or Immediate Release:
May 14, 2008
Electronic and Classified Records are Overwhelming the National Archives,
According to Senate Testimony by Archive Director
For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000
Washington DC, May 14, 2008 - The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
is overwhelmed and behind the curve, facing huge increases in both electronic records and
classified records, according to Congressional testimony today by National Security Archive
director Tom Blanton.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on
Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International
Security, chaired by Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), asked for the National Security Archive’s
expert testimony for an oversight hearing on NARA under the title “Protecting Our Nation’s
History for Future Generations.”
Blanton warned: “[T]he National Archives today faces two overwhelming challenges – the
exponential increase in government-held electronic records, and the geometric increase in
currently classified and previously declassified records – with which NARA has neither the
resources nor the strategy to cope.”
On electronic records, Blanton cited the case of the White House e-mail to argue for
Congressional mandates to agencies that they include archiving requirements at the front end of
information technology procurement (the government spends $68 billion a year on IT, compared
to NARA’s total budget of about $400 million and electronic archiving budget of $67 million),
and for a much more active leadership and auditing role for NARA.
On classified records, the Archive’s testimony urged Congress to impose a “classification tax”
on federal agencies (the government currently spends more than $8 billion a year keeping secrets
and only $44 million declassifying them) to fund a National Declassification Center. The
Archive also recommended that Congress change the standards for current classification and for
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