 Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our first ever 100% virtual bridge meeting. I'm Patty Means, a member of the Record Management Training Program, and I'll be the moderator for today's event. We're hosting this bridge meeting today using Adobe Connect, and I'd like to take a few moments to discuss the functionality of this Adobe Connect tool. Please remember to mute your speakers or phone lines, and if you're dialed in, this will eliminate any background noise. So remember to mute your speakers or phone lines. Adobe Connect is a web-based platform, and it works best on a Chrome browser. Also, please remember that this presentation is outgoing audio only. You'll have the ability to ask questions during the Q&A sessions for each speaker via a written chat box that will appear at the end of their presentation. And if at any point you're experiencing technical difficulties, please email us at rmt1atnara.gov, and we'll be happy to assist you. And I'll repeat that. Email us at rmt1atnara.gov if you have any technical difficulties. Now, I'm going to turn the mic over to our producer, Jonathan Marker, to discuss the handling of questions for the live Q&A sessions after each presentation. Jonathan? Thank you, Patty. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jonathan Marker, and I'll be monitoring the chat feature in Adobe Connect to field questions from the audience for each presenter to answer in their Q&A session. When you ask your question, please tell us who you are and what agency you're from. If you are not able to ask your question during an individual Q&A session, you can ask it in the general Q&A after the presentations have been completed. In the general Q&A, please also be sure to identify to which presenter the question is directed. And I'm going to hand it off to Patty and get the presentations rolling. Thanks, Jonathan. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our first presenter, Lawrence Brewer, Chief Records Officer for the United States Government. Lawrence? Thanks, Patty. And good morning, everyone. I'd like to start, thanks off today with my own welcome to all of you for joining us today. I know we're reaching capacity. If we haven't already reached it, we're looking to see what we can do about that. But we found, and I'm sure you all have as well, as we're all working at home full-time, the ability to join webinars and engage with others and colleagues has really increased. So I'm not surprised at all. We're going to see what we can do, if anything. I wanted to thank everyone for joining. And I really want to thank all of our staff who have been working behind the scenes to help us pull off this all-virtual meeting. One of the things that I have learned is that it is significantly more complex to pull off a virtual meeting than it is a face-to-face. And I don't know if it's just because we had been doing these bridge meetings in McGowan for so many years that we had gotten to down pat. There's a lot of coordination and a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that we can bring you this event and do it as smoothly as we can. So just wanted to thank everybody for providing that support and just wanted to let you all know that we're going to do our best to keep things running along smoothly. But if we do hit some bumps along the way, hopefully you'll bear with us. So before we get to some announcements that I have, I wanted to take a quick look at the agenda. So if we could flip to the agenda slide. So I do have a couple of announcements I will cover. And then Gordon is going to bring us a federal record centers program update. Cindy is here to talk about some preliminary results and some of the things we've learned from the annual reports that you sent us this year. Gailin is going to come talk about GRS TransMittal 31 and all that is covered within that transmittal. And then before we get to the general Q&A, Lisa is going to close out the main agenda with an update on digitization regulations that were recently out for interagency comment. So if we could go back to the announcement slide. If we could go back one more. Thank you. There we go. So the first announcement I have is actually very good news. I'm very pleased to announce that since we last met at NAR we've been able to hire a new director of records management training. His name is Christopher Edward Klein, but you will all get to know him as Eddie. Eddie joins us from UCIS where he was a section chief and a lead supervisory instructional designer. He's still settling in at NAR. He started with us right after Memorial Day. So he's quickly learning and trying to get a grasp of the content, but you all should expect to hear more from Eddie and what we are doing with records management training at one of our upcoming bridge meetings. Next I have some news from OGIS, NAR's Office of Government Information Services. The FOIA advisory committee for the 2018-2020 committee term is wrapping things up. The final report is now being finalized and we expect the archivist of the United States to sign it by the end of the month. And then it will be posted to the OGIS website. So please make a mental note at the next bridge meeting. OGIS will be joining us to present on the details of that final report. Also, for the next term of the committee, the 2020-2022 term, the Archivist of the United States has signed the charter. And OGIS is now in the process of accepting nominations for the new term, but self-nominations and nominations of others. So there is a deadline by July 2nd, which is coming up. OGIS is looking for government members and at a minimum we need three FOIA professionals from cabinet-level departments and three FOIA professionals from non-cabinet agencies. So if you are interested in throwing your hat in the ring or throwing someone else's hat in the ring, please contact OGIS directly about the 2020-2022 term of the advisory committee. And then my last announcement, because we are still working through a pandemic, I wanted to bring your attention to an FAQ that we issued in April. So if we could flip the slide to the new normal, there we are. So hopefully you are all familiar with the slide. We issued an FAQ on April 23rd. And a lot of the reason behind it was we were getting a lot of questions from you and others about what agencies should be doing and what employees should be doing to manage their records as they continue to work at home through this pandemic. So we compiled a number of Q&A of questions related to teleworking and concerns about printing at home and managing emails from employees who may be using personal accounts and tried to put all that together with some other Q&A about retention of records that are specific to employee safety and health. A number of those items come out of the GRF and we kind of brought those out of where they currently are in the GRF and kind of put them front and center in this FAQ. So I wanted you all to be familiar with it, review it. We would still love to hear from all of you if you have any questions that have come up since we've issued the FAQ related to how we should be managing records during this COVID-19 pandemic. Also, we have as a reminder in the FAQ the list of appraisal archivists that are signed to your agencies so that you can follow up with questions. But if you do have any GRF specific questions, because a lot of the information that's in the FAQ comes out of the GRF, I just wanted to draw your attention to the last bullet of the slide where you can see the GRS team group mailbox where you can forward those inquiries. So if we can flip the slide, I will turn it over to Patty so that we can move on to the next presentation. And then I'll look forward to any questions you may have at the end of the program following the scheduled presentation. Thank you, Lauren. Now please welcome Gordon Everett. He'll be presenting an update on the operating status of NARS Federal Records Centers. Gordon? Thank you, Patty. Good morning, everyone. I'm Gordon Everett, Director of Customer Relationship Management for the Federal Records Center program. And joining me today for the Q&A will be Chris Pinkney, our Director of Operations for the Federal Records Center program. We know you've been waiting to hear about our reopening status and I just wanted to give you some updates. The National Archives is developing plans for the gradual reopening of its facilities across the country. In developing plans, we are adhering to the guidance from the White House, OMB and OPM. NARA will open its facilities only when its assessment aligns with the criteria and requirements laid out by OMB and OPM as detailed in M2023 aligning federal agency operations with the National Guidelines for opening up America again. We will make reopening decisions in phase on a facility by facility basis. We recognize that different parts of the country are experiencing the pandemic differently. Our goal is to ensure that conditions are safe for our staff in the local communities before reopening a facility. We're monitoring local public health conditions and coordinating with NARA designated officials at each of our facilities. We will not reopen a facility until local public health conditions allow us to safely return to work. Now at this point in time, a few facilities will begin initiating their phase one plan which includes preparing the centers for a safe return of staff. Once the facility enter phase one, we expect to be limited to 10 to 20 percent of staff. In phase two, that number will increase 25 to 50 percent. In phase three, we will be limited to no more than 50 percent of our staff. Even as we begin to reopen operations, some operations may be curtailed due to ill or isolated staff and facilities may need to be closed temporarily for cleaning. So our preparation also includes facility related activities such as ensuring personal protective equipment, adequate supplies and cleaning contracts are in place. And staff related changes such as social distancing and contact tracing guidelines are implemented. Now, as many of you know, the Federal Records Center program is a full cost recovery with revolving funds. And we're incurring unplanned expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic as we prepare to reopen the centers. We are considering a COVID-19 related surcharge based on storage to recover those costs beginning July 1st through September 30th. We hope you understand that we're required by law to recover our costs and we appreciate your patience as we move to safely open the Federal Records Centers. As always, we appreciate hearing from you and ask that you contact me or your account managers with any concerns that you may have. With that, we'll get ready for the Q&A. And Jonathan, over to you. All right. Thank you, Gordon. Okay, everyone, if you have questions for Gordon or Chris, please type them into the chat. I will then read each question in turn to Gordon or Chris and they will answer. So we're just going to pause here and see if we have any questions from the audience. All right, we have one question from Gina Coleman-Williams from NARA. And Gina is asking, how can I receive any requests during your reopening? Go ahead, Gordon. Is Chris on? Yeah, I'm on, Gordon. I'll let Chris take it. Yeah. So to answer Gina's question, as we start reopening, we will have staff who have the ability to send things out using our usual mail rooms. Some agencies have used couriers in the past, and we will get guidelines out as to how we can receive couriers and pass requests to them using that method. So I anticipate once we get to phase one and have staff in the buildings with some regularity, we should be able to get material out to agency customers using whatever method you choose prior to the closure. The one exception I would put out as a caution is that there will probably be a delay in the restart of our metro courier and service operations. And as soon as we get that worked out, we'll start that later in the year. All right. Let's see. It looks like we have one more question. It's from Lynette Cosby. Lynette, could you tell us what agency you're actually from? All right. So Lynette Cosby from CMS is asking, is there any estimated timeline with phased-in approach? What stage is the WNRC in? Gordon or Chris? I can get that one as well. At this point, a number of our facilities are moving towards a phase one reopening. The WNRC is still a little behind based on local conditions and our need to collect appropriate PPE for staff. Like many of the agencies out there, we have placed orders for PPE, but some of our deliveries have been somewhat delayed due to the crazy nature of the world right now. The hope is we will have the WNRC moving towards a phase one reopening in the near future, but I don't have a specific date I can promise right now. When it comes to the timeline itself, we are envisioning multiple weeks at each phase. I hesitate to give firm numbers because I don't honestly know exactly how this is going to evolve. But once we move into phase one, the hope is that we will have good conditions on the ground and adequate PPE to support our staff, and we're all crossing our fingers and hoping we can move forward steadily as opposed to having to drop back at one or more facilities. Okay. We have another question from the audience. Tony McGowan from the FCC is asking, in what phase might we anticipate having the public be able to review documents at your facilities? All right. That would be on the research rooms and all. I would ask them to monitor the archives.gov website and try to monitor that for when the public will have access to research rooms and availability. Okay. We've got another question from John Berenstein. Given the statistics Gordon provided, will there be an extension of the 1231-22 deadline? I'll take that. We don't have any information at this time on any extension on that deadline. As far as we know, everything is still working toward that deadline. If there is anything that changes or any other information that comes out, we will get that to customers right away. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. I have a question. And I can't type. Okay. Go ahead. Identify yourself and what agency you're from. Okay. I am so sorry. It says the user limit is exceeded, so I'm unable to type my question. So if there's a different way for me to send questions, let me know. My name is Shannon Lawrence, and I am with DISA. I had a question regarding the surcharge price that was mentioned. That's beginning July 1st. Do we know what is the surcharge a certain percentage or is it a flat rate? Can you please inform me so I can let my finance department know? Sure. Before we have Gordon and Chris, I just wanted to let you know. You can send an email to, hang on just one second, please, to RMT1 at nearer.gov, because we can't handle extra capacity for the phone. Okay. Thank you. All right. All right. Yeah, the surcharge, okay. The surcharge has not been approved yet by the archivist. It's something that we're considering. It will be a small surcharge probably just on S1, on storage, on standard storage. And, you know, as we've taken a look at most customers, most customers do have enough funding to cover themselves in that surcharge if necessary. But if it's not significant, it will be on a per-bots basis, and it's not necessarily a huge surcharge. Okay. So it looks like I skipped over one more question from the audience, and it's from Anna Pardozo from DOE. And she's asking if July disposal notices have been submitted to the FLC with the understanding that the facilities are still closed, will agencies be charged for the storage of those records past July? So, jumping in. No, Gordon. Go ahead. So, Anna, I am happy to report that while we have not been able to accomplish the physical destruction of boxes that have been authorized during the closure, we have been able to leverage ARCIS, and we've got teleworking staff who are taking care of the other steps in the process. My understanding at this point is that the usual rules will apply, and the storage for those materials will fall off your bill after the 90 days. And then we are getting disposal contracts in place in different regions. We've got a lot more than we had a year ago, and we will work through the physical destruction of the records once we've got facilities restarted and have worked out all the kinks with the process so that we're able to social distance and adequately protect staff as we accomplish disposal. Okay, everyone. At this point, we're going to move on with the next presentation. If you have any other questions and you weren't able to answer them in the individual Q&A session here, you will have the opportunity to ask your question in the general Q&A at the end of the program. Okay, Patty, back to you. Thanks, Jonathan. So now we're going to move on, and please welcome Cindy Smolvick, supervisor of Oversight and Reporting Team 1. She'll be presenting updates from annual reporting. Cindy? Thank you, Patty. Hi, I'm Cindy Smolvick from Norris Records Management Oversight and Reporting Team, and I'm here today to give you a preliminary sneak peek at the annual records management reporting data we've received from all of you. Next slide, please. The reporting period was originally January 13th through March 13th, but it was extended through May 15th. There were, once again, three pieces. However, this year there was a new maturity model covering both electronic records management and e-mail instead of just e-mail by itself. The senior agency official for records management report template, this time focused primarily on the transition to electronic record keeping and the target goals described in OMBNOT Directive M1921. And of course, there's the annual records management self-assessment. This year was the year to bring back the storage-related questions that we ask every other year, which is one of the reasons the Army say had more questions than last year. Annual reporting is conducted at the beginning of each calendar year so that we can capture as much of the activities from the year just ending as we can. This explains why the name is always a year behind. Next slide, please. Even with the COVID-19 emergency actions that sent agencies into new ways of operating right in the middle of annual reporting, with the extensions into May, we received over 90% of the Army say and electronic records and e-mail management maturity model reports from agencies we were expecting to hear from. And we received 83% for the SAO RN reports. It's going to start in five minutes. Okay. Please meet your phone. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has been able to meet and get all of these reports into us. Next slide, please. If you need a copy of your SAO RN report, these have been posted to our website. If you were not able to download the maturity model or Army say from the survey tool when you submitted it, please send a request to rmselfassessmentatnaw.gov, and we can provide these to you. If you are a department records officer, you should have received spreadsheets that have statistics and responses for all of your component agencies who respond it. If you have questions or need anything related to these, just let me know. There is some information we make public and some that we do not. The SAO RN reports are available, as I said, on our website in PDF. If you have bookmarked the chief records officer's page, you will find a link to these reports. If not, when you get into the NARA website, you can search for any reporting, and that should help you find the right page. Next slide, please. This is what the SAO RN page looks like. Each individual reports are listed separately. The site also has reports going back to 2015. Next slide, please. For the maturity model, we also have a web page. Next slide, please. This is what that page looks like. However, instead of posting individual reports as we have done in the past, this time there is a link to a spreadsheet. Next slide, please. The spreadsheet is downloadable and looks like this. Well, this is obviously not legible on this slide. It's too small. You can see that it lists each responder and how they answered. This enables an easier comparison and use of the data for anyone who is interested. Next slide, please. There is also a second spreadsheet that has the data similar to the ones from this year going back to 2016 when we first started using the email maturity model. So this has data from 2016 through 2018. Next slide, please. The RSA data is not posted to the website. However, the federal agency records management annual report to Congress where the data is summarized, includes stats per question, lists of agency scores, and lists of non-responders is available and looks like this. Next slide, please. Obviously, you can see the 2019 report is not listed here because it's still pending. It has not been completely written yet. Next slide, please. Now we will get into a sneak peek of the data itself. Next slide, please. The main focus of the SAORM reports this year was the original M-12-18 and now M-19-21 deadline to manage all permanent electronic records in electronic format by the end of 2019. 68% of the agencies in the reports received indicated that they had met this goal and provided a variety of comments on how. The next two questions focused on transitioning further to include metadata and temporary records. The reports show that agencies are confident that they will meet the additional requirements to ensure that all permanent records have associated metadata by December 31st, 2022, and that agencies are making progress to maintain temporary records in electronic format. Next slide, please. The SAORM template also includes the opportunity to explain further. And yes, I get to read all of these. From questions two, three, and four covered in the previous slide, here are the topics mentioned most often. The most often mentioned topic was the use of electronic records management systems or records keeping systems, document management systems, enterprise content management systems, or a records management application of some kind in order to maintain records in electronic format and capture metadata. Next was digitization or scanning projects were listed so that records were either being used now or at least being planned. Establishing policies and procedures to require electronic record keeping were also mentioned often, as were updating record schedules. There is a variety of specific software which was also mentioned. And there were agencies that indicated that all records regardless of temporary or permanent status were already created and maintained in electronic format. Next slide, please. The template also asked agencies to comment on any specific challenges to transitioning to fully electronic record keeping that they may have. Agency size, either small or very large, was pointed out as an issue. The need to maintain some records by regulation or other legalities in paper format is another. Some agencies noted that their agencies are dependent on paper and the shift will require a culture change, which is never easy. The high volume of legacy paper or just in electronic records themselves or the large quantity of systems was also mentioned. Agencies also mentioned lack of funding, lack of staffing tools for staff or staff themselves and other resources. Several agencies also indicated that they had a wide variety of approaches to systems implementation within their organization and a variety of different types of data to deal with. Next slide, please. We also asked what support is needed from us. The three most common areas of support are shown here. First, please meet your phone, sir. You need to mute your phone, please. We also asked what support is needed from us. And as you can see, the three top subjects are listed here. For more or clearer guidance on digitization standards and success criteria from N1921 and to more clearly define the terms of N1921 were of the highest ones listed. Also, agencies want to have more guidance and policy on how to update their schedules and obtain storage for hard copy exceptions. Hands-on assistance, particularly the small agencies and assistance with updating schedules were also listed often. It was also suggested NARA needs to conduct more records management program reviews and inspections, provide basic records training for small agencies, and streamline the approval of records schedules. And finally, advocacy efforts including collaborative efforts and dialogue, stronger advocacy with executive and senior staff, plus more support for electronic record-keeping shared solutions and approaches for funding. Next slide, please. The results from using the maturity model for the first time is interesting. The majority of agencies rated themselves in the low risk for both electronic records and email management. With email at 78% and electronic records management at 51%. This basically means agencies chose maturity levels 3 and 4. Most agencies chose level 3, which is the beginning and end of low risk. We are currently looking further into the responses to see what the challenges are and what needs to be done to raise confidence in electronic records management and email management up into the 80 to 90% ranges in the future. Next slide, please. Last but not least, we can't leave out a quick look at the RMSA. The overall risk levels remain exactly where they have been, but most agencies scoring themselves in the moderate risk range followed by low risk. The two of the three risk levels actually have very broad ranges. Particularly moderate risk was scores between 60 to 89, being in that category, and anything from 0 to 59 being in high risk. If you break it down further, it's interesting to see that there are agencies that are within a few points of moving up or down between risk levels. While the majority of agencies, around 33%, are solidly in the moderate risk category, there are some 8% that are really closer to high risk. And another 10% that with a little more progress will move up to low risk. The reverse is also true that 70% of agencies have just barely made it into low risk and must continue to be diligent in order to stay there. Next slide, please. While the data has a variety of uses, one of the most important is for you to assess your own programs to identify weaknesses. Not for NARA, but for yourself and your management to make decisions on where to apply those limited resources. Maturity model in particular should be used to help you decide if parts of your program are at an acceptable level of risk and which are not, so you can focus energy where it is most needed. The main purpose of the RMSA is to give agencies a tool to measure where they are at a given point each year and to determine their own needs. Provide data to senior leadership that can be used to leverage support no matter what the final numerical score or risk level. For NARA, we use it in many ways, not only to report to Congress on the state of records management across the federal government which we are required to do, but also to identify trends, areas that need changes in policy or more guidance. And of course to provide agencies with some level of feedback by scoring. Next slide please. So what's next? We need to complete the analysis of the data, create the annual report to Congress, and then begin working on the templates and questionnaire for next time. If it seems to you like a never ending cycle, it seems that way to me too. I hope that you are able to use this cycle to continue to spiral upwards, take your program to new heights to meet the never ending challenges of being able to provide the right information at the right time to everyone who needs it. After all, this is why we all do this in the first place. Next slide please. Thank you for listening and feel free to contact me, our Don Rosen who is the director of oversight and records management reporting program for NARA. Or you can email the RM self-assessment at NARA.gov email box. Thank you and back to you, Jonathan. Alright, thanks Cindy. Okay everyone, if you have questions for Cindy, please type them into the chat. I will then read each question in turn and Cindy will answer. So let's pause for a few moments and we'll see what questions we get. Alright, right off the bat we've got one from Gina Coleman Williams from NARA. And Gina is asking, when will the annual report to Congress be published? Thank you Gina. Our goal is to have the report published by the end of the fiscal year or immediately thereafter, sometime in October. Okay, and it looks like we have a comment from the crowd. John Mancini, where are you from? Mr. Mancini, could you tell us what agency you're from please? It looks like we couldn't connect with you. So we're going to have to ask you to hold your question until the general Q&A. But we'll pause for a few more moments now and we'll see if anybody else has a question for Cindy. Okay, so Mr. Mancini, you are the former AIIM president. Let's see, you commented, my experience in talking to agency RM folks is that while intentions are high, translating often into fairly high scores, the reality is often much more challenging, even on things like you meant. Do you have anything to add? That question, John. John, that's a very good question and I appreciate it. We find the same thing. My team is responsible for records management inspections, as well as the end reporting. And we do find that some of what happens on the RMSA, where you have something in place, it may not be as effective or just because it exists, you get to say yes on the RMSA. So we do find the same thing that you're talking about. And then in those cases, it's our job to help agencies identify what some of those issues are and make recommendations on how they can improve further. So the RMSA is more actually, as I said earlier, for the agencies to determine where they need to put their resources and not so much on how well they actually score. I hope that answers your question, Mr. Mancini. All right, so we are going to move on to our next presenter. Remember, everyone, if you did not have the opportunity to ask your question during the individual Q&A session, you will have the opportunity to ask your question in the general Q&A at the end of the program. Okay, Patty, back to you. Okay, thank you, Jonathan. So now let's all please welcome Galen Wilson, who'll be presenting on GRS Transmittal 31 and capstone resubmission. Galen? Good morning, everyone. I'm Galen Wilson. Next slide, please. Thank you for inviting the GRS team to speak today about GRS Transmittal 31. This transmittal was signed by the archivist in late April and issued to agencies on May 4. Next slide, please. In fact, no, don't back it up one, please. Transmittal 31 contains no new schedules. However, this transmittal incorporates three significant changes into the GRS. First is alteration of 15 schedules to require agencies to offer to NARA records dated prior to a specific date before destroying them per GRS disposal instructions. In addition, GRS 6.1, e-mail managed under a capstone approach, has been altered to require periodic resubmission of Form NA-105. And finally, this transmittal removes GRS 6.6. Let's look at details about each of these. Next slide, please. When the GRS was introduced in the early 1950s, many schedules included a blanket prohibition on destroying records created prior to January 1, 1921, without first offering them to NARA. In other words, offer them to NARA before you destroy them. When the new GRS was planned and worked out 60 years later, we figured this requirement was no longer necessary. It turned out we were wrong about that. We have determined the requirement is still necessary in 15 schedules, so we have reinstated it. For 11 of these schedules, the requirement is simple. If an agency finds records covered by any item in these schedules dated before 1921, they must first offer the records to NARA before applying the disposition instructions. NARA may choose not to accept the records, but such records predate standardization of administrative practices, so they may have additional values. With the other four schedules, it's a bit more complicated because in addition to the blanket pre-1921 prohibition, individual items in them cannot be destroyed if older than 1933, 1939, and 1950, details are in the transmittal memo and the schedules themselves. Next slide, please. GRS 6.1 covers email records managed under a capstone approach. Email of certain agency staff members is retained permanently. Agencies propose their lists of such officials to NARA via form NA-1005. Thank you to all agencies that have worked diligently to prepare your 1005s and forward them to NARA for approval. Next slide, please. GRS TransMittal 31 institutes a new policy for resubmission of form NA-1005. Agencies reorganize themselves. Staff duties morph, responsibilities shift. In order for a capstone email capture to save the right stuff, from time to time we must reevaluate the list of officials whose email is considered permanent. The revision to GRS 6.1 requires resubmission of form NA-1005 at least once every four years. Additional information about resubmission is available in the GRS 6.1 FAQs in Questions 38-42. Next slide, please. The last major alteration to the GRS via TransMittal 31 is that we have removed GRS 6.6 for rulemaking records. We learned that items 010, 020, and 030 did not reflect how agencies create and maintain these records. It would therefore cause many agencies to disrupt the provenance and original order of their records in order to send permanent series to NARA. So we have rescinded these items. That list items 040 and 050. We moved these to GRS 5.7 agency accountability records. They are now GRS 5.7 items 070 and 080. Next slide, please. We only have time this morning to hit the high spots. There is, of course, a lot more to know. If you would like to see the details, read the TransMittal memo on pages 3 to 5 of the TransMittal itself. Head on over to the GRS webpage and take a look. Next slide, please. As always, the GRS team stands ready, even if we're actually sitting, to respond to your questions via our mailbox. Let us know what's on your mind. We generally count on hearing back from us within 24 hours and most often considerably sooner than that. Thanks for listening. And now we are happy to hear your questions. Responding to those questions will be Andrea Riley and Maggie Hawkins. Okay, Jonathan, back to you. Thanks, Galen. Okay, everyone, if you have questions on GRS TransMittal 31, please type them into the chat. I will then read each question in turn to either Maggie Hawkins or Andrea Riley and one of them will answer. So I'm just going to pause and let people write in their questions. And it looks like Maggie Hawkins is having a little bit of technical issues, so we're going to defer to Andrea Riley. And our first question up is from Gina Coleman from the National Archives. And Gina asks, is it up to the agency to keep track of when capstone NA-1005 resubmissions are due, or will NARA tap agencies on the shoulder when four years are up? And this is Andrea. And the answer to that question is that, yes, we are planning to send out reminders via ACMEMOs when the time comes, but agencies should be mindful of the timing of that requirement as well and be prepared to send in their forms. Okay. And it looks like we had a little bit of trouble in transmitting the info about the pre-1921 record. So could we go back to that slide? And Gailen, would you be able to speak to it? If not, Andrea, could just repeat what you had said. This is Gailen. I'm happy to repeat, just repeat the basic message. Okay. Go ahead. Well, here it is. When the GRS was introduced in the early 1950s, many schedules included a blanket prohibition on destroying records created prior to January 1, 1921, without first offering them to NARA. In other words, agencies were required to offer the records to NARA before they destroyed them. When the new GRS was planned 60 years later, we figured that this requirement was no longer necessary. 1921 is pretty far back in history. But it turned out that we were wrong. So we have determined that the requirement is still necessary in 15 of those schedules, so we have reinstated it. For 11 of these schedules, it's just a simple, flat requirement. If an agency finds any records covered by any item in those schedules that's dated prior to 1921, you must first offer the records to NARA before you apply the disposition instructions in those schedules. Now, we say that with the caveat that NARA may choose not to accept the records. But the point is that prior to 1921, this is sort of the cutoff date where the standardization of administrative practices came into federal government. And records created prior to then may have additional value. So we ask that you give us that option of turning down the records. With the other four schedules, it's a little more complicated. There's the blanket pre-1921 prohibition individual items in those schedules, however, cannot be destroyed if the records are older than 1933, 1939, and 1950. The details for all of that are in the transmittal memo and in the schedules themselves. So I refer you to the transmittal for all of the details. I think I'm done. Okay. Let's go back to the Q&A slide, please. Hello. Back to the Q&A. Thank you. So if there are no more questions, we're going to move on to the next presenter. Remember, if you did not have the opportunity to ask your question during the individual Q&A session, you will have the opportunity to ask your question in the general Q&A at the end of the program. This is also, I'm going to take this time to remind everyone that if your microphone is active, please mute it. And with that, Patty, back to you. Thanks again, Jonathan. Now let's please welcome Lisa Harlampus, Director of Policy and Outreach. She'll be presenting on Digitization Regulation Updates. Lisa. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Jonathan. This is Lisa Harlampus. Before I get into my presentation, and I can't wait to talk to you about digitization and digitization regulations, I'm just going to take a brief moment to acknowledge all of the people who may be watching this bridge recording because they weren't able to dial in to the meeting today. I'm sorry, and for those of you in the meeting who maybe did not realize that we're having a little bit of technical issues being able to mute because unlike our normal bridge meetings, which generally get about 250 people, we have tripled that for today's event, and I hope that in August we'll take our lessons learned and be able to get even more people online able to participate real-time. So for those of you who weren't able to get in this month, look forward to our next bridge having you participate and participate slowly. So with that exciting update on real-time technical behind the scenes, I'll go ahead to the next slide and talk a little bit about digitization. And I was going to start by saying the last time I had a chance to talk to a bridge audience on digitization was back in April of 2019. And as you can see, we always record our sessions, and this session will be recorded and will be made available on our website through our YouTube channel. So you can look at what I said in April 2019 and you can compare it what I'm saying today in June of 2020. What we said back in there is we issued regulations for digitizing temporary federal records. And I remember actually just being very happy to be on stage and very happy to share that we were able to get that work accomplished and answer questions. And as a reminder, those regulations were very high level. They were intentionally conceived that way following our microform regulations, which are 36 CFR Part 1238. We had a small section that said in that regulation that these are the requirements, the standards, the validation, and the disposal. We also issued at that time and updates the GRS to explain how the GRS impacts, how the GRS coordinated with the regulation. So if you were able to follow the standards, validate your digitization process, you could dispose of the original source records and your digital copy, the digital version would now be your official record keeping copy. And I remember being happy to share that because the next day, I feel like it literally was the next day we turned around and we really continued our focus on developing the next regulation. Next slide, please. So since 2019, we have been working on the digitization standards for digitizing permanent federal records. And just as we did with our microfilm regulation, we knew these were going to be far more complex and far more detailed. So the box on the left side of the slide here that we're discussing is a preview of the information that will be coming in the new digitization standards for permanent records. We're going to have a part on how you prepare, and that includes a little physical control as well as intellectual control. We're going to have a section that describes project management and documentation, again, that you know what you're about to do. We have a section on file formats. We have some standards specifically related to permanent paper and photographic print records. We also describe what we're called permanent mixed media files. So what do you do when you see records of different formats? We've tried to be really clear about what's in this standard and what is going to come later. We'll have a section on metadata, a section on quality control, and a much longer section on what do we mean by validation and how did that fit with the GRS that will come out next. Is this going to cover everything? It's going to be done because I said it's subpart e-digitizing permanent federal records. I'm afraid to say it's not quite going to cover everything. It's going to cover paper-based records such as modern office paper, maps, charts, photos. But it's not going to cover film-based records such as negatives, audio cassettes, x-rays, or our old friend's microforms. If you're digitizing microforms, we know that we're going to have to do another set of standards to cover those records. These regulations are going to cover the wide majority, but it won't be everything. For those of you who prefer a more technical discussion versus my plain language saying film versus paper, these standards are going to cover records that have been digitized with a reflective digitization method. We're not covering records that need to be digitized with a transmissive digitization method. We see this regulation, this upcoming regulation as a very comprehensive package. We see it sort of as a total quality management regulation. We hope that by putting some real specificity with these different areas that agencies will be able to pull together, this is what I need to do when I'm digitizing my own records. This is what I need to do if I'm hiring a vendor to digitize records. We think that that's our intention. I said this in the past, and I'll say again, these standards are not coming from thin air. We are basing the standards. We pulled it together from a lot of – the digitizing standards have been pulled together from a lot of sources. One of our main sources for creating the standard we said, and we did use the Federal Agency Digital Guidance Initiative FADGI. If you want to preview because you're still interested and want to know more now, you can learn more about FADGI at their website, which is www.digitizationguidelines.gov. We think that these digitization regulations are really going to help us meet the NARA strategic plan. We think it's going to help us meet OMB NARA memo M1921. We recognize that if NARA is to be able to meet the goal of stop accepting paper permanent records and only accept electronic permanent records, these regulations are going to be a key factor in making that happen. And we really will have been – I'm going to go over a minimum of the comments we're receiving, but we're really trying to make this comprehensive or you'll see there's a lot that we'll be able to talk about with digitization. And I hope this is going to help be an important step in meeting those targets. That was a little preview of what's coming. On the right-hand side of the slide, I also wanted to point out, because it's all one rulemaking, we are going to have a second part to the rulemaking that will be an update to the CFR 1224 and 1225. We are also looking to be a little more specific in our regulations. In the past, the regulations said agencies must regularly review schedules. We're looking to develop some time frames and have a little more specificity about how often agencies will be reviewing their schedules. So that is also going to be coming your way. And if we can go to the next slide, I can give you a little more information about what coming your way means. This is a graphic that is currently on the National Archives website. It's a graphic that explains how NARA's regulation process works. And as you can see, there are four phases from initiating to proposing to commenting to actually issuing. The initiating box talks about the drivers. Why are we doing this work? And I think I said it before, but I'll recap. The reason we're working on our digitization regulations is in part the update to the law, the Federal Records Act was amended in 2014. And it said NARA will produce regulations to digitize federal records with an IAGE for disposal. So we've been working to comply with that law. And we've also been working really hard to make sure the regulations that we had developed would again meet the M1921 goals and that guidance that has come out from the administration and cannot from OMB and NARA. So where are we in this process? We definitely finished with the initiating. We knew we needed to have a regulation. We are in the proposing phase. And some of you may have heard a little bit more about regulations. In fact, I think this bridge meeting might be very interesting because we did draft the regulation and we did do the blue box under proposing that says submit to OMB for review and comment process. And that's where we are right now. In April, we sent the rulemaking package to OIRA and OIRA sent it out to agencies for internal review. So it's not been made publicly available yet, but it was sent out to agencies so they would have an opportunity to review the process and be part of our proposing section. We know that agencies, they had about two weeks to comment. So instead of just relying on OMB and OIRA to communicate, we also sent a message out to agency records officers specifically and the senior agency officials for records management, letting them know that this happened. So we tried to make sure that our community who cared tremendously about these standards knew they were happening and wouldn't miss the commenting period for this first commenting period. Some agencies requested an extension till May. And right now, we are still in that blue box. We are in the process of adjudicating the comments that we did receive. I can certainly share, we definitely heard from 18 agencies. We actually ended up having hundreds of comments to look at and we were addressing them all. And I know those comments are going to help make the next version of the regulation much better. It's always good when you write something for the first time to hear how people read it, they have questions or are we clear? So we are doing that blue box process and we expect to be at the last box of proposing by the end of summer. That will be the step when we take the comments, we have our new draft rule, and we will prepare to post it on the federal register. We're hoping, and I will say I double checked with our regulations liaison, so I wanted to give as accurate information as I can, she told me I could say tentatively I could say August. We should, because we are on the path and we should expect to have the federal register proposed sometime in August. I also will laugh, I know that it is hard. We're all working a little differently. There's a lot of agencies, we're all doing our processes remotely, are working with the way we work with the pandemic and that is true for the federal register office also. So I keep saying we have to show a little patience and a lot of perseverance. This has taken us longer than we would have liked it to have taken. But with a little patience and perseverance we should have out in August. This regulation will be out to the public so that everyone can see it and make comments on it, and we'll get the public comments and we'll look forward to getting that final rule out hopefully in this calendar year. And if not, then it will be as long as it takes us to get to the issuing phase. So how can you find out more information? How can you make sure you don't miss the big news when the next regulations are available for comment? I'd recommend following our blog, Records Express, we'll definitely talk about it there. And if you haven't done so already, you can go to our website and sign up for emails from our office. There's a link to make sure that when we send out AC memos or other emails you get a chance to see those regulations. So I'm afraid it's an update. I don't have the details at this point since things are still under debate. But I'd be very happy to answer any questions that I can on any part of the standard or anything else you have to ask. So, Jonathan, back to you. Thank you, Lisa. Okay, everyone. If you have questions for Lisa, please type them into the chat and I will read each in turn. And it looks like we have... All right. You'll need to mute your microphone, please. Sir, I don't know who's trying to get in, but it looks like you'll have to mute your microphone, please. All right. So we have one, let's see, one question from Scott Swiderski from Quality Associates. And he asks, Lisa, when will the 36 CFR, 1236 subpart E, be made available? You may have mentioned a date, but there is some interference on the call. Scott says this is critical guidance document for many of our clients. Thank you, Scott. That's a great question. And again, as putting on my outreach hat versus policy, I am sorry that there is a little bit of interference in call. The system is so overloaded, it's taking a little bit of time for people to be put on mute automatically. But like you said, we can only get better the next time. And that's actually my... So to repeat my question, or to repeat the answer, Scott, is the first... We expect the next version of the draft regulation to be made available in an August timeframe. We are running through the process where we are and we hope to have our work done by the end of July, so that OIRA and the Federal Register can do their part in August. It won't be the final. It will be the next draft. So there will be another public comment period. And for those of you who are familiar with how the Federal Register comment process works, it's at least a 45-day comment period. So the final version of that regulation should be out, depending on how long it takes us to adjudicate all the comments that we will receive when it goes out for public comment. And I look forward to receiving many good, thoughtful comments, because as you say, this is critical and we want it to be the best that it can be to meet the many, many goals that the digitization of permanent records have to meet. It has to be implementable. It has to be doable. There has to be a threshold so that we know we're preserving our history. Are we scanning records? We're not going to get the paper. So is the scan done well to document what we've done? And have we balanced all of the stakeholder interests? So we look forward to the August comment period, followed up by the final, which, like I said, we're hoping to have done by December. But, you know, hope springs eternal. All right. If there are no more questions, we're going to move on to the general Q&A. And remember, if you did not have the opportunity to ask your question during the individual Q&A session, you will have the opportunity to ask your question in the general Q&A right after this portion of the presentation. Okay, Patty, back to you. Thanks, Jonathan. So, okay, everyone, now we're going to move on to the general question and answer portion of the meeting. So once again, you'll need to write your questions in the chat box and be sure to identify who you are, what agency you're from, and to whom your question should be directed. So, okay, Jonathan, back to you. All right. Thank you, Patty. I'm just going to pause here. I'm going to wait for everyone to type in a question if they have it. And I will address each question in turn. But let's just hold for a few moments, and I'll wait for you to type in your questions. All right. And again, I'm going to ask everyone to mute their microphone. All right. Let's see. All right. We have one question from Michelle Trimineo. I apologize if I butchered your last name. She's writing from the Eastern District, Texas, U.S. Attorney's Office. She said, I had getting trouble connected and missed the first part of the conference. Is it possible for us to send the notes and info on email? Yes. Once we finish up this presentation, we're going to do an evaluation of some of the pros and cons of today's presentation. But we will send out the bridge presentation slides over email. But they'll also be available on the bridge site at archives.gov. And this is Lisa. We are also recording. And we will make the recording available so that you can either read the information or if you're a brave soul, you can watch the conference. You can watch the presentation again. All right. We have one question from Anthony Proctor from the Department of Function Affairs. Let's see. How can we receive updates and anything new from there without going onto the website to see any updates? Hey, Anthony. This is Lisa Harris-Lampus. I'd recommend if you're not going to the website, I'd recommend going to the Records Express blog and subscribing to it. That's one way to get a push. And the other way would be to sign up for emails. We have moved our platform so you can sign up to get emails, and then that will get pushed to you as well. So between following the blog and signing up for emails, those will be your pushes that you'll hear the latest and greatest from the Office of the Chief Records Officer, and you won't have to go to the website to see the changes. Hey, and this is Gordon Everett. And as for the Federal Records Centers, their reopenings, we will send that information out to the Records Officer from the Account Managers as the Records Centers open. All right. So we're going to pause and wait for a few more questions. And participants, if you're calling in via your telephone, please mute your microphone. Thank you. All right. I'm going to do one more call for questions from the audience. Go ahead and write it into the chat box. And then tell us who you are, where you're from, and to whom your question is directed. All right. Final call for anyone to write into the chat. I think Michael has catted us a question. Jonathan? Say again. Looks like we have a question from Michael. All right. I'm having difficulty loving this. All right. Let me. Okay. Michael Nguyen? Go ahead, Lisa. I should go ahead and read the question and answer if you'd like. Okay. So Michael, we've got a great question. What to do if you've not met the deadline of digitizing our records by 2022? So let me first say the deadline of 2022 says that the National Archives will no longer accept paper. It's not quite the same thing as saying you have to have digitized records by 2022. So if you're still digitizing permanent records that would be transferred to us, we would work with you on a case-by-case basis to sort of say, okay, well, you're doing your digitization. When will you be finished? And what would you be ready to transfer those permanent records to NARA? Otherwise, the permanent records would still remain in your custody and under your management, under your control, and you would have time to finish that. So to clarify, and I let my other colleagues jump in if I'm maybe answering the wrong flavor of the message, but the deadline is not to digitize. You need to do the digitization to meet the goal of being able to send permanent records to NARA. Unless, of course, you have, there is that exception in the M1921 memo that says, if you've got paper records and you send them to the Federal Records Center prior to 2022, NARA is going to take the paper version. We'll just take it from the Records Center and put it in the archives. Then digitization of those records is a NARA responsibility, something we would digitize to provide access in the future, but it wouldn't be the agency's responsibility to digitize those Federal Center records. And Gordon and Lawrence, if you'd like to. Yeah, this is Gordon and I would chime in on. Yeah, no, this is Gordon and I would say the same. If there's a concern, if you have, you know, the paper records, the Federal Records Centers will take those permanent records now, and you do not have to digitize those records. Those would be in your custody storing with your records and you still have access to them, but you wouldn't have to digitize those records. And this is Lawrence. I would just add that, as Cindy said, and when she was going over the information that we've been collecting with reporting, what we are really wanting to see and continue engagement with agencies is your progress towards these goals. So we want to hear from you if you're having challenges, concerns. Lisa mentioned the exceptions clause that is in M1921. So that is available, but we are hoping that agencies will be taking steps now to implement changes in workflows, processes, and digitization programs. But we really do want to hear from you about how you are making progress towards those goals, and then we can provide specific advice and guidance as you move forward. We know the devil is an implementation, and that is where we want to hear what is going on in your agencies and how we might be able to help with guidance that they use and other products, including training. Okay, everyone, if there are no more questions, we're going to close out the event. Addie, back to you. Thanks, Jonathan. So we would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our next bridge meeting will be Tuesday, August 18th, and there's August 18th, 2020. And you can find out more about the bridge meeting at the site indicated on our slide. And if you have any questions about bridge, please email us at rm.communicationsatnara.gov. That's rm.communicationsatnara.gov. Or just visit our bridge page at the URL displayed on the screen. Thank you, everyone, for participating in our first virtual bridge conference, and have a great day.