NSA Gets Award For "E-mail Preservation-LIFETIME FAILURE" Even The “PRINT & FILE” System Failed

[kpete]

"National Security Archive announces Rosemary Award"

By Al Kamen
The Washington Post
March 12, 2010


2010 Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance Goes to Federal Chief Information Officers' Council

National Security Archive cites CIO Council for "lifetime failure"
To address crisis in government e-mail preservation

Disappearance of John Yoo e-mail shows CIOs missing in action;
Latest debacle in two decades of red flags over saving official e-mail

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Washington, DC, March 12, 2010 - The Rosemary Award for worst open government performance, named after President Nixon’s secretary who erased 18 ½ minutes of a crucial Watergate tape, this year goes to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council, the senior federal officials (responsible for $71 billion a year of IT purchases) who have never addressed the failure of the government to save its e-mail electronically, according to the citation today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

Formed by Executive Order in 1996 and codified in law by Congress in the 2002 E-Government Act, the CIO Council describes itself as the “principle interagency forum for improving practices in the design, modernization, use, operation, sharing, and performance of Federal Government information resources.” Yet neither the Council’s founding documents, its 2007-2009 strategic plan, its transition memo for the Obama administration, nor its current Web site even mention the challenge of electronic records management for e-mail.

Last month, the Justice Department investigation of former senior officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee over their authorship of the so-called “torture memos” revealed that “most of Yoo’s email records had been deleted and were not recoverable.” The Yoo deletions represent only the latest red flag about government e-mail preservation – dating back to the January 1989 attempt by the Reagan administration to destroy its e-mail backup tapes, thwarted by the National Security Archive’s lawsuit.

A 2008 survey by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and OpenTheGovernment.org did not find a single federal agency policy that mandates an electronic record keeping system agency-wide. Congressional testimony in 2008 by the Government Accountability Office indicted the standard “print and file” approach by pointing out: “agencies recognize that devoting significant resources to creating paper records from electronic sources is not a viable long-term strategy”; yet GAO concluded even the “print and file” system was failing to capture the historic records “for about half of the senior officials” checked – John Yoo’s peers.

MORE:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20100312/index.htm

[Richard Steele]

1. 18 1/2 minutes of Nixon's history erased: Major scandal. 18 million BushCo eMails missing....

...and no one even blinks an eye.

That whole "rule of law" thing is OVER, folks.
You're a damned FOOL if you think it isn't.

[anigbrowl]

6. Funny, I seem to remember that being rather a major scandal

But hey, hyperbole is fun.

[thecrow]

2. Remember that shredder truck parked outside Darth's house?

Down the memory hole.

[SoCalDem]

8. Yep.. they don't even TRY to hide things

[comtec]

11. interesting pic... what's it from?

?

[SoCalDem]

12. a washington post article, I think

The truck was at Cheney's house either right before the election or shortly after.. I'll try to find the article


here's a reference story
http://www.reefland.com/forum/anything-but-reefkeeping/23075-federal-contracts-paper-shredding-services.html
Mid-Atlantic Shredding Services truck making its way up to the Cheney compound at the Naval Observatory in October 2006. Mid-Atlantic was hired by the Secret Service to assist the Vice President in his record-not-keeping needs. That was right about the time that Cheney ordered the Secret Service to destroy all logs and records pertaining to his contacts.


and a link from findlaw.com

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070629.html

[MadHound]

3. Of course it was a failure,

It was designed to be. You don't expect the government, any government, to actually keep records of it more despicable activities do you?

[upi402]

4. "oopsie"

"darnit gee golly, now where is that?"
I want to know; who didn't know what, and WHEN didn't they know it!?

[RationalAltruism]

5. This is why they need to make multiple backups sent to independent parties frequently.

[Hekate]

7. "Rosemary Awards" -- I like it. But why am I only the 4th Rec? Surely some of us remember her ...

... very well indeed.

Hekate

[pnorman]

9. I just cast the 7th 'rec'!

I well recall that iconic photo, but only as a B&W newspaper illustration.Had it been "colorized" for this occasion? And if so, WHY?

That "eighteen minute gap" phrase, instantly brings to mind that entire Nixon Era. Yeah, I'm 'dating' myself!

[Hekate]

10. I'm sure the original pic was in color, but papers only used b/w except for the Sunday funnies...

... or mostly, anyway. I don't remember when the big changeover was, but I do remember that my paper ballyhooed it on the front page.

Dang, I'm old, too. ;-)

Hekate

[Quantess]

13. K & R