrated this month, their 10 year anniversary. And I know some of you were able to attend their recent meeting where they had a number of folks who were around 10 years ago with the founding of the FRON talk about their experiences. And we at NARA have always had a great partnership and we've always supported the FRON. We've had them participate in due briefings here at Bridge and the past. And we want to encourage all of you who are Records Officers, if you're not a regular attendee or member of the FRON, it is a great resource and community of practice where everybody gets it when it comes to records management. I'd also like to remind everyone that the AROC or the Agency Records Officers Credential Renewal Process will start again next year. So for those of you who are due in your three year cycle, we will be sending out notices in January. So I wanted to give you a heads up and keep an eye out next year. If you're in the cohort that is up for renewal, those will be coming out soon. And then finally, an announcement of interest. And I think a lot of you are aware of the work that we do supporting the Partnership for Public Service and the Center for Presidential Transition. When there is a change in term, and again, change of term, it is always in place, whether it's, you know, a first term president or two term president. We have to every four years, take the steps that we do for records management to make sure that political appointees and senior officials are aware of their record keeping responsibilities. So I just wanted to let you know that that process has started. We started working with the partnership in the center. And we have started looking at our resources that we typically use. That would be documenting your public service, the website where we have a lot of our information for agencies and officials. And some of the resources that we have like our entrance and exit checklist. So we've been taking a look at those products, those resources, the website that we have, making sure everything is up to date and current. And as we continue to go through the process, we encourage you to as well use those resources for the senior officials and political appointees in your agencies as we go through this end of term transition. So with that, I am going to turn things over to Chris, who is going to give us an update on where things are with the Federal Records Center's program. Awesome. Thank you, Lawrence. And I would be negligent if I didn't lead off with a perhaps slightly early but very sincere happy holidays to everyone who blocked time to join us today. Much like Lawrence, I look forward to the end of the year. And I think we're almost there this time. A little later in the meeting, we have Rashad Shakir, who's the FRCP's Information Security Program Manager, to talk with us today about safeguarding NATO equities. But before we get to that, I wanted to provide a few very brief system wide updates on where the FRCP stands in December. At this point, FRCP staff continue to move records out of our Fort Worth Warehouse 9 Annex. A total of 191 trucks have now shipped from Texas to the Lenexa FRC, and we've shifted a total of almost 240,000 cubic feet of records. The Fort Worth to Lenexa move remains on track, and we anticipate shipping the last of the containers in March 2024. Across the system, the FRCP continues to take in new paper records. And we've now received and shelved an excess of 147,000 cubic feet during FY24. We have an additional 12,600 transfers, which collectively cover slightly more than 204,000 additional cubic feet, which are an approved status within Arcus. With the M2307 deadline just over the horizon, we will continue to work with customers to process SS-135 and schedule retirements through June 30 of next year. If your agency is not covered by an exception, I would encourage folks to be prepared to have all of your pending transfer requests entered into Arcus by the end of next June. On the disposition front, it's been a very interesting start to FY24. One of our primary disposal vendors suffered a roof collapse during a storm. The incident took place at night, so thankfully no one was hurt, and no federal records were in any way impacted. But the incident did disrupt our disposal activities for multiple weeks as we coordinated with other vendors and the primary vendor worked to restore operations. Regardless of the excitement, the FRCP has managed to destroy almost 275,000 cubic feet of materials since October 1. And our total disposal backlog now stands around 1,090,000 units. IT remains a critical part of our operation. And I'm probably not giving away too much of a secret here when I say that Arcus is reaching the end of its operational life in terms of both hardware and platform. We realize that this has caused issues with connectivity and performance. And as such, we're early in the process of developing a replacement application. The contract for next-gen Arcus has been awarded, and it will involve a shift from the current Oracle platform to a new Salesforce platform. Development will take place during FY24 and FY25, and we will provide additional updates later this fiscal year. I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a substantive leadership change at the WNRC and make sure that all of our DC customers were aware of the transition. Sharif Abdul-Julial who has served as the WNRC's assistant director for several years has accepted a new position with HUD. We very sincerely congratulate HUD on the hire, and we wish Sharif the very best with his new agency. To fill the gap, Lawrence Monroe, who has previously served as the director at the San Bruno FRC, has transferred over to the WNRC and in mid-November assumed the title of assistant director. Lawrence is wonderful to work with, and as he gets situated, I hope he'll be a solid resource for DC customers who interact with the WNRC. And then finally, I wanted to take a second to thank the dedicated FRCP customer account managers and a large number of agency representatives with whom they engaged to establish the annual agreement. As of close to business last Friday, little over 95% of the FY24 agreements have been sent to customers and 24 or 26% have been fully signed and executed. We've also collaborated with a large number of customers to get clarification as to what services we can provide them during any government shutdown. The response rates to that question were great, and I think we're all well positioned for January and February. And I suppose that's pretty much my story for right now. I can attempt to answer any immediate questions that people might have, or we can turn it back to Arian and I can wait for general questions. Well, we have thanks, Chris. We do have two in the queue. So let's kind of bang these out pretty quickly. Where are the records from Fort Worth being transitioned to? They are moving to the Lonexa Federal Record Center. That's one of our Uber modern underground sites. It's just to the west of the Kansas City area. Okay, and given the June 30, 2024 deadline, are any FRCs on the verge of being maxed out of space? So we have space that's relatively tight at a couple sites, but across the system we have very substantial number of shelves available. I want to say it's probably north of 5 million cubic feet. So if Tommy or anybody else had a large collection that they wanted to get in, we could certainly work with them and find space for it at one of our centers. Thanks, Chris, and I'll go away. If any more come in and we'll get you, we'll get those at the end. Sounds good. Oh, here's one more just came in. Do you have a tentative date for the new Arcus replacement to take place? The timing of that? So we're very early in the development cycle. We anticipate development and rollout will take 24 and most of 25. So we don't I don't have a date. I would be comfortable sharing with people for the flip the switch day yet. But we've had very good initial meetings with the selected vendor and I am cautiously optimistic we'll be able to hit the deadlines. Okay, so I think we've got the early ones out. Again, stay tuned. We'll see if any come to they come later on in the in the program. Sounds good. Thank you. You're welcome. Next on the agenda, we have John Martinez and the digitization group. They're digitization team to talk about guidance on digitization updates updates on the digitization guidance and products that have come out. So, John. Thanks, Ariane. Hello, I'm John Martinez. I'm the supervisor of the policy and standards team here in the office of the chief records officer. And as Ariane said, also joining me are our teammates, Kevin divorcee and Mike Horsley. Could you go to the next slide, please? So, as you know, earlier this year, in our issue, we published the regulation with digitization standards for permanent records, specifically for paper and photographic prints as the first phase. We've been talking a lot about as we roll those out to introduce them, we've been having a lot of venues or we've been talking about them and we started rolling out the supporting products to sort of help, well, to help agencies understand and implement those the regulations. So today we wanted to sort of we're moving from sort of the deep background on the regs themselves to where we are. There's sort of a status and we have a mix here. We wanted, as you see on the slide, we wanted to give you an updates on some of the new products that the most recent ones that have come out. We have a success criteria, white paper, an FAQ on non-compliant digitized permanent records, the quality management guide. We want to talk a little about what's coming next, what are what the next phase of the regulations is coming this year. We're going to talk a lot in this about everything we're talking about today. I think we're going to point you to a resource. We've got links in the slides and I think Aaron's going to try and post them in the chat as we do it, but both in these in this slide deck, which will be posted and I'm going to give you a we're going to talk at the end about the web page where we sort of collect all of these links as well. We're going to be pointing you to a lot of resources. We're going to be talking a lot of resources and we'll be pointing you to them as well. And then we just wanted to give you an idea. We have several upcoming presentations within the next month month or so and we just wanted to for your information, let you know what's upcoming. So to start on new products, I'm going to pass it to Kevin Dvorsey, who's going to talk about the success criteria white paper. Kevin, great. Thank you, John. So I heard Dr. Shogun and Lawrence both use the word partnership in describing records management. And I know for our team that worked on the digitization reg, we really do see its success or failure as a partnership with agencies. And so as John mentioned, we since the publication of the regulation earlier this year, we put out a number of supporting products. And, you know, if anybody's looked at the code of federal regulations, it's not the easiest document to understand. It lays out what agencies must do to comply with the digitization requirements, but it doesn't explain how to do that or why you do something. It's not a guide to how to digitize. And we recognize that. And so this success criteria document, it follows along earlier success criteria white papers that we've done for electronic records management and then also email management in trying to come at some of these requirements from different angles, and hopefully we'll help trigger avenues of thought on the part of the agency staff who are involved in digitization to bring up things that they may not have noticed in reading through the CFR. And so here you can see these general requirements as well as a link to the document itself. And can we go to the next slide? So in our previous white papers on success criteria white papers, we basically broken down the records management world into four categories. And here you can see they are policies, systems, disposition and access. And you can see it's a jigsaw puzzle where all of these things are interrelated. And you really need to do all of them well to be successful at records management, but then digitization as a records management function. So let's go to the next slide and we'll take a little deeper look at each of these. And so when it comes to policies, we recognize that agencies may have been digitizing for years, decades for access, but digitizing to replace the source record with a digital copy that is of sufficient quality to be used for all of the same business purposes is a very different kind of digitization. And so we hope that agencies will look at this and really think through what their policies are because they may need to change as they digitize according to this new regulation. And that includes the roles and responsibilities of the people that are involved in it, recognizing that some of these functions are going to be done by agency staff. Some functions may be done by contractors, but it's really important that agencies think this through and document who's doing what. Since this is a records management process, do you have procedures in place for handling of the source records throughout the digitization process? The actual digitization, who's doing that work? What is expected of contractors? The quality management is very important. How often is that done? What type of quality management have you considered? The management of the resulting digital records since they're going to inherit the disposition of the source records, what are you going to do with them? Is your IT department aware that you're going to have this new body of information that needs to be taken care of? And then validation, since this is a relatively new concept, who in your organization is going to be responsible for this? And then ultimately for the disposition of both the source and the digital versions. So let's go to the next slide. So for systems, this is a part of this transition to an all digital government. And so we're kind of moving from what might have been analog records management processes built around paper to all digital workflows. And so the systems are very important. And so we've gone through and as we did for policies, trying to bring up what does success look like in terms of the systems that you have to manage the source records throughout digitization? What should your systems be capable of doing to actually digitize records? And then when you have this body of digital records that are going to take the place of the source records? What do those systems need to be capable of doing until you transfer those records to the National Archives? So let's go to the next slide. Access. Access is one of the key components of this entire move to all digital government is that hope of taking kind of siloed analog information and making it more successful accessible. And so in the success criteria white paper, we look at that and you know, there are these key concepts, your records need to remain usable and retrievable, whether that's the source records or the digital versions. And then intellectual and physical control is a concept that we stress throughout the regulation that we try and explain it and what success looks like when it comes to that in terms of your ability to locate and take care of your records. And then we recognize that in many cases agencies have other business needs that they need to comply with. And so we look at what does access mean in terms of that responding to FOIA requests. And you know, you're moving from this idea of having analog records to then also having analog source records and digital records. And so there's this kind of new requirement to be able to maintain two sets of records until you actually execute the disposition and possible destruction of the source records. So let's go to the next slide. And I mentioned disposition, you can see how all of these things are interrelated. But we there is this kind of complex process that ultimately leads to these digital versions of records taking the place of the analog source records. And it ties in with other existing records management requirements, the general record schedules or agency record schedules. And so we lay out what success looks like. Have you considered that transfer of the retention period from the source records to the digital records? And are your systems capable of taking that information and putting it forward? Have you really thought through all of these concepts that relate to the disposition of the records? And then in addition to that section of the white paper that lays out these things, you know, asking questions, putting forward these ideas of what successful digitization records management looks like, we have an appendix which poses lots of questions relating to each of these, again, in the hopes of triggering thoughts that may have been overlooked in just reading through the CFR itself. So I believe that's it. And John, I will pass things back over to you. Thanks, Kevin. Next slide, please. So the next product I'm going to talk a little bit about is on the subject of non-compliant digitized records. And what we've issued, I'll jump to the bottom of the slide is the link. We've issued an FAQ on non-compliant digitized records. This is something we've gotten a lot of questions on. And starting on this slide, you know, what is a non-compliant digitized record? It's pretty simply digitized records that do not meet the standards in the regulations. Another term we use, and I'll probably slip into it while we're talking here, is previously digitized records. I think there's a most often a temporal aspect for it. These are records that were digitized before the regulations were issued, which we know agencies were doing. So I'm going to talk through sort of the main part of it. The FAQ itself answers a lot of questions around this area. But sort of the meat of it is the options, which I think is what where most of the questions come. I have these digitized records. They don't meet, they're from before the standards were issued. What can I do? What possible paths are there? So the main options are in the middle here of this slide. The first one, and I'll just give an overview of each of these, is submitting a new record schedule. This option would be to sort of submit a new schedule with specific disposition instructions and for these previously digitized records or non- compliant records. As part of that process, NARA would upon review make a determination whether or not these could serve ultimately as archival records, whether or not they could be transferred as permanent. The purpose sort of this process would be to it allows the determination to be made that NARA, the agency and the public can have confidence in and understand that the digitization processes that were used and what is being ultimately accepted for transfer to NARA. The next question, the next possible path is re-digitizing. This would be to re-digitized obviously according to the standards and the regulation. And again, as I said, this recognizes our past digitization efforts that may have been for different goals and using different requirements and standards. If an agency re-digitizes per the standards and the reg, they could then transfer the newly re-digitized records to NARA. Whatever was the previous set of digitized records, the digital versions would most likely then be considered temporary records. Another possible path is transferring the born digital records. As we say in the last 30 years or so, most records have been created, originated using computers. So if an agency can access those born digital records that were used to create paper records, and if those born digital records can be used for the same purposes as the paper, they could be considered for transfer. If ultimately they can, the born digital can be transferred, they do serve the same purposes, provide the same, have the same context and information as the paper. Obviously, then to do electronic records transfer, the transfer would have to fulfill the usual requirements for electronic records transfer of metadata, file formats and so on that we already have in place. And then the fourth option, which we've been talking a lot as we head up to the deadline, is sending the source records to NARA. Agencies can also send the source records, the analog records to NARA before the deadline in the NARA OMB Memo M2307, that deadline is June 30th, 2024. If an agency transfer those records before the deadline, once they're in the FRC, NARA then takes responsibility for access to those records, and that includes any future digitization that would be on a NARA's plate. And if an agency cannot, wants to transfer it, cannot until after the deadline, there is a possibility to an exception request, which if approved would allow an agency to transfer those records after the deadline. And there's a bullet there, NARA Bolton, 2021, we issued a few years ago that addresses the exception request process, talks about how it works, what sort of elements to put into an exception request, and so on. So just for reference about the exception process. We also, the FAQ also talks a little about the questions around media neutral schedules, before the regulations for digitization was issued, media neutral schedules meant that for paper-based, for paper or born digital or digitized records, you could apply the disposition to any type of media. With the issuance of the regulations, that paradigm is shifted, that things have changed. So really, with media neutral schedules, agencies can transfer digitized records under media neutral schedule, but only if the records meet the digitization standards in the regulation. The next slide, please. And I want to say this is just for illustration. I don't think anybody will read this. I just wanted to mention this just to give you an idea. We also, along with the FAQ, when you go to it, there is a link to what we did a graphic of a decision tree, which shows sort of the different paths, sort of the conditions and questions and steps for each of the different options to help agencies sort of visualize a walkthrough, whether or not one of these might work for you. It's like I said, it's posted. It's linked to the FAQ. I think we have it as a set. We have it a couple of ways. You can download it as a PDF. And I just have to mention your credit for this to Tommy Lee from the Air Force, when we had a review of this with the Federal Records Management Council, along with a lot of the comments that you have at us to improve the FAQ. Tommy gave pretty much that we just we did a few revisions to it, but we thought it was really helpful and we appreciate that he thought he both gave us the idea and I will say drafted, but more or less gave us the idea for putting this as part as an additional tool for this. So thank you, Tommy. Next slide, please. And then, like I said, the FAQ goes into other questions as well. This is just a sample to give the idea of some of the other areas that are addressed in it. The FAQ addresses other questions about the process used by NAR to evaluate proposed a record schedule. In addition to that decision tree, I just showed you it gives links to other resources, such as the applicable GRS and other resources for digitized records. Discusses questions about what agencies can or cannot do to the two previously digitized records to make them compliant. The answer is generally is generally no, there's but there may be very limited areas like adding metadata where it may be feasible, but those sort of questions are addressed as well. It also talks about what to do for other media types, things like film negatives, audio visual that are not addressed in the in the regulations yet. At this point, generally it's contact us at RMStandards at NARA.gov for those kinds of questions. Next slide, please. And I'll pass it to Mike. Mike, Michael Horsley is going to talk about, as we said, he gave a deep dive on this the last meeting. But because it is one of our most recent, we just want to remind you again of the quality management guide. So, Mike. Thanks, John. I appreciate it. And I love the opportunity to talk about more quality management. So, as Kevin and John has said, we've been putting out some supporting documents. And, you know, again, as Kevin said, it's really difficult to be able to be very explicit or explanatory in the constraints of the regulation regulatory language. So we have published this quality management guide. And it was written to help agencies learn about the various aspects of quality management known as QM in this in this context. In digitization and it includes quality assurance and quality control, as well as the role of objective testing and automation in optimizing quality control in the inspection process. The guide supports the National Archives NARA's regulations concerning digitization standards for permanent and temporary records. The goal of quality management or QM in a digitization project is to prevent defects before they happen. Prevention of defects is the most efficient, cost-effective and productive activity in a digitization workflow. Digitization should be considered at this scale an image manufacturing process that relies upon quality assurance known as QA to establish the specifications and the requirements of your project and uses quality control or QC as a process to test for and inspect for defects. A well-run digitization operation will be proactive rather than rely upon quality inspection to achieve quality. This is a very important concept because many people conflate quality control, which is an inspection process with quality management, and you're in trouble if you're relying upon inspection to find defects. Also, I'd like to state that it's taken me a long time now in no way an expert in this but quality management, quality assurance and quality control are distinct components and shouldn't of a quality management and really shouldn't be used interchangeably. NARS digitization regulations could be considered as a total quality management document that brings together records management practices, digital imaging quality standards, quality control inspection and validation steps. Each phase of a digitization project affects the other parts. For example, by establishing intellectual and physical control, that contributes to creating metadata as well as can identify things like missing records. The quality control and inspection steps have been optimized to rely on automated processes where possible and to limit human inspection to the phases that cannot be automated. For example, you can use a tool to inspect the directory of files to see if they are to say tips or they have an RGB color spacing coded where humans do need to come in is that you can have an automated tool that says there is metadata in a certain field. But what if it's all wrong? What if it's misspelled or the wrong type? So that is how we try to improve what the inspection process should be. The quality control inspections I'm sorry, by relying on objective testing and analysis for image quality, we eliminate wasteful subjective inspection of attributes. So we are using standardized test targets and an analytical software to identify areas that are out of compliance, as opposed to an operator saying, looks too red. There might be many, many reasons why something looks too red or and that is not really an efficient way of fixing maybe a problem that is compounding itself within your workflow. And finally, the validation phase is a high level review to verify that all the requirements of a project have been met and the digital circuits can serve as the same legal and evidentiary purposes as the source records. Next slide, please. I want to talk a little bit about what we're working on now. We are working on the digitization requirements for film records. Technically, that would be for any transmissive imaging. That means where, as opposed to reflective imaging, where yours have a piece of paper and you shine a light on it and you take a picture of it with a camera. Transmissive imaging is you have materials like negatives and slides where light is projected through the material and it's recorded digitally. The technical the technical specifications will be taken from the federal agency digital guidelines initiatives specifications for transmissive film materials. And we are covering the range of microfilm, radiographs also known as X-rays, transparencies, color and black and white negatives and aerial film. It may not be news to many people here. I mean, I understand this is a very highly complex and costly process, but this level of digitization is perhaps the most technically intensive and in particular digitizing color negatives is the most complex digitization process that you can do. So in that light, we recommend that you transfer those records to NARA as soon as possible before the deadline. And finally, future work is also very complicated regarding things like dynamic media, which would be audio, video and motion picture material, because not only is the equipment rare, it's expensive. But there is a real lack of consensus of international standards. But we do have a good sense of what the best practices are. And NARA itself has published. It's not part of our records management suite of products, but we do have a relationship with our film and audio visual preservation labs, and they have presented what they use for access projects. So I anticipate that we will be involving a lot of other experts across a wide range of the industries. Thank you very much. And John, back to you. For Kevin. John, thanks, Mike. Next slide, please. So I was just going to mention in addition to two things like this, like bridge meetings, we are we often are asked to speak in other venues. And this is just for awareness, just FYI, we realize we have several coming up within the next month or so, some within this next week. So just FYI tomorrow, this first slide shows my course is going to be speaking about the regs at this records modernization workshop. Information is there. Next slide, please. Then the day after that Thursday, the team will be speaking at this digitization best practices. Webinar and we'll be talking about frequently asked questions that we've been getting about the regulations, sort of the top 10. And next page. Next slide. I'm sorry. And then next month, and we just announced this, you should have just seen an announcement for this yesterday. We'll be doing a deep dive webinar on what I talked about more briefly today, a non-compliant, the non-compliant permanent digitized records FAQ. And like I said, I think the information and the registration is open now for that. And links were in all of these slides for all of these FYI. And next slide, please. And again, this is a another slide where I don't expect you to read this for illustrative purposes because it is very small. It's just a page capture. Just wanted to mention this graphic is here to show the the main thing is the link there to the digitization web page. That's where we have been putting and will continue to add resources on the digitization rags to help clarify and give tools for digitization work. And what we put there are supporting products, presentation decks and videos, if appropriate, links to other resources. Like I say, anything anything that will help that we think will help you implement and understand the regulations were capturing it here. So that was the last last bit of our presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you, John and Michael and Kevin. We do have a couple of questions that have filtered in or at least some comments. It would be great if there were checklists for digitization for temporary and permanent analog records as job aids on the NARA website. So I think we can pass that over to the training team and see if we could develop those. Well, I think you say right on Tommy because I'm a big fan of checklists and I think the regulation was written in a way that we could create that. Sorry, Michelle. We are curious to know if any agency is currently using Open Dice and maybe start with explaining what Open Dice is in 10 seconds or less. Open Dice is a government created, developed by the Library of Congress. I suppose that would make it Fed Ramp approved. I don't know. Freeware, Open and Digital Invit Quality Analysis Tool. It's upside is that it's free. It's downside is that there's a learning curve. And yes, do we know if any agency is using it? Have you heard? I don't have. I know they people are and that's the feedback I've been getting. If an agency needs to submit a request for one or more media neutral schedules as we move to a digital environment, is there an express method for doing so or will the usual record scheduling and appraisal timelines be the norm? That's what we'd have to take back. I would have to ask the appraisal team. I don't think so, but I don't want to speak for them. So we can get an answer, a definite answer on that. I guess one that's sort of out of the scope of digitization. And maybe Lisa wants to hop on for this one. What is the hard start date you recommend an agency secure an ERM solution or risk being out of compliance by June 30, 2024? Thank you, Terry, Derek, Terry, for that question on YouTube. I did see it come in. I thought maybe I would jump in to answer that. I'm Lisa Harrell-Lampus and I'm the director of records, management, policy and outreach. And this is a very interesting question because it's not really a digitization question, but a deadline question. And I think my answer would be the need to secure an ERM solution isn't driven by the deadline. It's actually driven by those requirements for managing electronic records. We've got those requirements in our regulations and Chapter 36, CFR 1236. And we've written success criteria papers and this is why the success criteria sort of follows the same model. You need to have policies in place, the systems to do the electronic records management work, being able to prove you can access to those records over time and then ultimately execute the disposition. So I would say that it's not the deadline that's going to drive that. You would be out of compliance now if you didn't have tools in place to meet those solutions. And we've been working very hard with our colleagues at GSA to help agencies find solutions through a variety of ways to either doing our requirements analysis or vendor solutions. So I would point you to the work we do with Fermi, F-E-R-M-I, we've talked about that at other meetings and presentations. If you find our Fermi work, you'll find our requirements work. So thank you for asking that, Derek, and I would say, please reach out to us if you would like to be pointed in that direction. Thank you. I see another one. My agency uses a lot of Google for documents and spreadsheets. Can you discuss this in regards to archiving? I'm not sure. I understand. Could you say it again, Aryan? Oh, my agency uses a lot of Google for documents and spreadsheets. Can you discuss the implications this has for archiving? So it's a broader question than digitization. It's kind of a records are created in any format. They must be managed appropriately in any regardless of format. Yeah, this is Lisa Harrell-Apas again. And thank you, Deborah Hanson, for asking that question on YouTube. I will share that we at NARA are a Google shop. We are not a Microsoft shop. So your question rings very true for me. We have a lot of Google documents, Google spreadsheets. Our guidance and our requirements are written. And I love this phrase. You've heard us use it so many times from a media neutral perspective. So we don't tend to write requirements that say, hey, this is what you need to do for a SharePoint site. This is what you need to do for a Google site. So again, I'd recommend looking at our Fermi requirements, our requirements for managing electronic records. And you'll find in there the things that we say have to happen and can happen, certainly with Google Docs, Google Spreadshades, Google Slides, which is what you're looking at right now. This is a Google slide and other things that relate to those office suites. So thank you. Thank you for that question. Will the webinars occurring today, tomorrow and Thursday be recorded and available to watch at a later date? So I guess you heard about the the two you plugged, which I guess are up to the vendors who are producing those. Correct. So visit their websites and see what they say. I guess that's that's the straightforward answer there. Sort of acknowledging we've got a couple of thank yous from one from John Mancini and a couple others just saying thank you for all the education work. So with that, I'll let you guys go, but don't go far. We'll see if any more come in and we'll address those at the end of the meeting. And moving bridge along, I'd like to introduce Cindy Smolovic to present on annual reporting for calendar gear 2023. Good afternoon, Cindy. Hi, and thank you, Arjen. Next slide, please. All right. Good day, everyone. It's time for our annual announcements about the upcoming annual records management reporting cycle. The reporting period covering activities for calendar year 2023 will begin January 8th and run through March 8th of 2024. If you've been designated as an annual reporting contact for your agency, you should have already received an AC memo with instructions on where to find on our website, the reporting questionnaires and templates. Records officers should also have received this AC memo. Agency contact should have already received an email with additional information and a tip sheet from the RM self assessment at nara.gov email box today. And this tip sheets will help you with the survey tool in Qualtracks, the tool that we use. We know that arrows are also often the reporting contact, but this responsibility does get designated to others with some within some agencies. So if you are both the arrow and the and reporting contact, you will get duplicate messages. There's nothing we can do about that. We do that so that we can be sure to reach everybody. If you are no longer the reporting contact and you've been receiving these messages today, please contact us right now at RM assessment nara.gov, the self assessment email box is on the screen there for you. So that and give us the updated information. If you don't know that information, at least tell us that you are no longer the person that we need to be reaching out to. We will be expecting four items this year. The usual three reports, the senior agency official for records management report, the federal electronic records and email management report, also known as maturity model. And of course, the records management self assessment itself, the RMSA. This year there is an additional data call that I will get to in just a minute. The SAORM template will cover the June 30th, 2024 deadlines, again, giving you an opportunity to let us know where you are with that. It also includes data management and social media strategies that you may be working on specific program goals from the SAORM perspective for the records management program. How your agencies, if you're doing any digitization, how are you using the digitization standards that were released earlier this year and that what you've been hearing a lot about at this meeting? Are you using them? If so, how and how are they working for you? The maturity model measuring electronic records and email management has not changed. This is the opportunity to measure how your program has or has not grown in the past calendar year. The RMSA, the scoring is the same for the regulatory compliance questions. We keep these the same so that you can compare your scores from year to year. Each year, there are also non-scored questions. And the reasons for these is that they help us understand what is actually happening across the federal records management community and they help us to develop the policy and guidance and other things that NARA puts out to help you with your records management program. A lot of that information does come from what you tell us in annual reporting. This year, these include digitization regulations and standards and estimates of the volume of permanent records and email that your agency has. So that brings me to the fourth piece. This year, in order to help the archives for future planning, there are questions on the RMSA asking about volumes of permanent records and potentially permanent records and specifically if your agency has any of these that are five terabytes or more. If so, we're going to be asking you to send us information via a spreadsheet. This has also been posted to archives.gov and the link is in the AC memo that you should have received today. If you do not have any record sets of this size or larger, you will simply answer no and move on. You're done. However, if you do have record sets that are five terabytes or bigger and the answer is yes to the question on the RMSA, the follow-up question is to send the spreadsheet, fill it out and send the completed spreadsheet to the self-assessment box. Do this separately. We understand that this separate spreadsheet may take a little time to complete. And so therefore it's deliberately separate so that you can still send the SAOR report in and you can still complete and should complete the maturity model and the RMSA in the surveys tools, even if you were still working and need more time for the spreadsheet. So on January 8th, watch for another AC memo and there will be one specifically to the SAORMS as well announcing opening day. And those of you who are the reporting context on January 8th will receive your two separate links from the survey tool to one for the maturity model and one for the RMSA itself. Records context will also receive another email from the RM self-assessment at nara.gov email box. And we do this to provide additional information, but it also help us verify addresses and provide any additional instructions that are really just for the people filling out the annual reporting itself. As always, if you have questions, you can send them to the RM self-assessment at nara.gov box and our team is as always ready to answer them. Now I want to turn this over to Don who has some additional information to you for you. Thanks, Don. Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment and share with the bridge community that's Cindy, Cindy if you want to stay on camera, is retiring next week after 24 years at nara. So this was her last annual reporting update. Cindy has been leading our reporting activities for the past decade. She's worked with many of you in completing the RMSAs, the SCR reports, answering your questions. She's also worked with many of you on inspections and assessments as well. So Cindy, we wish you all the very best in retirement. But I'd like all everyone know, the community know that Cindy has an excellent team in place and we will be ready and look forward to working with you when reporting kicks off on January 8th. So best wishes to Cindy and then I'll back over to Arian with any questions you have for us. Thank you, Don. And I'll also issue my congratulations, Cindy, on a long career and all the best in retirement. But we do have a couple questions that have come in over the while you were speaking. So the first one, why were the templates for the reporting cycle provided in advance? Usually they are available when the reporting open reporting window opens up in early January. We have always strived to have them out in advance. And those of you who have been doing annual reporting for as long as I have, you may remember in past years they came out in advance. The last three or four years we've been unable to get the type of approvals that we go to go through to get them out in December. A lot of agencies and agency annual reporting contacts ask us for these early so that they can get started. We will they are posted to the website as well. And so they're always available throughout the reporting period. And you will get another AC memo, as I said, that will have these links again for you. But it is something that agencies have asked us for. So that's why we do it or try to do it each year. And thank you. Also, are there broad examples of records that may fall within the five terabyte scope of the perm unscheduled electronic records data call? Not to my knowledge. We are exempting not email. They want to know anything but email. So we would have to take that back to our research services folks who are part of the people who are wanting this information. We're also going to work with our colleagues on that side of NARA's house to get a person to forward questions too. But we would like for you to send the questions to the RMSA box so that we can send them on as appropriate. So sorry, I don't have an answer for that one. I think that's fine. I think those are the questions we have. So stay tuned. We'll see if any more come in and we'll address those at the end. Then thank you again, Cindy. Now I'd like to move bridge forward to Rashad Shakir about safeguarding NATO equity within the Federal Records Centers. Rashad, you're up. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We would like to kind of focus this last part of the presentation on agencies who store classified information within the Federal Records Center program. Next slide, please. This briefing serves as an introduction to ISOO Notice to 2023-002 in its role in reshaping how classified NATO equity shall be identified and safeguarded going forward. Forgive me for reading directly from the slides, but we thought that it was important that the community understands not just the words in the slides, but exactly the context as well. So I'm going to be sticking pretty close to the slides as much as possible because we want to make sure that we don't A, leave anything out, and that B, for the listening audience and for the greater community in general, understands exactly what we're kind of put what we're trying to put out and what we need you to kind of understand moving forward. So ISOO Notice 2023-002, handling NATO information during automatic declassification processing provides updated guidance to agencies for the proper identification and safeguarding of NATO classified information encountered in records under review for automatic declassification. So basically this is any classified NATO equity that you may find in records. Next slide, please. Prior to the issuance of ISOO Notice 2023-002, which was this summer, agencies were identifying and reviewing NATO classified equity eligible for declassification in accordance with the previous ISOO Notice, which addressed the subject, which was ISOO Notice 2009-006. So those of you who are not familiar with ISOO Notices, the dates are the day that these notices were issued. So basically this ISOO Notice that was issued in 2023 is replacing and superseding an ISOO Notice that came out in 2009. So that's the important dates to kind of recognize. We're updating previous guidance. Returning records with marked classified NATO equity to the Washington National Records Center, which is where we store all of our classified records for continued storage, was contrary to both U.S. policy and NATO policy for a number of reasons. Before 2023, which is obviously this summer, the WNIC was not a NATO subregistry and control point. And why is that important? It's important because if an entity is going to hold NATO classified information, it can only be an approved NATO subregistry or an approved NATO control point. And before 2023, the WNIC was neither. We weren't a control point and we weren't a subregistry. So that was a bit of an issue. So ISOO Notice 2023, dash 002, corrected some of those problems. Before 2023, returning before ISOO Notice 2023, returning records marked with classified NATO equity to the WNIC was technically a security violation because we didn't satisfy all the requirements. So although we could safeguard the records properly physically, there was some administrative things that we were not able to do. And so therefore, we were not considered to be a subregistry or an approved subregistry or an approved control point because we could not manage some of the administrative burden. Next slide, please. And ISOO Notice 2023, dash 002 establishes a new path forward for identifying and safeguarding marked NATO classified equity during the classification review. So this is some of the really, really important part that we have here in red. ISOO Notice 2009, 06, handling NATO information during the classification process pretty much said that NATO records had to have a unique NATO identifier, a unique NATO identifying number or an administrative number that agencies put on classified NATO records. And the thing about that was that was true, but it was only partially true because they were and they are and there were a lot of classified NATO records that did not have this administrative number. So agencies were somewhat at a loss as to is it really classified if it doesn't have this number or is it not classified? So NATO NATO registry records are marked with a unique Alpha America identifier located in the upper right hand corner of the cover page in a NATO security designation. NATO secret and above are accountable, but this does not take into consideration NATO confidential or NATO restricted, which is also NATO classified information. NATO records classified at the confidential and NATO restricted levels do not call for NATO registry numbers, but still emphasis still, but still requires safeguarding and storage and handling is NATO classified material. The absence of a NATO registry number or NATO classified material never implies emphasis on never never implies the overall NATO classification marking on the on the document does not apply. And I soon noticed 2009 006 kind of confuse this whole identification issue. Security requirements for access, protection and declassification review continue to apply and will be enforced pursuant to applicable U.S. and NATO security directives. So basically I soon noticed 2009 006 in almost as if it said you had to have this alpha identifying number in order for it to be quote unquote really NATO classified equity and that was misleading to a great degree. Next slide, please. I should notice 2023 002 further provide safeguarding guidance when encountering NATO classified equity while conducting declassification reviews. This framework includes instructions for reviewing and safeguarding records for declassification under the virgin scenarios to include NATO classified records in the custody of the originating agency or department and yet not legally transferred to NARA for the federal records for the federal records act either within department or within the custody of the agency. So that means we're talking about in this particular case NATO classified records that are still within the agency and they have not been turned over to the federal record center for temporary storage or to the archives for permanent storage. NATO classified records that will not be a session by NARA. So that means that the agency is deciding oh, we want to keep these records. But what do you do with the classification? NATO classified records already a session by NARA in NATO classified information found within the US government originating records. Next slide, please. Records with classified NATO markings must be segregated from records with US classified markings. So let me go a little bit higher for a second and talk about important takeaways. So these important takeaways are things that when you look at this new ISU notice 2023-003-002 there are some important general takeaways that when you read this ISU notice you might not kind of get the major points. So these are the major points or the major takeaway that you should take away from this notice when you have access to it. One, when encountering marked NATO classified records in an agency collection, commingled, in other words, mixed in with non-NATO records, segregate or take away and separate the NATO classified records from the US classified records. So you have to physically separate them and store them differently. Agencies with records containing classified NATO security information stored with the Federal Records Center program, that's us, shall establish a NATO point of contact with the Federal Records Center program and the Central US Registry to facilitate the recovery of records with marked NATO equity. So what this is saying is, is that if we find NATO equity in your records within the Federal Records Center program we're going to be contacting the appropriate agency and say, hey, we have NATO records here that are from your agency and we need to do something administratively with these records. So agencies with classified holdings with us have to appoint a NATO point of contact. So do we know that when we do find or if we do find NATO equity in your records we have a place to go so that we can discuss what the next steps are going to be. For NATO classified documents already a session by NARA, tab the document with standard form SF-15 the classification review tab indicate is as a referral in field nine of part A of the SF-315 with an indication of, please go back to the previous slide. Thank you. Right, security requirements for X, oh, I'm sorry. So basically what we're talking about here is identification in this slide. Next slide, please. So this is our safeguarding slide. We will address the new safeguarding requirements. Next slide, please. And again, these are an important takeaway. So the last part of the important takeaway is is where we talk about if you doing the classification review if you do discover NATO equity exactly how you ought to refer it and how you ought to tab it administratively. Next slide, please. If you are involved in managing classified records and you have your records with us the federal records center program and you have questions as to how we need to handle these records if they are permanent records please contact Don McElwain as listed here for records within the federal records center program and they classified talk with Krista Donnelly as indicated here. And if you have questions that are concerning federal records center security policy that would be myself as indicated here. And for questions regarding general overall NATO security policy at the national level please contact Doris Brown at the email address indicated here. Back over to you, Ari. Thank you, we do have a couple of questions and I think one you've kind of hit on already but what is the major difference between ISO notice 2020 302 and ISO notice 2009 06? So the major differences between these two ISO notices is that ISO notice 2023-002 corrects the mistake that are in ISO notice 2006 09 or 2009 06. And it addresses specifically the part about having to have an alphanumeric number on a classified NATO document in order for it to be considered to be really quote unquote classified. So just because it does not have that alphanumeric number it doesn't mean that it's not still classified if it had classified markings and that you have to safeguard it properly in accordance with both NATO regulations and US regulations. And one more, how was ISO notice 2023-002 developed? ISO notice 2023-002 was developed as a combination between OSD, the Federal Recreational Program Central US Registry. And what we did was we combined our resources because we knew that the previous ISO notice did have some mistakes that needed to be clarified. So we came together as a community and developed this newer ISO notice which we think is going to be more clear and more direct on how you handle classified NATO equity. Thank you. You're welcome. And now we'll turn Bridge over to the general questions and the questions that have come in after presenters moved off the stage. First one, will direct offers submitted to NARA in ERA have not yet physically transferred to NARA custody before June 30 be accepted in original textural format? Yeah, thanks, Aaron. I'll go ahead and take that one. And I imagine we're gonna be getting a lot of questions related to the deadline as we certainly get into the next calendar year and we get closer to June. The answer to this specific question is yes, we will take the records and it's one of those things where if we get the records in time to allow us to fully consider and process the transfer request in advance of the deadline then we will of course accept the transfers. I do wanna highlight the fact that we issued a memo back in 2022. It's AC memo 33-2022. That covers a lot of these questions that we were hearing when M1921 was coming up against the December 2022 deadline. The answers are still in effect and you will find the answer to this question and a lot of other similar questions in that memo AC 33-2022. Okay, we have reached out and this one's I guess for Chris. If he's around. We have reached out to the WNRC service several times both by phone and email and in an attempt to get on their pickup calendar. We have never received a response. How can we get the WNRC truck service pickup calendar? We have approximately 300 boxes approved in Arcus and ready for delivery. So I've already forwarded that question over to Shannon Harris and Lawrence Monroe. I would ask Kimberly if she doesn't mind to reach out to Lawrence on this. He's aware of the need and I'll rely on him to work with you and get that set up. I think we can certainly accommodate. And I'm sorry for the confusion. That's one of the reasons I wanted to highlight his appointment because I thought there might be some dropped balls as we shifted to a new manager. No problem. Thank you for being ahead of the curve on that. We had a question. Are we doing webinars on record scheduling? And I think the short answer there is there's nothing. We have recently posted some job aids on our website and in manuals, they're all available on the training pages of the NAR website. So I think that's how we'll handle the scheduling piece. And here's, I guess to clarify maybe an earlier question if an agency needed to submit a request for one or more media neutral schedules as we move to a digital environment, is there an express method for doing so? Or will the usual record scheduling appraisal timelines be the norm? Yeah, I guess the answer to that question and the question before that, we are still working with the same guidelines and the guidance that we've issued about schedules, the training that we have in place for agencies and agency records officers about schedule. So all of that information is on our website. And in terms of prioritizing records in the queue, it's something that we've always done on a case-by-case working with the agency. We are more than happy to review from the appraisal archivist to the agency records officer, the schedules that are there for our appraisal and we are fine rebalancing and reprioritizing if there are schedules that need to get done, for example, to support work that needs to be done before the 2024 deadline. And I would encourage you to reach out to your appraisal archivist and have a discussion about how to prioritize the schedules. But the short answer is there is no cheat code. There is no shortcut. There is a process and it takes what it takes, but there are ways that we can work with agencies to elevate those schedules that are more important to you in terms of getting them done sooner. Thank you. And this is again for Cindy. Can Cindy repeat what she said about if we need more time to complete the spreadsheet of permanent records volumes? Did she say we can finish completing it after the March 8th date? Okay. The short answer is March 8th is the deadline. The longer answer is what we don't want to have happen is for your normal reporting pieces to be held up because you're working on the spreadsheet. So if you will still submit those, like you always have, sometimes we get the RMSA first, sometimes it's the majority model first and sometimes it's the SAO report first and you get them all in by the March 8th deadline. What happens if you're having trouble getting it finished or you need a little bit more time, just let us know closer to the date, see where you are by March, getting closer to March 8th, send something to the self-assessment box and we will get that to the research services folks who are going to be collecting these and get you a contact person and you can work out any kinds of extensions for that spreadsheet with them because they're the ones who need it and I don't want to answer for them. But what we don't want to have happen is have the spreadsheet hold up everything else. Lawrence, is that a appropriate answer? Yes, Cindy, that is what we discussed. March 8th is the date. So we do want to, ideally, because we know next year is going to be a busy year as we're all working towards that deadline, we want to try and have all the data in hand by March 8th, that includes what we usually have for the three reports and for the spreadsheet so that we have a sense of the impending volume that we're going to have to accession. But we understand that some things may take longer than others and we're happy to work with you on a case by case. But March 8th is the date for all four pieces of the annual reporting in 2023. And along the annual reporting line, we got Tommy saying we greatly appreciate NARA providing the annual reporting templates in advance to allow early data collection. So thank you, Tommy. Also, and maybe this is for Rashad, have all federal agencies with NATO records stored at the WNRC and other FRCs been identified and contacted? Thank you for that question. We have notified all agencies with classified information within the Federal Records Center program, but not necessarily with NATO equity within those classified records because we don't know if there is or not and we don't go through the agency's records in order to look for NATO equity. So when we do find NATO equity or we find out that we have NATO equity, that's when we reach out directly to the agency and we make appropriate next steps as to how they can pick it up from us. But no, we don't have like a spreadsheet or anything like that that tells us what agency has NATO equity with us because agencies don't tell us and we don't go through their records to look for them. Thank you. And at this point, I think we're pretty much done team. Is there anything, any other questions I'm missing? I'm looking as well. I don't see anything else lingering. Okay, Lawrence, we can give them back five minutes. Next slide. Yeah, well, thank you, Aran. And my thanks to all the presenters today. I know there was a lot of information that we had to share and hopefully, we go away in December, we won't forget everything that we've learned today when we come back in January, but if you do, the good thing is that we record these meetings so you can always go back and review the recording and the slides. I also especially wanna thank Dr. Shogan for joining us this afternoon in sharing some remarks to kick off the meeting. And as she noted, we will be in touch as we start thinking about in a senior agency official for records management meeting next year in 2024 so that we can talk to other parts of the records management community and include you all as well. So Aran, thank you for your expert facilitation as always and for everyone else, it seems like a long way away, but I promise you it's not. February 13th, 2024 will be our next meeting, same format, same time. And again, the website is here on this slide if you wanna review any of the previous bridge meeting materials, look at the schedule for next year. And this is where you will find the recording for this meeting posted once we do get it processed and finalized and ready to post. So thank you all, have a very happy holidays to everyone. Keep the records management work going, but be sure to take a break and come back refreshed in the new calendar year. And we will talk to you all again in February. Thank you all very much.