Richard E.
Barry,
Principal,
Barry Associates www.mybestdocs.com
Cofounder, Open Reader
Consortium www.openreader.org
Email:
rickbarry [at] aol [dot] com
Testimony to The House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on
Treasury, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary and
The Honorable Frank R. Wolf
241
Dear Congressman Wolf:
I ask that you consider this correspondence urging
restoration of the National Historical Publications and Research Commission
(NHPRC) budget and to please pass my testimony on to other members of the House
Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Housing
and Urban Development. My name is Richard Barry. I am an Arlington-Va-based author and consultant in information and records
management. I have served a wide array of clients at the federal, state and
local levels of government as well as in the private and non-profit sectors in
About two years ago, I submitted an OpEd
piece to a leading national newspaper about the role of records and
recordkeeping in: documenting individual citizenship, protecting human rights; creating and maintaining public
confidence in government; enabling government by the rule of law; and promoting
democracy through public accountability of its officials. I received a
call from the editorial staff indicating that they had discussed the matter but
simply felt that the subject of archives was "boring". But boring is
not necessarily a synonym for unimportant. Those who make great use of public records and depend on continued access
to them in their jobs should also understand this and publicly acknowledge their
reliance on trustworthy public records, including historians, journalists,
auditors, inspectors general, lawyers, jurists and, respectfully, legislators
in the US Congress and state and local governments.
Our country faces a serious conundrum: more public records
are being produced than ever before due to the convenience of word processing,
electronic mail, instant messaging, Websites, intranets, Web logs (blogs) and
other forms of digital records and the exponentially rising volume of records
they produce. At the same time, we are systematically decreasing the size and
seniority of records staff in many agencies – where what is needed are more
highly skilled and paid staff – while at the same time adding new
responsibilities such as the review of complex information systems, responding
to FOI requests, etc. I quoted one
federal agency historian in an editorial for Federal Computer Week, "Saving
the future now: Commentary,"
<http://www.fcw.com/article79806-06-02-03-Print> said that the system to
maintain federal records has "collapsed utterly…It will be impossible to
write the history of recent diplomatic and military history as we have written
about World War II. Too many records are gone, and with [them] public
accountability of government and rational public administration." Among
the responses I received from that editorial was one from a federal agency
records manager, just as I received it except for my changes in brackets to
mask the agency's and individual's identity:
“You are correct that Agency heads,
legislators, journalists, auditors, lawyers, and historians do not support
recordkeeping practices, sound or otherwise….[We
do] not audit records…You have personnel destroying
permanent documents. No discipline except for maybe a slap on the hand…Up to
the early 90s recordkeeping was in pretty good shape...However, in the late 80s
and early 90s is when we started getting the cuts in personnel. My office
was reduced from 11 people (GS11…GS4) down to 3 people (GS9…GS4)…We are trying
to handle the same programs and the same reponsibilities. We
(records managers) are suppose to review all automated
programs that will retain data to ensure they meet recordkeeping and Privacy
Act requirements. Do you really believe a GS13 is going to listen to a
GS9 or below when it comes to automation programs. Will a GS14 department head… listen to a GS5. Not really. We are no longer able to go out and
evaluation offices on their recordkeeping practices as we did in the 80s.
This practice ensured records were being kept and long-term records were being
captured and turned in for forwarding to Federal Records Centers and to
NHPRC cannot solve agency
management problems but it is pivotal in underwriting research that
addresses the technological and other aspects of electronic records for all
levels of government. I can speak to the value and importance of NHPRC from
personal experience providing pro bono assistance peer reviewing proposals for
research grants and serving as a consultant on advisory committees of some of
the most important electronic records research projects that NHPRC or anyone
else has funded, including: the University of Pittsburgh Functional Requirements
for Evidence in Recordkeeping, the Indiana University Electronic Records
Projects. The latter made great strides in tackling how trustworthy records can
be captured from modern financial and human resources systems, often called
enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and how the records can assist the
audit function. The project has directly led to the inter-university Kuali
Project www.kualiproject.org/ that has been embraced by
I can testify from my consulting work that state
and local levels of government and academia are heavily counting on these and
other NARA/NHPRC projects to provide solutions to the same set of problems they
face at their own levels, because they do not have the funding to do it
themselves and because they seek more universal solutions. You may be certain
that NHPRC research not only serves the needs of the federal government, but
those of every state and local government jurisdiction as well.
I urge the Subcommittee to restore
and increase the NHPRC budget to a level needed to continue progress in this
important, if unheralded, national asset area. Thank you.
Richard E. Barry