An independent government agency, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) functions as the nation’s record keeper. The agency is responsible for keeping and protecting precious national documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It also serves to hold public records created by ordinary citizens in trust and manages the federal government’s growing electronic records. NARA is officially responsible for maintaining and publishing the legally authentic copies of acts of Congress, presidential proclamations, executive orders and federal regulations. The chief administrator of NARA, also called the Archivist of the United States, has the authority to declare when a bill has reached the constitutional threshold and has become an amendment.
The National Archives and Records Administration was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt. The agency served to collect papers and records dating back to 1775, which included slave ship manifests, the Emancipation Proclamation, and, eventually, captured German records and the Japanese surrender documents from World War II. Samples of other documents kept by the agency include: journals of polar expeditions, photographs of Dust Bowl farmers, Indian treaties and a signed copy of the Louisiana Purchase.
Thomas Jefferson was the first president to express concern for the future of America’s records. Originally, each branch of the federal government was responsible for keeping its own documents, and there was little communication among them. Documents were routinely lost, damaged or destroyed. It wasn’t until the 1930s that historians and preservationists began to see their hopes of a centralized archive realized.
Architect John Russell Pope was charged with creating the structure that would house the National Archives. They broke ground in 1931, and President Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone in 1933. After President Roosevelt created the National Archives in 1934, the staff began work in 1935. NARA was incorporated into the General Services Administration in 1949. In the 1960s, the original archives building reached capacity, and many records were moved off-site to local storage facilities.
In 1985, the National Archives separated again from the General Services Administration and was made into its own agency (as NARA). After several years of planning, a new archives building was completed in 1993.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is responsible for protecting and maintaining the nation’s public and political records. These records are housed in a modern facility in College Park, MD, which has enabled NARA to consolidate its Washington-area records from its original location. The new building measures 2 million cubic feet and can assist up to 390 researchers at a time.
NARA keeps only those federal records judged to have continuing value: approximately 2%-5% of those generated in any given year. Currently, there are 9 billion pages of paper records, 7.2 million maps, charts and architectural drawings, more than 20 million still photographs, billions of machine-readable data sets and more than 365,000 reels of film and 110,000 videotapes.
Archives locations exist in 14 American cities. Each branch assists federal agencies and the public with research and public workshops designed to help American citizens to learn how to use archived records. The 17 Federal Records Centers (FRC) provide federal agencies with storage facilities, as well as access and disposition services for their records and documents. The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, for example, manages the records of millions of 20th century military veterans, as well as those of former federal employees.
NARA’s primary duties include:
- Choosing which documents are most likely to have historical import and which show the workings of the government. These documents are also chosen to support long-term research worth or provide new information of value to citizens
- Preserving all of its records, whether derived from paper, microfilm, video, film or other source.
- Classifying documents into “record groups” that reflect the department or agency from which they originated. These can include paper records, microfilm, still pictures, motion pictures and electronic media. The Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is currently being developed to preserve, manage and provide access to electronic records.
- Making these records available to the general public since works created by the federal government are exempt from copyright protection.
- Storing classified documents. The agency’s Information Security Oversight Office monitors and sets policy for the US government’s security classification system.
- Assisting families in genealogical research by providing access to census records from 1790 to 1930, as well as ship passenger lists and naturalization records.
- Publishing a daily “gazette” of the US federal government called the Federal Register.
- Providing a record of government proclamations, orders and regulations.
- Assisting non-federal institutions through grants administered by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
- Managing and overseeing various presidential libraries which house papers, records and other historical materials relating to US presidents from Herbert Hoover on. Presidential libraries also include information on presidential families and their administration. Museum exhibits and educational programs are combined with these records which are made available for researchers and students.
- Entering into public-private partnerships. In 2006, NARA announced a joint venture with Google to digitize and offer NARA video online.
- Digitizing historic documents through the National Archives and Footnote.com. A pilot program was launched in 2007 to allow greater access to approximately 4.5 million pages of documents that are currently available only in their original format or on microfilm.
- Making thousands of historical films available for purchase through CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon. CreateSpace specializes in on-demand distribution of DVDs, CDs and books. The NARA-CreateSpace partnership will provide the National Archives with digital reference and preservation copies of the films as part of NARA’s preservation program.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) spent nearly $929 million on 926 contractors this decade. According to USASpending.gov, NARA paid for a variety of services from data processing and telecom services to utilities and housekeeping services.
The complete top 10 are as follows:
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Lockheed Martin Corporation
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$91,504,595
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SRA International, Inc.
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$54,610,990
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Emcor Group, Inc.
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$45,313,670
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Pepco Holdings, Inc.
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$44,705,815
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Securigard, Inc.
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$38,419,867
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Integrated Computer Engineering, Inc.
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$34,388,702
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SAIC, Inc.
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$26,054,158
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Optimos Incorporated
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$24,472,204
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The Texas A&M University System
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$24,153,148
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CACI International, Inc.
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$23,576,553
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Lockheed Martin, a leading multinational aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, is NARA’s largest contractor and handles much of their automatic processing and telecommunications services. Lockheed Martin is based in Bethesda, MD, the Congressional district in which more than $96 million of NARA’s budget has been spent. Washington, DC, is the second largest grossing district, with more than$51 million awarded to contractors there.
NARA Archivist “Reclassifies” Documents for National Security
In March 2006, a public hearing revealed that the Archivist of the United States had an understanding and unspoken agreement with various governmental agencies to “reclassify” or withdraw from public access documents deemed dangerous to national security. This was done in secret so that researchers would not notice the missing documents.
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Loses Artifacts
On November 8, 2007, Reagan Library National Archives officials reported that poor recordkeeping has been responsible for the loss of roughly 80,000 artifacts. Some may be lost inside the huge museum complex, officials said, or may have been stolen outright. They blamed a security breakdown and cited understaffing and underfunding as a possible cause for this lapse. NARA responded that the Reagan Library has had the most serious problems with their inventory, and U.S. Archivist Allen Weinstein blamed poor software for the mishap. The library has undertaken a massive inventory project that will take years to complete.
National Security Advisor Pleads Guilty to Removing Material from National Archives
On July 22, 2004, the Washington Post reported that Samuel Richard "Sandy" Berger, who served as the United States Security Advisor under President Bill Clinton, had aroused the suspicions of NARA staff who noticed that certain papers were missing. They coded documents to tell more easily if some had disappeared.
Berger claimed that the documents he removed were done in order to fight terrorism (he removed them before testifying before the 9/11 Commission), but in April 2005, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material from the National Archives in Washington. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Berger was stripped of his security clearance for 3 years and relinquished his license to practice law. At the time, he was acting as an informal policy advisor to Senator John Kerry during his campaign for the presidency. Currently, Berger later served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Hilary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign.
Sandy Berger fined $50,000 for taking documents: Must perform 100 hours of community service
(CNN)
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Founded: 1934
Annual Budget: $411.1 million
Employees: 2,504
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National Archives and Records Administration
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Weinstein, Allen
Archivist
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A native of New York, Dr. Allen Weinstein has served as the Ninth Archivist of the United States since February 2005.
Weinstein received his PhD in American Studies from Yale University. From 1966 to 1981 he was professor of history at Smith College and chairman of its American Studies Program. He then worked as a professor at Georgetown University from 1981-1984 and from 1981-1983 as executive editor of The Washington Quarterly at Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as professor of history at Boston University from 1985-89.
In 1982, Weinstein served as coordinator and vice-chairman of the US delegation to the UNESCO World Conference on Culture. In 1983, he served as vice chairman of the US delegation to a UNESCO conference in Tashkent and chaired election observation delegations in El Salvador (1991), Nicaragua (1989-90, 1996), Panama (1988-89), the Philippines (1985-86) and Russia (1991, 1996, 2000).
From 1985 to 2003, Weinstein was president of The Center for Democracy, a non-profit foundation based in Washington, DC, that he created in 1985 to promote and strengthen the democratic process. In 1985, Weinstein was a founding member of the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace and chairman of its Education and Training Committee, remaining a director until 2001.
Weinstein has been widely published in political and business journals, and he has been a frequent commentator on CNN and other news channels. He is the author of six published books, and his work has appeared in several anthologies.
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