I'm forwarding this message on behalf of Maarja Krusten, who subscribes
to the Archives & Archivists listserv and comments on national issues
such as this.

Fred
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Frederic J. Grevin
Email: [log in to unmask]
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Maarja Krusten:

I often read web posted messages at Recmgmt-L (lots of interesting, good
stuff there) but I'm no longer a subscriber. So I can't post my response
there. Feel free to forward this to the Recmgmt-L if you think anyone
there would be interested.

I've heard some names mentioned among the people who are looking into
the U.S. Archivist nomination on behalf of President Obama.  There are
more people involved in the vetting/selection process than just the ones
listed at the Change.gov site.  At least one has worked at NARA in the
past and brings some very useful expertise to bear. I won't say anything
beyond that, LOL.

As to Tim Sprehe's article, I tend to approach what he and other
outsiders say with some caution. I do believe NARA and the federal
community would benefit from an AUS who understands archives, records
management, technology issues, history, outreach, and managerial
science. However, the federal environment presents unique challenges for
the head of an archival institution. It can be hard to take some
managerial concepts that work well in the private sector and apply them
to a subordinate executive branch agency. Not all are suitable, for
reasons I'll get to in a minute.

It is not true that NARA focuses *only* on the archival. Its records
appraisal division works with federal agencies to appraise records and
to ensure approval of records retention schedules. Regulations still
require the AUS, through his designees, to approve federal departmental
and agency retention schedules.  And NARA still has the right to come in
and do inspections of record keeping. So it still retains records as
well as archival functions. Sprehe may be thinking of the fact that NARA
had cut back on agency inspection visits in recent years. I believe that
may be changing back again to some extent (to the extent limited
resources allow). As in any agency with limited budget resources, every
dollar spent on one activity means a dollar withheld from another. In
recent years, development of the Electronic Records Archive has taken up
an enormous amount of its resources. (NARA has been playing catch up in
some areas since the departure of Don Wilson as AUS in March 1993.)

NARA actually doesn't have one monolithic culture so I would encourage
people such as Sprehe not to look at it that way. Consider the framing
used by Nancy Smith, an official with NARA's Office of Presidential
Libraries. Ms. Smith actually mentioned at a presentation at the Society
of American Archivists annual meeting in 2006 that there is a "federal
world" and a "presidential world" at NARA. I know from having worked at
NARA that the statutes, rules, regulations, and cultures  in those two
worlds can differ. More importantly,  the stakeholders have competing
needs. For example, depending on who is in office, Presidential lawyers
may look at the creation, preservation and future public access to
deliberative information differently from historians and other
researchers. Not surprisingly, the presidential side of NARA relies more
on message discipline and coordination with lawyers than the federal
side. Not all of those lawyers are employed by NARA. In court, NARA does
not speak for itself, but is represented by the Department of Justice.
If there's a top-down way to doing some things, some of that comes from
the fact that in some areas, stakeholders include power players -- and I
really mean power players -- outside NARA.

Even the federal side of NARA varies in the extent to which tight
managerial control is required. The risk levels vary greatly. An
archivist's work can be very different, depending on whether s/he works
on the reference or on the processing side. Consider what it takes to
declassify national security classified records (you definitely want to
pay attention to every last detail and to strike the right balance
there). Or to handle special prosecutor records. Or to work with old
pension records or with Civil War records. Sprehe totally leaves out the
need for risk assessment and risk management in deciding how functional
units should operate. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement
in the way some things are done, of course.

Sorry to go on so long -- I actually could say more :-) but will cut it
off here.

My best to everyone who subscribes to Recmgmt-L.

Maarja (still a federal historian and, of course, a former NARA
archivist)

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