Obama Orders Federal Agencies To Digitize All Records 186
Lucas123 writes "President Obama this week issued a directive to all federal agencies to upgrade records management processes from paper-based systems that have been around since President Truman's administration to electronic records systems with Web 2.0 capabilities. Agencies have four months to come up with plans to improve their records keeping. Part of the directive is to have the National Archives and Records Administration store all long-term records and oversee electronic records management efforts in other agencies. Unfortunately, NARA doesn't have a stellar record itself (PDF) in rolling out electronic records projects. Earlier this year, due to cost overruns and project mismanagement, NARA announced it was ending a 10-year effort to create an electronic records archive."
How Can The US Construct a Big Brother Database (Score:4, Insightful)
When all the records are locked in 8x11 filing cabinets, sealed in Manila envelopes?
And the FOIA headache!
Destroying those records is hard, and some turn up - years after they were declared not to exist!
Lockheed Martin (Score:5, Insightful)
Archaeology (Score:4, Insightful)
ALL paper documents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does that include the Declaration of Independence? I suppose it would be much easier to change in digital form...
Re:Ye$! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you condemn Obama for things he doesn't do (e.g., reduce costs), then condemn him for doing things (e.g., reducing costs).
Gotcha.
Re:Inevitable Release (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ALL paper documents? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean the constitution?
Or do you think they'll want to rejoin the British empire?
Re:Ye$! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah - as noted, the man can't win. Ask any corporate bean counter about the cost savings (that is, stopping spending money) by going digital.
Also - remember - he's the President. He doesn't make the budget. (That's tied up in the Super Committee.) And unlike the previous President, he hasn't been ruling by fiat, executive order and signing statement.
Re:It's all about the formats! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at the executive order itself:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74042394/Managing-Government-Records-November-28-2011 [scribd.com]
you'll find that while formats aren't called out explicitly, it basically instructs the archivist to come up with a comprehensive system within a limited amount of time. It's a pretty high level set of business level requirements; basically, these business level requirements translate to, "give me the system level requirements docs and specifics within four months." I can't imagine that such a system wouldn't include the proposed formats.
Will the file formats be publicly documented? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be a good time to write your congresscritter to point out the problems with undocumented file formats as well as Apis and network protocols.
There are plenty of formats that could be used that are open and vendor neutral.
If congress doesn't require that in it's funding authorization, many of our public records will be stored as word dos or in ms SQL databases.
Re:ALL paper documents? (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed, sad it won't happen... unless Obama is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agencies who have thus far opted to NOT digitize their records have done so for many reasons. And even though they're being forced to digitize now, they'll find many different methods of making the process cost substantially more than it should have and drag the process out over extended periods. Let us not forget that most of these documents can only be handled by certain staff with high enough clearance given their confidential nature. If the expose writers are to be trusted, there are entire rooms of records of paper where only one highly trusted person is allowed to enter.
Let us also point out that many of these records have been written in cursive which unlike block is a screaming nightmare to handle automatically. That means that the people who hold the clearance to view the records will need to manually enter these records themselves. There will be issues of encrypting the records so that only certain individuals will have access to them. While Obama would like to make it so that there could be some central database per organization, I'd imagine that there will be many individual, sealed networks to guarantee security.
With all these issues, let's be blunt...
1) The agencies will fight it... outright AND through bureaucratic means.
2) The agencies will say "Sure... we did it" and since many of the records are highly classified, no one can actually contradict the statement... so it most likely won't happen. When a given record is asked for they'll claim "oh...we must have missed that box"
3) It will take decades to complete as there are rooms of records where only a single individual is likely to have access and I'm guessing their typing speed isn't 100wpm.
4) Obama is on his way out. Even if he survives this coming election by some miracle (he sucks as much as the next guy, but people know he sucks and are more likely to trust someone else with less of a known suckage) by the time the project is likely to start, it's almost certain whoever takes over will pull the funds from that budget within hours of getting into office.
5) For data security sake, the agencies will most likely have to design the systems themselves using whatever crap engineers they manage to find with high enough clearance that's willing to actually code document management systems. And truthfully... this isn't a TV show... if the agencies have "Super Hackers" on staff, they're probably just as lame as the self promoting idiots you find everywhere else.
So, I'm willing to say... this will cost a tremendous amount to talk about... but will go nowhere. Sad
Re:seriously, how hard is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, software would be easy to design if it weren't for all those pesky stakeholders.
Whose purpose, exactly, does it serve if the stakeholders are disappointed?