 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our bridge meeting for April 2024. My name is Ari and Robin box 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 and with an open forum at the end of each meeting to ask questions of the presenters or of any related federal records management topic of interest. Viewers are encouraged to ask questions by sending an email to rm.communications at narra.gov. Our staff is monitoring this email during this email box during the meeting. You're 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 today. Copies of the presentation slides used today will be posted on the bridge page of the Archives website. That web page is also where you'll find the links and information about previous and upcoming bridge meetings. If you have general comments about bridge or suggestions for future topics, you can use that same email address rm.communications at narra.gov to pass these along to us. We welcome your feedback. Next slide, please. With that, here's the agenda for today's meeting. We'll have opening remarks from both Lawrence Brewer and Tayshia Ford, along with updates for FRC customers from Arthur Hawkins, followed by a summary of our open out for towers. Now I would like to start by introducing Lawrence Brewer the chief records officer for the United States government. Good afternoon Lawrence. Good afternoon, Aran. And thank you for setting the stage and giving us that overview of the agenda. It's a little bit of a different agenda. It should be fun. It's going to be much more conversational, much more discussion as we try and debrief some of the conversations we've had around M2307 and some of the questions that still keep coming our way. So, well, we're going to walk through that and hopefully have some more robust discussion time permitting at the end of the program. But before we get to that, I have a couple of updates I wanted to share with all of you, just a few quick things. First, and this is very exciting news next Tuesday, we will be having our first meeting of senior agency officials for records management and records officers at archives one in DC and on the gallon theater. And this will be the first meeting I think we've had in close to five years because of the pandemic and the ability to be able to get everybody together in person. Because yes, it will be in person only. So we have an agenda as you might guess is focused on M2307. And we'll be talking about the responsibilities and the roles that the senior agency officials for records management have in driving the change needed to transform and transition to electronic records. So we'll be talking about the perspective from NARA, but we will also be joined by our friends at the Department of State to talk about the best practices and the things that they are working on there at the department. With respect to the transition and M2307. So we will certainly I'm sure at later bridge meetings be able to talk about some of the things that you know transpired the meeting next week and share some of the highlights of the conversation that I'm sure is going to have. Also, related M2307 I also wanted to let you know that as the annual reporting period has closed. And all of the data is mostly collected. We are now working on our analysis and developing the consolidated report. So just wanted to give you a heads up on that and the data that we're going to be able to share from all of you in terms of where you are with your maturity with your progress on the requirements and M2307. And we are still planning on having that consolidated report out this summer. Also released this month. I just wanted to give you a heads up and point you in the direction of our latest records management assessment, which we did on safeguards related to unauthorized disposition cases. Again, it's up on our website. So I encourage you to take a look. There's a lot of really good information about what we've learned from a number of agencies that we engage with to identify, you know, what are the things that they put in place to make sure that unauthorized disposition instances don't reoccur. And records are well managed and protected from future UDs. And then finally, in interesting news, there is a new bill that has passed out of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in the Senate. It is bipartisan that covers strengthening oversight of the Federal Records Act. So it is very specific language. We've seen iterations of this bill over the past couple of years, but this is the first time that that bill has passed out of the committee. And it covers a number of things related to oversight and some reforms that they are proposing to the Federal Records Act, specifically around email management, capstone, and certification by agencies of departing officials and employees when they leave the service of the agency. There's also quite a bit in there related to unauthorized disposition and the referral that is in the statute to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. So there's some language around that and a lot of provisions that I'm sure will get closer review. And we hope that it will be something that will be shared with agencies for comment as we move through the process and it moves through the process within Congress. So just something I wanted to give you a heads up on Senate Bill 4042, Strengthening Oversight of the Records Act, which has passed the first milestone of getting out of the committee. So I'm sure you can find references to that. And I believe our end has posted some links to some of the things that I've just talked about. So I encourage you to take a look once we close out this meeting. Those were the few things that I wanted to talk about. So I'm going to stop here and turn it over to my colleague and partner in crime, Miss Taysha Ford. Taysha. Thank you, Lawrence. So I've been in this role for around about three months now, and I've been spending most of my time acquainting myself with the FRCP and assessing the current environment. So our discussions have been related to have been planning resolved revolved around in 2307 space planning and strategic planning exercises to determine the impact to all FRCs while maintaining alignment with the overall mission and goals of the agency. I have Arthur Hawkins here today, the Director of Customer Relationship Management. He will cover customer updates, but before Arthur joins us, I will provide a few program wide updates. The FRCP work volume continues to increase during FY 24, FRC staff have shelled up around about 478,000 cubic feet of new records, and we have another 198 cubic, 198,000 cubic feet of approved transfers. Additionally, we have a little over 2000 transfer request pending, which are under review by FRCP specialists. We are keeping busy and working through our disposal backlogs across the FRCP. We have destroyed a little over 938,000 cubic feet of material since October 1. Our total pending disposal backlog has decreased to 752,000 cubic feet. And so that's all I have as far as program wide updates, because I wanted to leave more time for Arthur, and I'm going to turn it over to him to provide a few customer related updates. Thank you, Taysha. And good afternoon everyone. Again, my name is Arthur Hawkins. I am the Director of Customer Relations Management, and we refer to it as CRM. And what I want to talk about first is that we are preparing to send a reminder, as a reminder to our customers, a letter regarding M2307, which is basically become the bane of our existence here recently. It is really just a quick note of what the FRCs will and will not be able to do after the deadline of June 30. We expect that we expect to send that to all of our customers that we service by mid to late next week, if not sooner, so please be on the lookout for that. As we also move forward, we are planning on updating our FRCP website, which has not gotten an update probably in the last maybe six or seven years, if not longer. You may see a few changes. One of the first changes that we've made is we've added a countdown clock, and the countdown clock basically shows the amount of time left before the actual deadline happens. So I invite you to go to FRC or archives.gov slash FRC to take a quick look. We've not also done a customer survey since 2019, but we expect to have one ready to send out to our customers within the next couple of weeks. I will ask you to take a few moments when you get it to please provide us with much needed feedback, and I will also thank you in advance for that. As always, if you have any questions for us, please reach out to your National Account Manager. We are always happy to hear from and engage with you, our customers. So thank you very much. Ariane. Thank you Arthur for that update. Now, as we've indicated, we're going to do something a little bit different for today's meeting. We're going to take a deep dive and do a recap of the open office hours discussions that we've held. So next slide, please. So I want to refer the audience to AC 18.2024, where we announced that we would be holding a series of open office hours to serve as a forum for agency records management staff to ask questions and to talk about our digitization regulations, transfers, exception requests, and all other related to the transition to electronic records. We've held two of those already, one in March, one in April, and we have two more scheduled for May. I will be dropping a link in the YouTube chat to AC 18.2024, where you can access information and register yourself to join one of those sessions. We get a couple of, we have different expectations for those meetings. Those meetings are not being recorded. We want agencies to be able to feel free to ask specific questions about their unique circumstances and things like that. The bridge, what we've done is we're going to now go into a portion where we're going to summarize some of the themes that we've heard and I've got our executives here to help answer these common questions that have come up. So with that, next slide, please. The first question, will the June 30, 2024 deadline move again? Will there be another memo? Well, I'll take that one because that's an easy one to answer. The short answer is no. If I was going to say anything more, I would say that we are not working on an update to the update on the transition to electronic records. So June 30 is what it is. That's what we should all be working towards. But as I've said before, the work does not stop on June 30. If you get into July and the months after, we know that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to continue the modernization and transition to electronic records, but the deadline that we have is still June 30. Thank you, Lawrence. If agencies submit transfer requests before the deadline, will NARA accept the records after the day? Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tim Ennis. I'm the director for the A2 Textual Records Division. And I will take that question. So if agencies submit transfer requests before the deadline, NARA will review the transfer requests to make an approval determination. And for those transfers which are approved for accessioning into the holdings of the National Archives, NARA will accept custody of the records after the deadline. Hi, and this is Russell Loisle from the Federal Records Center program, director of national transfer and disposition, and for temporary records and permanent records. If you do have the transfer and submitted status prior to basically midnight, June 30, we will honor those transfer requests and work with you to get those records in. So please, please pay attention to the deadline and make sure that you do put those transfer requests in, you know, in enough time to where they show up in the system in submitted status. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Please tell me more about how to get an exception. I'll take that one, Ariane. So we are getting more and more questions about exceptions and I know many of you out there are still working on your exception package. And what I've said before is please get them to us sooner rather than later when we don't want to see happen is a whole lot of exceptions come in on June 29. We have staff at RM standards at NARA.gov who can work with you on your exception package. And really the broad brush directions and guidance on how to do and prepare and submit an exception are all in NARA Bolton 2020-01. One of the things that we have said before is that there is no template. There's no easy form with drop downs that you can use. The exceptions that we've seen are very much agency specific. They are sort of unique to the context with the agency that is submitting them. And we encourage you to develop your business case, write up your narrative, think big picture. We would like to see exception packages that are coming in that are more comprehensive and cover the various record series and specific items that you need either more time or an exemption from M2307. So I encourage you to work with us to consider not only the time that you need to get these reviewed and submitted by your senior agency official for records management to us, but then we also need time on our end to review it within NARA and stakeholders that we work with here within NARA that also work with all of your agencies. And of course, we also review exceptions with our colleagues over at OMB. So it's not a short process, but it all starts with you doing the analysis, the work, and developing the business case that is as specific as you can make it so that we can review and approve what you actually need. Thanks, Ariane. Thank you, Lawrence. One of the other questions that's come up, my agency has to create paper records for legal reasons. What should my agency do? And I think Lisa was going to answer that. I am. Thank you for that call out, Ariane. So this question has come up during our open office hours in a variety of different scenarios. So I'll give a little background to where this question came from. So, one thread was agency staff records management staff talking to us about court cases. Saying I've got permanent records to be digitized, but I have to create these paper records because the court wants evidence to be submitted in paper. They won't accept our electronic submissions. So, in those scenarios, I would separate out NARA's requirement to digitize permanent records for us to have to meet the memo to transition to digitized records separate from the need to provide paper records for the courts. Another scenario was that there was a statutory or legal request that related to a record having to be created. And then a lot of that can happen with public input. So there was an idea, but I have to create records and paper because I'm interacting with members of the public with citizens I'm providing services and I have to create a paper perspective. So those are the themes of the of the two questions. I answered one where I was like okay well digitizing for the courts can be separate from digitizing for archival purposes, or if it's temporary records you can still digitize for the courts and are digitized for your business purposes and have the paper records ready for the courts. I'd like to point out that we responded to these that GRS 4.5, which is the disposition authority for records that have been digitized according to NARA standards. It says longer retention is authorized if needed for business use. And if there's a court case or legal reasons that general counsel has said we are not destroying source records that's fine you have the authority to keep them longer if needed. Also related to this I this thought was some people were asked if they need an exception, because I'm still going to have to create these paper records. And as Lawrence has talked about exceptions a little bit it's a question to think about. If you're creating paper records for a legal reason, and you're storing them in an agency records center or like on site at like a facility either in your offices or next to the agency's buildings, and that holdings area is under 25,000 cubic feet. Our NARA Bulletin 2021 said you don't need to get an exception for small holdings areas that you might be using to process paper records. The goal of the memos and the goal for agencies transitioning to digital government is to stop creating paper records where possible to the fullest extent possible. So we would ask agencies when you've got these legal reasons to really look at what the reason is. If there's a statute or law that says I have to create records and paper, we would encourage you to talk to your general counsel and to your congressional affairs offices about why is that long place and would it be possible to change it. Do we need legal changes to make this transition to fully digital government? And if so, that is an avenue to explore and discuss as well. As Lawrence said, we talk big picture when we talk exceptions. So if you're saying I need an exception until the law changes, that'd be something that's good for NARA to understand, for your agency understand, for OMB to understand as we're looking at. Maybe there is a need for an exception or maybe the amount is so small we don't, it's not impacting our full transition to digital government. So I think those are the, it's a question I would say we're also still under development. And again, as Ari and said in the beginning, if you have some specific instances you would like to talk through with us, we do have the open office hours coming up to more and mark in May. And of course, you don't have to wait for that you can send us an email and we can start maybe analyzing on our end what we think would be an appropriate response to this, this theme of questions that that agencies are brought to us. So thank you. Thank you Lisa. Next slide. Agencies have temporary inactive paper records stored in offices. If we haven't digitized the records before the deadline. Do we need an exception? Yeah, thanks, Ari. And I mean, this is a good question that came up in in the office hours multiple times and, you know, we've, we've been thinking on this and had a lot of discussions about it, not just for the temporary but also for permanent so I'll try and address both. The short answer is first for the temporary no an exception is not needed. So, in this case, you know, an agency may have, you know, inactive temporary records in space. And certainly if they're short term records cover by a schedule and they're scheduled to be destroyed and, you know, a couple of years. Then, you know, there's no return on an agency's investment in digitization to do that work and they can just be disposition for the schedule in the analog form that they're currently in. I think where it gets a little trickier is if there are temporary records that are longer term and may have high reference are frequently shared between staff and offices. And then it's, you know, more of a question of, you know, is it worth that investment that, you know, agencies digitize because those records, you know, while they might be inactive they may still be frequently are, you know, often enough referenced or used to warrant digitization. And that's something that an agency would determine and do the calculus on, you know, the return on that investment. For permanent records, I would say the answer is still no that an exception is not needed. If agencies plan to digitize the records later when they are ready for transfer. So, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, we know the records need to come to us to NARA in electronic format. But if they're not scheduled for transfer for 15 years or more, then the digitization doesn't need to happen now. It just needs to happen prior to transfer. So we, you know, again, you know, leave that to agencies to determine, you know, the best time to do that work to make sure that they can meet that goal of, you know, only transferring electronic permanent records. To NARA. But I think, you know, all cases, you know, I think it's one of those things where, you know, we do want to encourage agencies working with electronic records to the to the greatest extent possible. But we also acknowledge the reality that agencies do and should make decisions that align with their business needs and the management and use of those records. So hopefully that that addresses the question. I don't think either case is a scenario where an exception is needed, but there's certainly a need to understand, you know, what the records are, how they're used and when the best time is to do the conversion or just proceed with disposition. Thank you, Lawrence. Now that we've digitized so many permanent records and have electronic records, how should we transfer these to NARA? My name is Rebecca Baker and I'm the acting director of the electronic records division within research services at the National Archives. We are the custodial unit for electronic permanent federal records. And I would say that agencies are encouraged to submit transfer request or TRs for any permanent digitized records in ERA 2.0 as direct offers for the custodial unit of electronic records division. Those TRs are reviewed and approved by the National Archives. Agencies can use either secure file transfer protocol or SFTP or copying those records onto physical external media such as hard drives, thumb drives, CDs to transfer those records and associated metadata to NARA. And this is the practice for both unclassified and classified records. If you are transferring classified records, you need to use physical media. But you don't have to wait. We are open and available to receiving those records today. And I encourage you to please contact E as an echo transfers at NARA.gov to discuss transferring electronic records. And we do have a variety of web pages and accessioning web page and FAQ web page that are available in the chat and contain more information regarding the transfer of electronic records. Thank you, Ariane. Rebecca, analog format accretions to current holdings will be accepted into the FRCs after the deadline. What does that actually mean? What is the difference between an accretion and a new transfer? Hi, this is Russell Loisle again, director of national transfer and disposition for the FRCP program. So this came up several times during the open office hours. And the memo was fairly explicit. It called out refiles and interfiles. That's basically the difference between a new transfer. This normally happens in a holdings that's actively referenced. Yes, of course, you can send the materials back to us. It's not a new transfer. In the case of open or active records, so, you know, temporary active records. Say a further court order or additional case file information comes. That's an inner file. Okay, it is directly related to the files that you already have in the FRCP program. So you can send those in as an inner file. And regardless whether it's, you know, one folder, another box, it is technically an accretion. So an accretion means to add to. But in this sense, we're adding to something that already exists. What we won't accept in the case of case files is a new case file that was not part of the original transfer. So that's, that's kind of the, the fine line in the sand is you can always reference and return stuff. Or if you have additional supplemental documentation that needs to be added because of further claims or follow ups, those can be sent back and included with the original file that we already have. But nothing new can be put in after the deadline. Thank you Russell. Next slide. NARA has not yet issued digitization standards for film records. What should agencies do. Yeah, that's a, that's a good question and we certainly heard that I mean obviously we have the standards and the regulations out for what we call reflective technologies for paper for stills. We're in the process of writing the regulations for the other type of records that film falls into which are transmissive technology digitized records. So, similar to the current standards for the, the standards that are covering the the transmissive. We're also using the Fadge guidelines and you know we encourage agencies to become familiar with what Fadge is saying about digitization of these types of records as well. At this point we're not in a position to accession film based digitized records until the standards are issued in regs, and we certainly buys agencies against any disposition action for the source records until we have done that. One of the things that I can say is that we will be able to share the draft when it's ready for agency review and we're looking forward to getting comments on that set of standards. And until we do encourage agencies to sit tight. And, you know, by all means you can reach out to our team at RM standards at narrow.gov and talk about where we are in the progress that we're making. Thank you Lawrence. The next question. Will there be any exceptions for classified records. Again, another another good question that, you know, we've had a number of inquiries from agencies about and we know there are special challenges related to classified records. I think Rebecca already talked about, you know, some of the ways that we handle classified electronic records. What I will say from an exception perspective is that there will, there will not be any blanket exception that will cover all classified records that an agency may have. And that's sort of typical of what we expect to see an expect in exception requests in general is like we want to see specific information specific record series that are affected. And so, yeah, if if an agency said, you know, we need an exception for all our classified, we're not going to approve that. We do have processes in place for both textual and electronic classified records. In some cases we are continuing to work on improvements. And as time goes on, we expect to implement more and more improvements on, you know, how we can make the, for example, the transfer of, you know, classified and unclassified records, you know, more seamless using, you know, cloud to cloud transfers and other functionality that will improve the transfers for both classified and unclassified. But from an exception process, we were we're happy to work with you and talk with you about any specific exceptions related to these types of records, but there will not be any general blanket exception to cover them all. Thank you Lawrence. And the last question we've selected out of our best of the open office hours section. Will there be any exceptions for employee records, including personnel files and medical files. Hi, Lisa hair lamp us again, director of records management policy and outreach. I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself during the last question. But I'm happy to answer this, this last question on our slide deck because it's something that I am my colleagues at OPM we've been working on for several months. Yes, we are going to have one one government wide exception in the works. After M. 2019 M 2119 was posted after M 2307 was posted. We at the National Archives got lots of questions about employee personnel files OPS and employee medical files, as did OPM, who is the agency responsible for guidance on the management of those records. So, for it's a, like I said, it's a complicated and nuanced story. Several agencies that would talk to us have already transitioned to OPS, but they hadn't transitioned for EMS so they were still had paper copy EMS they were managing. Other agencies were using HR systems to create and manage electronic EMS EMS and OPS, but they were still printing and filing because they thought they had requirements to send paper copies to the National Personnel And there were other agencies who reached out to us for exceptions because they still had paper based employee files, employee personnel files and they had plans to modernize but they knew it wasn't going to happen before the deadline so they'll use exceptions. And given the wide variety of scenarios that agencies faced and the wide variety of questions we received. We worked with our colleagues in OPM, and sort of talk to our colleagues I would say an OMB Office of Management and Budget to float the idea that we should offer a government wide exception. So we're working on it. I know the deadline is June 30. I hope it will be issued before that deadline. We actually have a draft of how we're planning to issue this exception that our agency Federal Records Management Council is reviewing. So if there are some specific questions about OPS and EMS, I would ask you to email us at NARA at rmstandardsatnara.gov. That's the team that works for me that's sort of tracking all the exception requests that are coming in so if you need to talk a little bit more about what is in draft, what will be coming, please email us and we'll let you know. And I will tell you feel very comfortable doing it now that this is getting closer and closer to the finish line that the proposal that we put forth was that we have a three year exception. So agencies would continue to be able to send this critical series of records, civilian and military personnel files to the National Personnel Records Center for another three years till June 30, 2027. So I'm telling you that now and I hope you'll be able to read about it soon. So yes, that is the one only government wide exception that's coming. So thank you. I think that answers that question. Thank you, Lisa. Next slide. Now we're going to pick up on general questions that have been left in the YouTube chat or email to us at rmcommunications. The first one is for the Federal Records Center program so Taysha and her team. Do you anticipate any of the FRC facilities running out of space with the increase in transfer volume. So this is a great question. The short answer is no. As disposition increases space opens up at the art or our FRCs. And although we have noticed the increase in new transfers we continue to have space available across the program. Thank you, Taysha. Another one and I'll just throw this up to whoever wants to answer. Can you speak to whether NARA systems are up and running to accept digitized records to ensure the standards are met with scanning standards. I think there's a conflation of a couple of concepts in there there's a question about the standards and a question about transfers of electronic records. Well that is a great question and I'll start knowing my colleagues at NARA will help answer that as well. So the first thing is that the responsibility for ensuring permanent records have been digitized to NARA standards does lie with the agency. It's part of the agency's records management responsibilities. In the past in an analog world. We didn't check to see if the paper that permanent records were printed on mapped to the standards NARA issue about high quality paper for permanent records. So that is a parallel to say like no agencies are responsible for ensuring they meet their standards and when they come to us there is this expectation that they do meet standards. We do process those records in boxes in a paper world and occasionally would see things that we would have questions well what is this. I think that is true for our colleagues who work accessioning electronic records transfers. They are not running specific tests to say ah I'm looking for statistically valid samples, looking for errors and digitized records. We're not doing we're not rerunning the validation steps that agencies are responsible for running. That said, we do open up the files and folders we do run them through tools to you know identify. Do we have the correct metadata do we have the correct formats are you know are the files open are they encrypted there's all these things we do to process electronic records, which I think Rebecca talked about just a few a few minutes ago. If during those processes something was noticed that had a question about, are these records complete. We couldn't help but notice as we were doing our process that we found some images that may have been concerned that might be the start of a dialogue with an agency to make sure the transfer was completed properly. And I think this is an ongoing topic that will have further information and further discussion to share. We know more digitized records will be coming our way starting June 30. And it's possible we will mature and develop our accessioning systems to specifically look for things. But right now, we're using our traditional electronic records accessioning processes to make sure the records meet with all of ours transfer requirements. We haven't yet developed any specific tool to double check the digitization quality that we are expecting to be done by agencies as they adhere to the digitization standards. So that was the one part I know if there was like you said all right and there might be some other nuance to that question that maybe I missed, because I zeroed it on standards. This is Rebecca I just like to add and thank you Lisa I think that was very comprehensive. I would only add that yes we are up and running and we encourage you to make those direct offers and do those transfers review your disposition authorities and as you're digitizing those records if these are eligible for transfer. Go ahead and reach out to us we're here to help, we can help you walk through era 2.0 and how to draft transfer request and get you up and speed and comfortable with that process. And we can connect to agency SFTPs as well as our own SFTP. So if you have your own technology that you would like to essentially push the records to us that we can handle that to just initiate a conversation with us and we'd be happy to help. And I say from, I just because we're having this conversation here. It is, there's another parallel in the paper world, the analog world, where we'd say you physically transfer records to us the NARA had to do work before we legally accepted the transfer. Well that same thing does happen in the electronic world as well so it's a great question Rebecca yes we have systems up and running. Transfer happens and we receive the electronic records that's the start of the transfer process, but it doesn't end until we're sure from NARA's perspective and any dialogue with the agency that we're ready to take those legally. So there will be back and forth if needed. Yes, if we identify any gaps or the need for replacement files let's say a file becomes corrupt in the transfer process. We will run hashes to develop a fixity or check sums for those files and make sure that that is unchanged. Even pre and post ingest into our repository. And then we will be in contact with agencies if there's any need for replacements or if we have any issues or need additional documentation and such. Okay, thank you both. So those are the questions that have come in. Are there any others we think we need to address. I saw a YouTube question just it's a very broad about accessing records. I'm not sure. If you have questions about how to access records I'd encourage you to visit NARA's website and our online catalog, which is the tool that we use to provide access to materials once they've been processed at our holdings. And if you had more specifics that you'd like to understand about how NARA works. We'd be happy to point you in that direction. I think we do have a couple that have come in once as thank you Lisa just wanted to make sure because if the standards are met, because we need to wait for your acceptance before source records can be destroyed in accordance with GRS 4.5. No, that is a great question if we wrote I will tell you the intention and I certainly hope that's how the regs read. The agencies are responsible for validating. We wrote those digitization standards were permanent records when you read them I know they were a little overwhelming was when they first came out because they're so detailed and so technical. And we tried to write these regulations almost as we in light of a manufacturing process in light that there's things that you do steps that you take and if you follow all these steps at the end. We did the quality management. Yep, we have our documentation. Yep, we did the file for all the technical things correctly. Yep, we've even documented the gaps as Rachel mentioned. So when the agency is determined it's validated it can use that disposition authority and destroy those records. You do not have to wait for NARA to approve or validate the digitization work you've done. The goal would be to have an agency say yes I had permanent records. I've digitized them they're now part of our business processes we're using. And at some point we don't have to digitize records anymore because they're being created digitally in the first place right for an digital. So there's this idea that we are in a transition to digital government and this transition is going to take a long time it's been a long time coming in a long time to get to you were fully happy with those systems and that we are sure we've got all of our permanent records in this electronic format that we'll be able to preserve as part of our nation's history and make accessible to the public to researchers and others in the future. So yes you do not have to wait to recap what I said you do not have to wait for NARA you can destroy once you validate. We have a set of questions that were emailed to us does NARA have approved storage space for TS SCI digital records. What volume can you handle are there limits to file size for records transferred. And will storage devices use to transfer TS SCI be returned for reuse or is it kept on hardware sent instead of storage within a system. So those kind of all seem to go together and I think Rebecca you want to tackle those. Yes, Ari and so thank you for those questions, and I would first start with yes, the National Archives does have an approved space for TS SCI, and that is a separate instance from our TS instance for the management and preservation of classified electronic records. As far as volume we can handle. Let's discuss. We've taken in transfers in the terabyte range as as one accession. And then some are much smaller it depends on the records that are eligible within that disposition authority, because we'll do it one transfer at a time, but we can handle for that type of physical media it's it's kind of the limitation of how much can the physical media handle and and we'll scale up to that as needed. And on the transfer request so a transfer request is an unclassified document that is created an era 2.0 that documents the transfer of records from the creating agency to the National Archives. On that transfer request, there's a question about if you're using physical media. Would you like that media destroy it, or would you like that media returned and the agency will specify what they would like NARA to do with that media. And if you want it returned, we would return it to you whenever we've accepted custody. And if you would, you don't want it returned or you want NARA to keep that that's an option too, but those records, the originating physical media that you transfer. That's not where we're preserving them long term we are preserving them in a system. And so that I hopefully that answers your questions, but I encourage if you have any other additional questions to reach out and we can discuss. Thank you Rebecca. Here's another question that's come in. And I think Lisa wants to handle this. Is there any sort of checklist or suggested methodology for validating records were digitized in accordance with NARA standards. So the answer is no, we have not produced a checklist or more how tos on validating, but this is a great time to point to the digitization resources we do have available on our website. And Ariane I hate to ask you but could you find the he's like I know you're moderating but if you wouldn't mind doing a quick search to drop in the link to the digitization resource page we have on our website. So the digitization standards were issued almost a year ago we were, we knew that we're going to be a lot of questions sort of like the one we just had hey can you give us more guidance on how to implement. So as we've been hearing questions and working on additional products to help agencies implement we've been posting them on the digitization resource page. We don't have a checklist on validating, but we did write a paper on understanding quality management which I think is a key component of being able to validate in the future. I appreciate the question and like we haven't finished yet right will be digitizing records for decades to come so I think that's something we're open to hearing and if there is a need to try to provide more products to help agencies understand how to implement we implement validation specifically it's something we can work on. I'll also point out that we're working with partners at GSA, because a lot of digitization is done by can be done by vendors can be contracted out for for specific needs, and those vendors have to self certify that they're able to meet our requirements as well. So it's possible that through the work of vendor does to self certify through the work of the that we're doing on understanding quality management there may be some, some resources there that we can point you to and might be able to help. Actually, and so the answer to your question is no I don't have it but the real answer to your question is, we'd love to help you figure out where to find additional information. And again, you can email us at RM standards all one word, and maybe we'll be able to provide you some more specific guidance. Thank you. I have a question for permanent analog records that are immediately eligible for transfer. What is the process for getting these records approved for accessioning in advance of the 630 2024 deadline. I think I'm going to disappear and let our colleagues and research services and so that. Thank you for the question for permanent analog records which are immediately eligible for accessioning into the holdings of the National Archives the process is to submit a transfer request and er a 2.0 transfer request should include detailed finding aid. The records are classified. Must also include the classified records transfer checklist in a form 1413 do you have any questions would encourage you to contact in accessioning point of contact here at the National Archives. Thank you Tim. Thank you for questions or comments. Okay, if not we can. I'll throw it to Lawrence pull up the next slide and Lawrence you can close bridge. All right, well thank you are in and thank you everybody for the questions and the discussion. I know this meeting was about an hour long and I think all good meetings, you know, last about an hour so I think we're right on target for that. So as you can see on the slide, our next meeting will be on June 11 so it'll be considerably warmer here in the DC metro area, but we look forward to seeing you all back here at 130 Eastern time. And in the meantime, please reach out to us at the emails that we dropped, whether it's e transfers or RM standards, or your customer account rep in the FRCP. I encourage it again look at some of the resources that we recently posted some of the things that I talked about this morning related to an off price disposition safeguards and other news that we're constantly putting out on records express I encourage you to bookmark that and take a look at the latest information coming out of the National Archives. And until then, keep in touch, stay engaged, and we will see you again in June. Thank you all for attending.