Section II(b) of the recently issued Presidential Memorandum on records management requires agencies to submit a report that:
(i) describes the agency’s current plans for improving or maintaining its records management program, particularly with respect to managing electronic records, including email and social media, deploying cloud based services or storage solutions, and meeting other records challenges;
(ii) identifies any provisions, or omissions, in relevant statutes, regulations, or official NARA guidance that currently pose an obstacle to the agency’s adoption of sound, cost effective records management policies and practices; and
(iii) identifies policies or programs that, if included in the Records Management Directive required by section 3 of this memorandum or adopted or implemented by NARA, would assist the agency’s efforts to improve records management.
We have received several requests from agencies for a template that could help in structuring this response. We have developed a simple Microsoft Word document (link is to a .doc file) to serve this purpose. Agencies are not required to submit their response using this word document.
As a reminder, agency responses are due by March 27. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment. We will continue to use this blog as a way to distribute information about this important project.
I like your Microsoft Word document, but you should consider password protecting it and adding some data fields so that users can fill out the form and submit it to you without altering the content of the document. I can help with that; just let me know.
Thanks for posting the template, Arian. When will your agency conduct the meetings that the Archivist promised in his November 28 memo?
Patti. Thanks for your comment. We are in the process of planning the details for those meetings, which are likely to take place in February. We will have more information on the blog very soon.
The Presidential memo states that Agency heads shall submit the report, yet the optional template has instructions to submit the agency report via email to RMCommunications. Could you please clarify how you want the report submitted. Thanks.
To clarify my earlier comment — the Presidential memo says the Agency head reports to NARA and OMB, so didn’t know if just submitting the report just to RM communications would satisfy the requirement. Thanks.
John – Thanks for your comment. You can simply submit the report to us via email. We will communicate them to OMB.
Hi Arian, Will the reports from agencies be publicly available? Thanks
Amy – Thanks for your comment. We have not determined the answer to your question. Once we have decided what to do, we will be communicating that decision here on the blog.