By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 14th, 2010
Executive branch departments and agencies in recent years have spent over a billion dollars to declassifyfederal records–but have produced few tangible results.
Two executive orders from President Clinton put into place the current policy “of automatically declassifyingnon-exempt information contained in permanently valuable records that are [at least] 25 years old.”
“Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their Government.Also, our Nation’s progress depends on the free flow of information,” Clinton wrote in 1995.
But U.S. agencies often have failed to fulfill the demands of these executive orders. Thus a change has longbeen needed in declassification procedures and policy.
“Between 1997 and 2007 the Federal Government acknowledges spending $1.343 billion on declassification,”stated National Archives Assistant Archivist Michael Kurtz in a recently disclosed briefing.
“This does not include the monies spent by the Intelligence Community on declassification,” pointed out Kurtz.Those amounts are considered classified.
But declassification results have not matched spending, for there still is a massive–and growing–number offederal records awaiting declassification.
“The Federal government has 408 million pages of historical records that are 25 years old–and older–at theNational Archives and Records Administration [NARA] that are still classified,” stated Kurtz, “and an estimated1.24 billion pages of historical records in agency custody which need to be reviewed and declassified over thenext 25 years.”
“Without reform in policy and process,” Kurtz continued, “billions of dollars will be spent perpetuating adeclassification system that does not work, while the backlog of records awaiting processing for the openshelves will continue to grow.”
The National Archives’ assistant archivist gave his remarks at a November 2009 federal conference whichfocused on records management. His presentation slides were released this February.
Kurtz also put forth a solution championed by NARA–a National Declassification Center. The Center, said theassistant archivist, will “enable efficient and effective agency review” even as it improves productivity andquality control.
President Obama in fact established the declassification center by executive order on December 29th, 2009 – itwas announced by NARA on December 30th, 2009.
The National Declassification Center began its initial operations this January.
