 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our bridge meeting for February 2024. My name is Ariane Robbenbach, and I will be serving as the moderator for today's meeting. As a reminder, the Office of Agency Services at the National Archives and Records Administration hosts these bimonthly records and information discussion group, or bridge, meetings to present information relating to federal records management. Bridge is co-produced by the Office of the Chief Records Officer for the United States and the Federal Records Center 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. Members are encouraged to ask questions by sending an email to rm.communications.nara.gov. Our staff will be monitoring this email box during today's 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. These are 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 questions 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 today's meeting by introducing Laurence Brewer, the chief records officer for the U.S. government. Good afternoon, Laurence. Thanks, Ariane. Appreciate those remarks in the introduction. And to everybody here, welcome to the last bridge meeting of the winter. When we meet again, it will be April and hopefully at least in the D.C. area, it will be sunny, it will be warm, the cherry blossoms will be in bloom, and it will be a completely different world than we have right now. We have a great meeting lined up for you and some good content that we want to discuss and brief on before we get into that. And the agenda, just a couple of reminders and deadlines that are coming up. Things I'm sure all of you are aware of, but I only get six times a year to talk to all of you, so I'm going to take every opportunity to remind you of the things that we all know are really important. The first is, if you are a new agency records officer or you're working with a brand new senior agency official for records management, please let us know who the individuals are who have been designated and follow the guidance in Nara Bolton, I believe it's 2017.02 for the formal designations of records officers in Say Arms. We really need to know the most current information, not only for how we engage with you on reporting, but also just to make sure that you're on our distribution list, and we have everything up to date so that we can stay in contact with you and your agency. Also related to that, if you are a new agency records officer and you do not have the agency records officer credential, please get in touch with us through your appraisal archivist, your regular point of contact, or through our own communications. We also have a records management training mailbox, which is RMT number one at Nara.gov. Again, that's RMT number one at Nara.gov so that we can connect with you and get you situated with the content related to the ARRO credential and make sure that you are up to date with that requirement. Also, I wanted to mention Capstone. If you are using the Capstone approach for electronic mail and other messages, there is a requirement to resubmit, and we want to make sure that every agency in the government, federal agency, is current and up to date with the requirement. So there are a number of Nara bulletins and memos that we've issued, also information on our website about Capstone and resubmission requirements. So please, if that's something that you're working on, it will be great to know if you are actually in the middle of working on it, or if you have completed the requirement, thank you very much. Finally, agency reporting. So I know all of you are very busy working on your records management self-assessment, the SAORM templates, and the maturity models. Just a reminder, the deadline is March 8th. We want to make sure that we have all of the reports in place. Ideally, the fourth piece, which was the data call for record series and systems, greater than five terabytes, that is a new template and report that is required this year. We would also like to get those in by March 8th. If you need more time for that, please let us know. We do not want the work that you're doing on those reports to hold up the submission of the standard templates we have, the RMSA, the maturity model, and the SAORM report. So if you have any concerns about submitting all four pieces in a timely fashion by March 8th, please get in touch with us at our reporting email address. So with that, why don't we flip the slide and we'll take a quick look at the agenda. We are going to have some Federal Record Center's program updates and a brief on ARKIS and the NextGen project. And then I will be back to talk about the semiannual report of records management oversight activities. And then we will close the meeting with some updates and some brief remarks about M2307 as we're all working towards the June 30th, 2024 goal. And we hope to have some discussion, talk about some communications we recently issued, and then see what questions, concerns and challenges that you all are having as you work towards that goal. But before we get into those pieces, it's my pleasure to introduce Jay Treanor, who is the Executive for Agency Services and Acting Chief Operating Officer for the National Archives, to provide some opening remarks and an introduction. Welcome, Jay. Thank you, Lawrence. Appreciate the opportunity to be here at Bridge. And like Lawrence, let's make it through this winter one and get to the spring one. So as Lawrence said, I'm Jay Treanor. Most of the time, I'm the Executive for Agency Services here at NARA, which includes the Office of the Chief Records Officer, the Federal Record Center program, the Office of Government Information Services, the National Declassification Center, and the Information Security Oversight Office, or ISOO. Currently, I'm also acting as the Chief Operating Officer, which brings the research services, presidential libraries and museums, public programs, and the Federal Register under my family, I guess. But today, I have the opportunity and the pleasure of welcoming Taysha Ford. Taysha was appointed as the Director of the Federal Record Center's program on January 14th. The FRCP became a revolving fund in FY2000, and Taysha is our third director, following David Weinberg and the late Gordon Everett. The FRCP is 40% of NARA staffing, and it's located in 17 facilities across the country from Boston to Seattle. But we have a very large presence here in the D.C. area with the Washington National Record Center, but also the National Personnel Record Center in St. Louis. We also service the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. So I think you would agree having an FRCP director in place is a pretty big deal. Taysha brings a wealth of experience to the role. She started with NARA in 2006 at the National Personnel Record Center, and eventually became the reference branch chief there at our Valmire facility, mostly dealing with the official personnel folders, and that allowed her to gain some supervisory and customer service experience. In 2016, she actually joined my staff in agency services as a management analyst, dealing with a wide variety of activities, but focusing a lot on workplace culture and also customer service across all five programs in agency services. In 2021, she became the director of the executive secretariat division in the Office of the Chief of Staff within the Office of the Archivist here at NARA, and that allowed her to collaborate on a variety of activities agency-wide. So she's brought a lot of her own, obviously, talent and skills and knowledge, but made use of a lot of different opportunities here at NARA to prepare herself to become the director of the Federal Record Center program. And I tell a small story that she doesn't like, but I do. I actually met Taysha shortly after she joined NARA. I was on a visit to the National Personnel Record Center, and a manager there at the time introduced me and said, this is Taysha. One day, we'll all be working for her. And as you can see, it's becoming very close to being a reality. So if something happens to me, point the authorities towards Taysha. With that, we can move to the next slide. And please join me in welcoming the new director of the Federal Record Center program, Taysha Ford. Thank you so much, Jay, for the warm welcome and introduction. And you're right about that story. But thank you. I am happy to be here today with some brief updates, program-wide updates, for the Federal Record Center program. The physical move of records from Fort Worth's Warehouse 9 NX wrapped up this week, more than 220 trucks ship slightly over 300,000 cubic feet of materials to the LaNexa FRC. And currently, NARA is working on demolishing the shelves at the NX, which is the exciting part of the project. And we are still on track to return the property to GSA by the end of April 2024. The FRCP has received a significant number of new transfers, amounting to over 307,000 cubic feet during FY24. Currently, we have close to 13,000 transfers that are in approved status, covering a little over 243,000 cubic feet. Additionally, we have 680 transfer requests pending, which are under review by the FRCP specialists. As the M2307 airline approaches, we will continue to work with customers to process SF-135s and schedule retirements through June 30th, 2024. If your agency is not covered by an exception, I would highly recommend encourage you to be prepared to have all pending transfer requests entered into ARCIS by the end of June. We are keeping busy and working through our disposal backlogs across the FRCP. We have destroyed a little over 666,000 cubic feet of materials since October 1. And our total disposal backlog now stands at around 889,000 cubic feet. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to Arthur Hawkins, who has recently been accepted or appointed as the director of our Customer Relationship Management Team. Many of you are familiar with ART, who is a fantastic person and a pleasure to work with. His appointment is a significant asset to our management team, and we are thrilled to have him on board with us. Lastly, our finance department is currently focusing on ensuring that all IAAs are signed and reflected on invoices. If you have any pending IAAs, please submit them to us for processing. We are currently working on integrating the GM voicing with our existing accounting systems, and Arthur will provide an update on the progress later this fiscal year. I will now turn it over to Joseph Stewart, the director of policy projects and management controls for the FRCP, who is here to discuss the ARCIS Next GM project. Good afternoon, everyone. As Tasia said, I'm Joseph Stewart. I'm the director over AFOP or Policy Projects and Management Controls for the FRCP. I'm here today to discuss the project that we're working on to replace the legacy ARCIS system with a next-generational platform. Next slide, please. So what we're looking at is a transition from our legacy system, which is an on-premise server-based platform to a new cloud-based application. We're moving or migrating to away from the Oracle-based platform over to a new Salesforce-based application, and it's going to be a lift-and-shift migration of both the data and the functions for all of ARCIS's submodules, which there are 40 of them. The intended outcomes, we're looking at being in a cloud-based environment, which will increase system reliability and stability. There will also be, with the new platform, increased system security and a more dynamic platform, which is easier to both update and enhance than the current generation. Next slide. For the project timeline, the contract has been awarded and the vendor onboarded, which is Cap Gemini. We held the project kickoff in October of 2023, and following the kickoff, we held a four-month discovery period from October to 23 to January 2024. During that discovery period with the vendor, we held demonstrations of all legacy ARCIS functions in both the employee and customer portals, and we held site visits at Lenexa, Lee Summit, Kansas City, and NPRC. With the overall goal of the discovery period was to acclimate Cap Gemini to the ARCIS environment and prepare them for entering into the development phase. Speaking of the development phase, we're using an agile development approach, which is going to consist of a series of three week development sprint cycles. The first development sprint, sprint zero, began on February 5th, with that sprint being more of a acclimateing the programmers to the requirements and getting everything set up. The following sprints, Sprint one starts next week, and we will continue to have development sprints through to our target completion of late 2025 calendar year. The initial deployment of ARCIS NextGen will be what is called a minimally viable product or MVP. This means that the first iteration of ARCIS NextGen will be a no frills functions only at launch with additional features being added after the initial deployment. Next slide. So prior to deployment, we're going to seek out early adopters for demos of customer functions and processes during the development process itself. This is designed to provide familiarity to the adopters of what the new systems look, feel and features, and also to elicit customer feedback during the development process. During the deployment itself, it is currently planned that we're going to do a phase transition for both the FRC and agency customers, which means we're planning for a period of time of running dual systems between legacy and next gen as we migrate users off of the old platform and onto the new. Next slide. So questions. Thank you, Joseph. We do have a couple of questions that have come in. We're moving to the new version of ARCIS help address recent system outages and with being able to log into the system. Yes. So our legacy system is over 15 years old and is approaching the end of its life. And a lot of its equipment is on on-site premise at Archives 2. And if there is an outage there, it can affect the entire system. The idea is with it going to a cloud-based approach is that we'll have increased ability and redundancy with ARCIS being hosted at multiple servers in the cloud environment. So the overall goal with that is that being in the cloud it will have more reliability and eliminate the system issues that we've been having as of late. Thank you. Will users be able to perform all of their current tasks in the new system when it first launches? Yes. So I mentioned that the system when it first launches will MVP, minimally viable product. However, the goal with MVP is that all current functions will be included in the system. As I said, it's going to be no frills. So it could be that the functions will be at their most basic levels. But after the initial launch, we're already looking at follow-on development projects to add further enhancements to the next-gen platform moving forward. Thank you. When ARCIS next-gen is released, will the format of transfer numbers change like when we transferred from NARS-5 to ARCIS? No. The record transfer format will remain the same. And here's a couple of, for lack of a better word, customer service kinds of comments. I'll tell them and you can comment. I was just in ARCIS an hour ago. The responsiveness needs to be improved. There are no immediate, for example, no immediate response after clicking an ARCIS option. I would love ARCIS next-gen to have a reporting option with an export to Excel or CSV file. So on the responsiveness, once again, the desired outcome is that with a cloud-based environment that the overall speed and responsiveness will be greater than what our current environment is with the on-prem servers. The other question... Or the other comment was about an option to export to Excel or another common format. Yeah. With the next-gen, we're already... We have requirements in place for being able to export to both CSV and PDF outputs. So with CSV, you'll be able to export into Excel. There was another comment in the other direction. All of our just someone noting that all of their cloud apps have been way better, more responsive, and accommodate teleworking and deployment way better. So echoing there, I think we're moving in the right direction here. Yeah. I think that's everything we have now. Joe, so hang around. We'll see if any come in. We'll address those at the end of the meeting. All right. Thank you for the presentation. And now I'd like to go back to Laurence. All right. Thanks, Ariane. Before I get started, I want to convey my own congratulations to Taysha. I'm looking forward to co-hosting these meetings as we go forward. And we're going back to, for those who remember the model where we alternated and basically took turns engaging with all of you in hosting the meetings. And I'm looking forward to working with you on that, Taysha. Congratulations again. And we flip the slide. I just want to talk for a few minutes about our semiannual records management oversight report. It's not an inspection or an assessment. So I think at times it might get overlooked. But we just released it this week. I'll have a link for you and we'll put a link to the report in chat. But it's really an important tool that we use, and I guess we could flip the slide now, to really engage with all of you and in particular, the senior agency officials for records management. Because one of the things we do twice a year, we create this very short report. It's only a couple of pages. And we try and target it to the senior agency officials with recommendations for executive action based on all of the oversight inspections, assessments, and reporting work that we do every year. So it is a great summary for the kinds of trends and themes that we are seeing when we're out doing oversight work. And I encourage you all to take a look at it. But it I think is a good tool for all of you and for us here at NARA to communicate with the senior agency officials for records management about some of the higher level strategic priorities and things that we're seeing that we feel are potential risks and things that should be addressed in agency records management programs. So as you can see, the most recent report covers the second half of 2023. And from our oversight work in the last six month period, we were obviously focusing on M2307. So as we were doing inspections and assessments, we're really looking at how well electronic records management is going within agencies, how the transformation and transition to electronic records processes is working, looking specifically at electronic mail, electronic messages. And specifically during this last period, we did an assessment on managing social media records. So in addition to looking at the kinds of things that we always look at, which is email and other messages, we did focus a little bit more on the management of social media records. So you could see in terms of the recommendations, and there are many more recommendations and action items that are in the report, just wanted to highlight a couple of them, because they always seem to crop up when we are doing our oversight work. And starting with the middle one, one of those such items is establishing strategic plans and aligning them with agency information resource management plans. It's something we've looked at for years. We always wanted to encourage agencies as they're working with the Office of the CIO or other senior agency officials to make sure that records management is factored in as a part of those other overarching strategic plans. We also, through our work in doing some system audits on email and calendar systems, we identified some recommendations around reviewing and refining procedures to make sure that there are adequate records management controls incorporated into agency email and calendaring systems. It's something we took a somewhat deep dive into our system audit that we published on our website last year. And it's something that we're going to keep looking at as we do more oversight on the kinds of systems that are maintaining records, and specifically in this case email records. We also, because we focused on social media, we did have some recommendations in this report on promoting policies and procedures just to make sure that agencies are aware of the challenges, records management implications around managing social media records and accounts. I also wanted to highlight on this slide, one of the things that we do in this semiannual report is also talk about some of the work that's in progress and the work that is on the short-term horizon, things that we're going to be working on in the month following the release of this report. So I'm highlighting here, and it's noted in the report and a few other items as well, that we are going to continue to focus on M2307, especially since the reporting period is closing on March 8th, we're going to be taking a close look at that and see how that informs what oversight work we may need to do. But then we are going to specifically look at two topics that we've been wanting to do for some time. One is a system audit on databases and records management controls related to databases that contain significant records. And there are a number of requirements as you know in the CFR around electronic systems and EIS. And we're going to do a system audit with a number of agencies on what those controls look like or our assessment of those controls and hopefully develop some recommendations for all agencies on databases and database controls. And then also one thing that I think we've heard from all of you that I think this is going to be very useful is doing a report on safeguards related to unauthorized disposition. One of the things that is a concern certainly for me and others you know in my office, the number of unauthorized disposition cases continues to increase each year. And we saw a significant increase in unauthorized disposition cases last year as opposed to two years ago where it more than doubled in the amount of unauthorized disposition cases that we've seen. So one of the things that we're going to try and do with this activity is engage with agencies to identify some of the best practices, some of the challenges related to establishing safeguards to prevent cases of unauthorized disposition from occurring. So we're going to be looking very closely at the policies, procedures, controls that are in place. And then from all of that work develop some recommendations and some findings that we can share with all of you. So stay tuned for that and the other reports that I mentioned that will be coming out in FY24. So that essentially is in a nutshell of you know where we are with oversight and I really just wanted to highlight this because you know it is a brief report that we can have discussions with you know our senior agency officials and others in in our own agencies about some of the things that are priorities and pressing matters. And I encourage you to take a look and give us some feedback. Let us know if this helps you if you're if you're using this report or if there's a way that we can make this report even better. You know I'd love to hear from you and get your take on the usefulness of this report as we continue to create it and try to get it in front of the senior agency officials in all of your agencies. So with that I will stop that is my one slide and I'll see if anybody has any questions about not just the report itself but what we are doing in oversight and reporting. Lawrence I don't see anything that has come in. Okay so far so hopefully everybody is pondering that and thinking of questions and we will be here for a while longer so we'll see if we have some time at the end for questions. Okay well we can flip the slide and again okay. And you're up again. I'm up again. It's almost like we planned it that way right. So I wanted to have this meeting and really start you know digging into some topics issues concerns related to M2307 you know as as you all I'm sure are painfully aware we have just a couple of meetings before we hit the June 30th deadline and I want first to be able to talk about some of the things that we are doing but then also have some space in this meeting before we close to hear where you are have some discussion about some of the steps that you're taking to comply with the June 30th 2024 deadline and then see what we need to work on. See where we can help with resources and see what feedback you have for us you know on things that we can be focusing on as we get into the home stretch before we reach the deadline. So we flip the slide. I wanted to highlight a couple of things first. We've issued a couple of AC memos. The first one 14 2024 covered some information around federal record centers related to how we're going to handle accretions. 17 2024 was you know a memo more focused on physical transfers direct offers and how we're going to handle them with the M2307 deadline coming essentially in a nutshell. If you get your TRs in and the paperwork in before the deadline then you're good and we'll be able to handle those and process those in time. But there's a lot of you know information in these two memos which we have been hearing of late that we wanted to get out to you sooner rather than later. The third memo here is one I wanted to highlight because we just sent it out this morning and it's something that I think hopefully you will agree is an opportunity for all of us to spend more time talking about where all of us are in our work to transition to electronic records. So one of the things that we are doing and announcing this morning is that we will have four open office hours with the first one scheduled for March 1st. There won't really be agendas for these meetings. So you can attend one. You can attend all of them. The idea is to have a unstructured discussion with people in attendance from my office, from the Office of the Federal Record Centers program, from the Office of Research Services to engage with all of you to answer and hopefully talk through some of the questions, concerns that you have as we all work towards successfully meeting the goals of the memo. So I encourage you to take a look at that memo. The times are there. There's information on signing up and joining the sessions and we look forward to seeing you there and talking in more detail about the work that is going on in your agency. So the fourth thing on the slide I do want to mention hopefully we'll have more information coming out soon. We are planning to hold an in-person meeting with the senior agency officials for records management and agency records officers right now that is tentatively planned for April. We're trying to nail down some final logistics so that we can send out a save the day to all of you. But the idea here is to not only be able to talk to all of the agency say arms about the importance of meeting the goals of M2307 but we also want to be able to share some of the best practices that are happening within some agencies who are doing this important work. So we hope to have something out to you all soon in terms of a save the date and more information about when this is going to happen in D.C. at Archives 1 in April. So before we open it up I wanted to also mention a couple general things about M2307 and the work that we're doing. So I know we are all working hard on it and one of the things that I have said before and I wanted to reiterate here is that our goal and our expectation here at the National Archives and certainly from OMB as well is that we want to see agencies successfully meet the goal. But I do want to note you know as we've gone through this exercise before with M1218 and M1921 our focus is really on maturity and on progress. We know every agency is starting from a different place every agency has different resources to get the work done and what we want is to be able to see that maturity that progress towards achieving this goal. So if we all don't meet the goal by June 30th 2024 which I hope is not the case but the reality is that likely is going to be true we want to be able to hear from all of you and be able to engage with those of you who don't and talk about the progress you have made and the plans that you have in place to become compliant. So I think from that perspective we know after June 30th 2024 the transition to electronic records doesn't stop. We are all going to continue to work on it and there's always going to be work to do as we continue to mature our processes and our record keeping abilities to identify capture schedule maintain and preserve electronic records. So with that in mind we know that for those of you who you know are struggling with some particular series or particular systems there may be a need to get in touch with us now before the deadline about an exception and we have reviewed and improved a number of exceptions for agencies and one of the things that I want to encourage you all to take into consideration is get your if you're working on an exception request or a comprehensive agency request for exceptions around multiple series or systems please get in touch with sooner rather than later the one thing that I fear and it keeps me up at night sometimes is that there will be hundreds of exceptions coming into the National Archives on June 29th and June 30th and I don't want to see that happen. I encourage you all to reach out to us even even now if it's something that you're considering and something that you are working on we can help you we can advise you we can work with you on the requirements for what we believe would you know comprise a a good request for an exception because there are a number of elements that we look for when we review them so please don't wait to the last minute if you know this is something that you're going to be engaging with us please get in touch with us sooner rather than later and I think you know I think those are the key points I appreciate all the hard work that you're doing if there aren't any questions or challenges that you're having please get in touch with us we'd like to you know work with you be aware and be able to support you as you know we help you hopefully solve some of those challenges that that you're having so with that I'm going to stop talking and open it up to all of you to see if there's anything you want to share about where you are success stories challenges things that may be of interest to other agencies that you know problems you may have solved or if there's something that you want to talk to us about in terms of like needed resources or guidance we'd love to hear it so I will pause and I'll see if there's anything coming in and in the meantime if you have anything you want offer please you know post it in the chat thanks Lawrence oh we'll start with the usual softball the usual questions um will the deadline be extended yeah I think I addressed that the deadline is not going to be extended so you know we know in M19-21 we extended it there were the extenuating circumstances around COVID that had an impact on all of us and how we were approaching the deadline we did get the extension but there's not going to be another extension and I think that's why I felt like it was important to say this is where we are right now it's about progress the work doesn't stop on June 30th so we're going to have to keep working on this but we want to try by June 30th to get all agencies as compliant as possible if not fully compliant can I submit an exception request after the deadline yes again to that same point you know there's certainly going to be instances where you know you you come across you know bodies of records series of records which you may not have been aware of or newly created and they may not be electronic things do have a way of turning up um and you know it could also be a situation where you know we we just you know you just didn't have the time to get your exception package in again that's an area where if you talk to us ahead of time we can work with you on it but we fully expect to be reviewing and engaging with agencies about exceptions and exception requests after the deadline here's one that came in is there or will there be an opportunity to reconsider the NARA waiver for agency record center closure um so I don't you know the reconsider part maybe is throwing me a little bit but if this is a question about exceptions um you know certainly that requirement about closing agency operator record centers is is still in effect um and if there is a business reason why you believe your agency needs an exception to that requirement then again that's something where you need to reach out to us you know through the guidance that is in the NARA bulletin where we talk about exceptions in the process for submitting exceptions um once we do decide an exception the exceptions go through a rigorous process where it gets reviewed within NARA it gets reviewed by OMB um and then ultimately reviewed by the Archivist the United States um it is final at that point that you know there's no reconsidering or appeals process related to an exception and that's why we need to have discussions before it gets to that formal review process to make sure that we've talked through all the issues make sure that the justifications are there and and adequate um because once we do move it forward the decision is uh basically final and as as it stands okay is it acceptable to enter the information or a transfer or direct offer into the system presumably ERA while the records are being digitized I have heard that this is acceptable and if notified that the FRC or NARA location is ready for the shipment we can notify and be moved down on the waiting list okay so um I'll start and I think Lisa uh it's been uh involved in a lot of these issues uh related digitization should be want to chime in but um yeah I mean similar to my previous response I mean if you are digitizing permanent records according to the new standards and the rags you do not need to get those records to NARA before the deadline I mean the goal is you know transfer electronic but you know if you have paper records we won't be taking those after the deadline so those would need to be transferred or the paperwork would need to be done before the deadline and I'll just real quick add that you may this might be a good conversation to have offline and you can start having that conversation by emailing RM standards because as you read that question Ariane I was wondering okay if I hear this right somebody is digitizing records and somebody wants to make a direct offer of records to NARA so why are you digitizing are you creating like an access copy for yourself and you want to send us the analog records that has to happen by June 30th or at least the transfer request has to be in place in the ERA 2.0 are you digitizing records and you want to send the digitized version to us then it's a question of which standard are you using and if they're not compliant with the NARA standards we want to have a conversation about getting a record schedule to cover that electronic transfer so let's have that conversation and please email us at rmstandards at nara.gov and my team and I will get you pointed in the right start and that's my answer to many of these questions go ahead and email us and we'll follow up with you thank you yeah and and we'll you know be able to follow up and have you know deeper dives and when we do the open office hours I mean that's really what the intent of those meetings are is to to really get into some of the details around some of the issues I mean this is sort of like an intro and a preview for what those meetings are going to be like but yeah I mean if you send us emails about questions we can be better prepared to have that those those open office hours meetings and and get you the answers you need I think here's an example of one of those questions I don't know if we want to tackle it here we have records not slated to go to NARA until 2027 but that should have already been in an FRC is it sufficient to get them queued up to go to the FRC's before June 30th so yeah I mean I guess this gets into you know the the transfer questions and you know and the answer is you know if the records you know whether they're scheduled or not if you get your your your transfer request and the paperwork done before June 30th you should be fine and then we can worry about the physical transfer after that but that's the goal okay now we have a couple of let me call on Joe and the FRC program we do have a couple of questions that have trickled in after you guys were or after we moved on will the no frills release include the ability to perform reference requests yes reference request and what all all the the current you know functions which include you know record transfer reference request the CPDM is all planned to be within the the first iteration or the MVP when requesting files that are currently stored at the FRC's would the reference request change or would it be the same so the overall look and feel of how the system will be will be you know different from the legacy platform uh which is like over 15 years old so I mean there'll be a lot of you know changes in that but the the overall steps and processes for submitting a reference request will be the same it'll just be in a different package okay here's another one how can someone sign up to be an early adopter for your testing um we'll be working with the customer relation managers and AFC to reach out to agencies for early adopters here in in the coming months so it looks like you have a couple of volunteers for that will there be expanded administrative functions for federal agencies who have gone arcus commercial excuse me who have gone arcus customer portal only in arcus next gen uh so with the mvp launch arcus next gen will have the same administrative functions and features for federal agency admins and super admins uh that they're so that they're able to perform the same duties that they are able to in the system now uh in uh later development we may be able to you expand upon that capability but at the very least we're going to have them be able to do what they are very able to today i'm just looking through i think those of the arcus related questions joe um shift back over to laurence and lisa maybe um will the open office hour sessions include discussions of difficulties and complying with the new permanent permanent records digitization standards i'm sure lisa wants that one i do like i'm coming back on camera i i do and the answer is yes because these are sessions we're not presenting any new content these was our idea that the meetings we've had in webinars and that we're having in bridge have been really rich uh we've been able to have good back and forth and we want to do more of that as the deadline gets closer so if you ask that question we will have narah staff on hand from a variety of offices and i hope we'll be able to have a good dialogue i'm also hoping that out of those office hours if there's a really good conversation it becomes clear that we haven't been clear in our communications i'll continue to do what we've done before i'm sort of writing out ac memos where i can put things in writing get it cleared internally and get you a written answer in addition to our verbal answers that we'll have during those discussions uh so i expect the content will vary on each session depending on what people want to ask we'll do them one hour at a time and uh any questions we don't get to we'll we'll collect and still try to answer so i'm looking forward to these open office hours i hope they'll be as beneficial to you as as we expect we had a question what are the latest procedures on transferring permanent electronic records do the procedures include technical dimensions such as checksums i guess i could take that one just you know to refer um all those who have this question to our accessioning web page for electronic records we could drop it in the chat but there's you know if you're looking for procedures in the details on you know how to do accessioning and transfers um this is the place to go on our website um and it will cover you know the various um you know not only procedures but also points of contact that and email boxes that you would need to get the information on um anything related to for example technical dimensions such as checksums i here's another question i assume it is an expectation or requirement that a federal contractor submit an exception request through their agency correct yeah i would say yes you know we want we want the request um per the guidance to come from the agencies senior agency official for records management um the specifics on the process or in the narra bolton um i forget the i forget the number someone can drop it in the chat where we do talk about um exceptions and the requirements related to but yeah it needs to come from officially and formally from the senior agency official for records management for the agency and that's narra bolton 2021 2021 that's the one still our current guidance on exceptions so and on that subject 2021 mentions agency should submit one exception request package to the requirements in them 1921 is it fair to assume a federal agency has one shot to produce this package so i mean we said that because you know we're trying to uh i think make it easier or all around i mean we don't want to have to deal you know with onesies and twosies coming from agencies we would like agencies and prefer that agencies think about you know a comprehensive submission that doesn't mean that if something comes up you know after you've done that work that you couldn't then submit a follow-up exception or if it hasn't been yet approved add that to the request that we have in hand but you know it's really more um something that we put in the guidance as as a practical consideration to to try and uh ensure that agencies are thinking about record series and systems across the agency um identifying where the gaps and where the risks are and where the exceptions need to be and then we could consider it all as one package request but no we we fully understand that there's going to be in a lot of cases other exceptions that are going to be coming in from those agencies just as things are uncovered or as we go one in time and i wanted to add we've been having conversations about the difference of writing a comprehensive exception request where i'm going to need to continue to using federal record services uh storage services until we modernize versus i've found a box of valuable permanent records that should have been transferred to nara already or it's a small collection or a small series of records in which case we're expecting to use the scheduling process so i would um we can have those conversations with your appraisal archivist about should i write a specific schedule because this record has intrinsic value versus going through and digitizing it and sending it to nara um sending it to that way sending it directly to nara that way so there's sort of like the big picture in the little picture and i also wanted to share as a response to that answer it's not like you just have one shot with that one exception because if we have questions about it or we want we've been having dialogues back and forth with agencies before we submit them to our executives or a few before we submit them to o and b so we want to make sure we understand the breadth of the package so if you were like i think this is good but i may have some more questions we can um my office is tracking exceptions and we'll have that conversation with you so you don't have to hit the submit button just once you know email it to us and that's then we walk away we'll talk so here's a question uh lauren's recommended reaching out if we may be planning to submit an exception prior to the deadline we are reviewing and discussing with our legal counsel currently but believe that we may need to submit an exception who should i reach out to so yeah thanks um so we have a mailbox rmstandards at nara.gov um there's also information in narbolton 2021 the one that lisa just mentioned which covers exceptions but we're trying to to use um that dedicated mailbox rmstandards all together at nara.gov um specifically for requests and follow-up and engagement around exceptions so and uh these are a couple arcus questions so called joseph backup yep um will there be dashboards and status charts in arcus next gen to assist federal agencies administration super administrators uh so with the mvp launch uh there or we won't have any additional reporting capabilities uh than what we have you know currently but with the flexibility of the new platform you know we'll have the ability to you know develop additional you know reports and uh and the like in the later development uh efforts post mvp will the new arcus system have reporting capabilities i know we touched on that earlier that's yeah pretty much all the same as as the previous question uh with the mvp we're we're looking for the basic functionality that uh and you know features that we have now uh to be moved over uh but with it going to sales force and you know a new platform uh the the idea is that it'll be easier for us to you'll be able to develop additional features you know uh in in later development you know post the uh the initial launch so here's one i i'm an i am our records officer with the arcus account but recently found out other personnel in my organization have been requesting records on their own how do i find out who has that ability within my organization uh that's a a current arcus question uh i'd reach out to the arcus help desk and we'd be able to track down you know uh you know that information i'm just looking through the list to see if there's any more i think those are the for now those are the arcus related questions okay thank you here's one will the open office hour sessions be recorded and posted so we can benefit from sessions we do not attend no we are not planning on recording them i mean we really want to you know make sure that people can speak freely that you know it's going to be disjointed it's going to be unstructured it's not the kind of thing you know like what we're doing today or if we're doing a formal presentation where we want to record it because we're you know conveying and communicating you know very specific information i mean this is not that this is you know and a very informal discussion which we didn't feel like would benefit from a recording we will you know be taking notes and certainly we're going to be capturing the feedback and we'll be able to talk about you know some of the things that we've learned at you know our upcoming bridge meetings we got a question on how to submit exception requests all of that is covered in the nar bulletin 2021 i believe yes i'm new to my a i'm new to my agency records officer role for a small agency who where or who do i speak to about getting resources to help with the deadline so i you know we always try and encourage you know new agency records officers for one and i mentioned in the beginning make sure you you reach out to us with the formal designation so that we have your your name your designation your agency and your contact information so we can you know most importantly get you on our distribution less make sure you're getting the information that we're sending out the memos the bulletins the blog posts um and we want to get you you know connected with our training program to make sure that you have access to the content and the agency records officer credential program that is the foundational piece that as a records officer covers your duties responsibilities and hopefully set you up for success in your new role i'd also encourage you to reach out to your assigned appraisal archivist and you know once we have the designation we can make that connection and that's a good jumping off point to talk about you know the status of schedules um answer any technical assistance questions related to records management and then we can find out you know what other connections we can make you know to support you in your new role thank you laurence i think there's here's one um if requests are approved in e r a where nar has accepted the offer of records by june 30th is there a time range allowed to get them to the nar facility similar to the 90-day window for frcs this is lisa i think i have the answer to that question because i'm the one who talked with research services to write that memo they uh specifically did not put a time limit on like how long for the physical transfer so it's an e r a direct offer get the direct offer in by june 30th and then the processing of that and then the actual coordination of the logistics between getting records from your agency to our stacks is something research services will have a continued discussion for so they did not there's no like you have to make the transfer 90 days after you submit the tr in e r a okay and we do have a comment um not on a different subject is there any new nar guidance regarding unidentified anomalous phenomenon records from the ac 13 2024 memo given the october 2024 deadline for that so yeah thanks for that question um we we are working with our colleagues in in research services it's sort of you know an effort you know as the as the memo indicated that we're working together on um research services has the lead on working on the that mandate which was you know codified in law um we will uh be sharing more guidance as it's developed and for now if you have any specific questions you can send them to us via the r m dot communications mailbox that we typically use to communicate with you on and it's right there up on the screen i'm going through the list and colleagues help me if i'm missing anything but i think we've covered all the questions at this time i would agree it looks like we have and we can wait a few seconds to see if anything pops up in youtube here's one that says i'd like to thank the nar training development team for creating and posting the new micro learning lesson on intrinsic value great that's great to hear we certainly expect to be doing more and more content and micro learnings you know i know we're all busy we all you know have limited time to you know to read very long reports but the micro learnings are really nice modules where we can really get to the point about you know topics that that you're interested in and hopefully provided in a way that you can reuse it repurpose it within your agency as well here's one where do you know where do you know where do duly created apps at the agency level fall in regulating of eis since most do collect information i think that's a question we may need more information about yes i mean other than cfr requirements related to you know systems information systems that maintain records and probably would need to know a little bit more about the issue and in general the requirements we have is part of our firme work which is our our electronic records monetization initiative has the requirements for managing electronic electronic records electronically courted information so if your agency is developing new apps which is collecting information so it can accomplish its mission now i would look at that and say yes that that information that was collected in that app is a meets the threshold of a federal record and then we have those requirements to help determine how to manage that so that is a high level theoretical answer but if you have more specifics please email us and we'd be happy to think about it and maybe point you in a little more direction thank you i'll do one last round for last call i don't i don't not seeing any i think laurance you can play us out next slide all right so thank you all for for joining um thank you for the questions thank you for the feedback and um please keep in mind i mean we're we're here to to help support answer questions the best extent we can um i encourage you to participate in the open office hours you know certainly you know as we get into april in may um you know more questions got to come up and we want to have an opportunity to be able to engage with you and learn from you about some of the challenges that you're facing um so i will hopefully see a lot of you there until uh our next meeting um where we will all get together uh where we can talk about you know the results of some of those meetings um our next bridge meetings you see is april 9th um same time um and you know we will be in touch soon with you know what the agenda is and how they're shaping up but as always if you have ideas for topics or presentations or if you or your agency is interested in presenting a bridge and maybe talking about some piece or some story or some activity perhaps related to m2307 and you know wanting to share that with everybody else at the next bridge meeting or an upcoming bridge meeting in june um please let us know we would we would love to be able to accommodate that and share the stage with with any of you who are doing good work um in records management um out there in the community so again thank you all for attending and uh we will see you at the open office hours and at our next bridge meeting in april have a great day everyone