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House Committee Passes Federal Records Bill
Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH)introduced legislation, H.R. 1387, the Electronic Message Preservation Act, that would require the White House to preserve all electronic communications. On March 10, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee marked up the legislation and passed it by a voice vote.
The legislation resulted from an investigation conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that revealed significant deficiencies in the preservation of e-mail by the White House and federal agencies. The measure was introduced last year by Hodes, then-Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO). It passed the House of Representatives in 2008, but stalled in the Senate.
"The people of the United States deserve an open and honest record of the actions of all administrations, regardless of party," said Hodes. "This bill will ensure actions taken by the Executive Branch are transparent and that they can be held accountable to the public."
Committee investigations revealed that during the Bush administration, numerous White House officials — including former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove — used e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which regularly deleted the e-mails from its servers. E-mails sent by White House officials under these RNC accounts included e-mails concerning official government business. In addition, the White House cannot account for hundreds of days’ worth of official White House e-mails sent and received between 2003 and 2005. At the time of these losses, the White House used an e-mail archiving system that a former White House information technology officer described as "primitive."
While the problems have been particularly acute under the Bush administration, other administrations, including President Clinton's, have encountered problems preserving e-mail records.
To ensure the retention of these important records, the legislation directs the archivist of the United States to establish standards for the capture, management, and preservation of White House e-mails and other electronic messages and to certify the system meets the requirements established by the archivist.
Under current law, federal agencies have broad discretion to determine how electronic records and electronic communications are preserved. Committee investigations and the Government Accountability Office have found that many agencies rely on unreliable print and file systems for preserving electronic records, including e-mails. As a result, many e-mails that should be saved as federal records may be lost.
The bill also directs the U.S. archivist to issue regulations requiring agencies to preserve electronic messages that are records in an electronic format. These regulations must cover, at a minimum, the capture, management, preservation, and electronic retrieval of these electronic records and must be implemented within four years of the enactment of the act.
ARMA International Washington Policy Brief, March
