The Honor System for Records Management

 A recent newspaper article (Times or Post?) noted that enforcement of the Federal Records Act is entrusted to the honor system. What does that mean?

 When I joined ASCS it had a Records Management Branch in its Administrative Services Division. It had been strengthened as a result of Congressional scrutiny of the Billie Sol Estes scandal.  (The investigators found that ASCS didn't have a good system for filing correspondence and policy papers.) 

The focus of the branch's work was establishing and maintaining a system for filing correspondence, and prescribing a filing system for offices originating policy decisions. Once established the routine was almost self-executing.  New secretaries would be shown what to do: original and carbons, yellow is official record, green is addressee folder, etc.  In my view there wasn't any explanation of the rationale for the way it was designed.

The records management people in the agency were effectively outsiders, people who might show up occasionally, but without any day-to-day contact with the workers   If that was true for fellow employees of ASCS, it was doubly true for the people involved with records management at the departmental level, and quadruply true for the employees of the National Archives and Records Adminstration.

How might this translate to the Executive Office of the President? On the one hand there must be a greater consciousness of the importance of records, given the constant scrutiny by journalists and investigators and the looming historians.  On the other hand the office has a lot more going on than any agency.  On the third hand, at the end of an administration I imagine it's like when you decide to retire, you zero in on the future and care much less about the wrapping up. Finally, your boss couldn't care less about records. 

[Update: given the discovery of more documents in Biden's places and today's discovery of documents in Pence's place, I think my "third hand" is well supported. I suspect you'd find a few classified documents in possession of a lot of high, and not so high, officials.]

Bar/CR Codes for Classified Documents?

 I had very limited exposure to the classification system for government documents during my time in ASCS/FSA.  IIRC ASCS did get some classified documents as part of the distribution system for the agricultural attaches stationed in some embassies.  I'm not sure why some, a few I think, were classified; perhaps the attaches had a report on the status of a nation's crops which were obtained by befriending a statistician--I don't know.  Anyhow, a management analyst in Records Management had a clearance and handled them.  I suspect the whole setup was a carryover from New Deal days, before USDA silos were built up, possibly before Foreign Agricultural Service was formed.

Anyhow, I'm not surprised by problems in handling and tracking classified documents.  You might be able to have secure handling if you used a dedicated database with no ability to copy, download, or print.  That way you could track the user ids anytime a document was read.  But, with the possible exception of the most highly classified, that's not practical.  (It does seem that when documents are viewed in a SCIF that while they could be printed, nothing could be taken out of the facility. 

For the more ordinary classified documents, I wonder if they have a system of bar coding or CR coding for them. The problem of course would still be the copying, printing, downloading--how do you assign a unique identifier to the copy, printout, or downloaded document?  If election officials and USPS can assign a unique code to a ballot so it can be tracked, but they don't deal with  duplication.

Thoughts on Secrecy

 A couple random thoughts.  The former guy and some of his defenders claim he declassified documents even though (presumably) the bureaucratic process to do so was not completed.  For a document to be classified, it has to be marked as "Confidential", "Secret", "Top Secret" or whatever, so to be declassified the marking has to be superseded by another marking: "Declassified" and the date and authority.  (This is my understanding).  So using Trump's theory, you can't prosecute someone for mishandling secrets, such as a Reality Winner without an affidavit from the President asserting he or she has not declassified the document?

While NARA rebutted Trump's claim that Obama had 33 million documents, I'm betting Obama actually has documents/records he shouldn't have, according to some lawyers.  

I go back to Apollo 11, the moon landing, and the other astronauts.  Years after their exploits we learned that astronauts made and kept, or sold, souvenirs of their flights.  Obama is human, so I'm sure he has some personal souvenirs of his time in the office. Perhaps GWB's note to him in the Resolute desk or whatever, something which could qualify as an official document.

Cynical Take on Federal Records Act

 Commentary on the missing Secret Service cellphone records has invoked the spector of the Federal Records Act, violation of which can lead to jail time.

We don't know what happened in the case, but I start with some cynicism.  I don't think most bureaucrats in most agencies know much or care much about the FRA. The leader of all Federal bureaucrats for 4 years, the former guy, showed exactly what he thought of it when he tore up documents he'd read.

The Act lacks an enforcement mechanism; NARA has no real power.  

I suspect, and predict, that the Secret Service has never taken the FRA seriously.  This might mean they simply ignored the preservation of records in past years, and continued that mind set in dealing with Jan. 6 and the upgrading of their cellphones.

We may find out if I'm right. 

I'm Not Surprised: Trump Disorganized with Transcripts

 There was a memoir written by a stenographer who worked recording and transcribing events in the Obama White House. It was pretty good.  One thing I remember from it was the work needed so that everything was recorded. It was impressive.

When I read that Trump made a practice of tearing up the papers documenting his meetings I knew he wasn't good news for historians, even though he was worth a lot to journalists.  That's now confirmed by this report of the missing transcripts of 8 percent or more of Trump's speeches.  It's not a loss to the history of oratory and given his incessant repetition of his best hits probably not a big loss to history of his presidency, but it's a loss.

Damnit--presidents are supposed to follow the law.  And Republican presidents are supposed to be organized. 

National Records Act and Trump

 Jill Lepore has an article in the New Yorker on the Trump administration and official records. It's  pretty good.  For a while I was responsible for records management in ASCS.  This was pre-PC.  In those days "records management" was a component of "paperwork management", which also included "directives" and "forms".

Back then paperwork management had become rather formal, partially perhaps because of the Billie Sol Estes case.  But since then technology seems to have disrupted everything; at least it was well on the way to doing so when I retired.

Sad Words on Records Management

 Federal Computer Week has a long discussion of the challenges records management faces in the current environment:“I love my records management staff,” one said. “They’re fantastic. But they are not database people. They are not technologists.”

I think the bottom line is that "records management" is not a sexy occupation, which means it can descend into a vicious circle: because it's not sexy it doesn't attract the best employees or employees who have experience in new processes and technology, management can ignore it for more crucial issues, employees can ignore records management problems and fail to understand the logic of the rules, and records management issues are ignored in developing new systems. Back in the day, my early days at ASCS, our business processes were pretty much standard across the country: electric typewriters and carbon paper, and information moved on mail carts and clearance folders.  No more.

That explains both Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as well as various figures in the White House under the current administration.

"Peak Document"

That's a term used in the title of the presidential address at the American Historical Association meeting. What McNeill is talking about is the surge of information coming not from documents but from science--especially genetics.

It's a valid subject, of course, but I admit when I first saw it my thoughts went in another direction; the change in sources in the current and coming eras because of digital media.  An example, when I was hired by ASCS people had improved the document management systems involved. The Commodity Credit Corporation board had a permanent secretary and an assistant, the board made decisions based on "dockets" which were systematically filed.  Most decisions within ASCS generated paper documents, memos and letters, all routed through clearance channels and eventually filed in the Secretary's Records or administrator's.   

As a failed historian I was intrigued by the processes.  The paper files didn't capture everything--there was a lot going on in the agency which wasn't fully  documented (particularly the political maneuvers) where the documents were like an iceberg, only a small part visible

By the time I left FSA, this picture was changing.  Partially it was the result of personnel changeover--the institutional memory of the reasons behind practices had been or was being lost.  Partly it was a change of norms--new people and new problems had new ways of doing things, often resulting in faster action but a diminished historical record.  Much of it had to do with automation, both the problems and processes of implementing policy with compers in the county offices and the new powers of communication conferred by new technology.

One example was the "wire notice".  Urgent messages to field offices would be sent by telegraph, which meant going through the telegraph office, therefore required official authorization, and permitted central filing of the message.  Once email arrived, it was possible for anyone to email anything to anyone with no central file. (Of course, this didn't happen immediately.) And for a number of years there was really no system for recording and filing such messages.  Supposedly after 30 years NARS has enforced systems in the agencies, but I'm dubious. 

The bottom line--in the 1970's a historan could look at the official files in the National Archives and do a reasonable history.  I doubt that's feasible for th 2000-2010 perioc

Time to Put Teeth in Records Acts?

A serious query: does deleting tweets violate the Presidential Records Act? https://t.co/z3NqVVYUlv

— Andrew Rudalevige (@rudalev) November 12, 2019

The responses say "yes" but there's no enforcement mechanism.   As it turns out, the Presidential REcords Act refers to amendments to the Federal Records Act, most recently  in 2014 to include electronic records on non-official accounts. Specifically: "The last provision forbids officers and employees of the executive branch from using personal email accounts for government business, unless the employee copies all emails to either the originating officer or employee's government email, or to an official government record system to be recorded and archived"

I'd love to see the Archivist of the US given police authority.  (My ex-bureaucratic persona speaking.)

Laws Aren't Self-Executing

My title is, I think, obviously true.  But just to recap:

• some laws are enforced by a bureaucracy, the police or an executive agency which can invoke legal sanctions, fines or imprisonment after due process.
• some laws are enforced by opposing parties which can file civil suits accusing their opposition of violating a legal provision.
• some "laws" are applied by one part of a bureaucracy against the bureaucrats within it

Most laws rely on voluntary compliance; people incorporate their understanding of law and justice into their consciences and abide by it, until it becomes too inconvenient or their understanding of the situation or of law changes.  That means that the bureaucracies and the civil lawsuits mostly serve as backups, at least in most "advanced" countries.

But that leaves a hole--it's difficult to enforce laws on heads of bureaucracies, the top level who set policy and who therefore supervise those who are charged with enforcing the laws.  

We deal with that hole in two ways in the US: 

1. each agency (i.e. cabinet department) has an inspector general who's independent of the heads of the subordinate units  
2. each agency has Congressional committees and the GAO (which works for Congress) with oversight responsibility.  

That still leaves the big hole at the top of the government: enforcing the President's compliance with laws.  This Just Security article discusses a big one--the Presidentiall Records Act.  The Act is part of the overall structure of rules on government records, none of which get much respect.  NARA can try to enforce the rules on the agencies, but as the article discusses there's no way, outside of politics, to ensure the President follows the rules. 

Trump Records Management II

Some more thoughts on the Politico piece describing how Trump tears up documents when he's through with them, requiring employees to tape these official records back together.  (See yesterday's post.)

1. Who knew our President actually handled any documents--the impression the media gives is he operates in meetings and by tweets?  That's an exaggeration, of course.
2. Presumably these are briefing papers, not decision memos.
3. Ann Althouse commented this morning, making one valid point: Scotch tape isn't the right choice for archival materials (which anything seen by POTUS likely would be). Can't say much for the rest of her post.
4. The employees who spoke to the reporter were likely GS-11 or below in pay grade.  Perhaps they're in the same category as Clinton's Filegate employees--people who usually carry on from one adminstration to the next, but who aren't permanent civil service so don't have the usual job protections.

Records Management in the Trump White House

This is--I lack the words.

The management of official records is a serious business, but one can only laugh.