Executive leadership from the National Archives and Records Administration addressed archivists from across the nation during the annual Society of American Archivists conference in Washington, DC, on August 17, 2018. Seated from left to right: Chief Records Officer of the United States Laurence Brewer and Chief Innovation Officer Pamela S. Wright. Standing from left to right: Chief Operating Officer William J. Bosanko, Chief of Management and Administration Micah Cheatham, and Deputy Archivist of the United States Debra S. Wall. (National Archives photo by Ben Jordi)
Leaders Share Archives’ Vision for a Digital Future
By Kerri Lawrence | National Archives News
WASHINGTON, August 23, 2018 — The National Archives’ strategic plan is a major step toward 21st-century records management, the Deputy Archivist of the United States said last week during a major conference of archival professionals.
Debra Steidel Wall joined other senior leaders from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to detail the agency’s digital goals during an August 17 panel discussion at the joint annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, the Council of State Archivists, and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators held August 12–18 in Washington, DC.
Other National Archives panel members included William J. Bosanko, Chief Operating Officer; Micah Cheatham, Chief of Management and Administration; Laurence Brewer, Chief Records Officer of the United States; and Pamela S. Wright, Chief Innovation Officer. The executives addressed the agency’s strategic plan, many echoing the conference theme, “Promoting Transparency,” as they outlined the agency’s progress and plans for modernizing Federal recordkeeping and implementing strategic records management mandates and priorities.
Wall shared the agency’s four strategic goals: make access happen, connect with customers, maximize NARA’s value to the nation, and build our future through our people.
“One particularly bold initiative . . . we’ve set is that we will no longer take records in paper form after December 31, 2022,” Wall said. “Although that goal sounds dramatic and is going to be a major milestone for us, it’s really part of a long evolution at the National Archives. We started our first electronic records program 50 years ago, and we’ve been taking a series of steps over the last decade or more to help Federal agencies transition to fully electronic recordkeeping.”
With additional goals of advancing electronic recordkeeping for all government agencies and digitizing 500 million pages of the collection, Wall called the strategic plan a major step toward modernizing records management.
“We think our strategic plan respects our traditions as archivists and our responsibilities,” she said. “[It] also helps the Federal Government take its modern recordkeeping responsibilities very seriously for the benefit of government transparency, not just for today, but for well into the future.”
Read more of the story over at National Archives News.
