Increasing Access to
Presidential Records

In a speech earlier this spring at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in observance of National Freedom of Information Day, I reviewed the initiatives we have under way at NARA to increase access to the records we preserve for the American people. I was especially pleased to praise the FOIA on its “day” during “Sunshine Week.” In 1975, I filed and won in the first FOIA lawsuit against the FBI for files of historical interest. However, neither I nor anyone else at the time could have predicted the vast and complex influence of FOIA on American economics, politics, and society and its pivotal role in maintaining a robust democracy.

In Fiscal Year 2006, NARA completed more than 80 percent of FOIA requests for executive branch agency records within twenty working days. The on-time rate of 83.89 percent, while under our target goal, was nonetheless six percentage points above the previous year’s rate of 77.41 percent. And nearly three-quarters of all FOIA requests were completed in ten working days—half the time required by law.

There are various reasons why some FOIA requests take longer. The records could have been destroyed in the 1973 fire in St. Louis, they could be classified, or they may require a presidential review or a longer review because of their contents. But we believe that, on the whole, we are making progress in expanding access to our government’s records.

Despite the generosity of the president’s 2008 budget request for this agency, fulfilling our mission will require additional resources. Still, we have made visible progress on a number of our strategic goals in the past two years—goals that will expand access to our holdings:

• We are moving steadily toward an Electronic Records Archives (ERA) that will ensure preservation of, and access to, today’s electronic records far into the future. ERA’s first increment is to begin this fall.
• We are working closely with the intelligence community and other key agencies to ensure that we can build a National Declassification Initiative to transform the way documents are reviewed and released.
• We are working with the private sector to digitize key collections and to enable Internet search engines wider and deeper access to our databases.
• We are also developing a learning center at our Washington headquarters that will parallel the learning labs that we have across the country. This is the cornerstone of a number of other NARA educational programs using documents and designed to strengthen civic literacy.
• We have started an effort to replace the existing inadequate military personnel records center in St. Louis with a facility that will provide critical improvements to the environmental storage conditions for the two million cubic feet of records we store for the military. The new facility will enable us to ensure the preservation of essential military personnel files so they will be there when they are needed by our country’s veterans to guarantee their rights and entitlements.
• We are completing plans to bring the privately-held Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, into the family of Federal Presidential Libraries.
• We are working with the White House to plan for a smooth transfer of the textual and digital records of the current administration to the National Archives and to plan for the George W. Bush Presidential library.

It is a privilege and pleasure to work with NARA colleagues as stewards of America’s documentary heritage—whether parchment, paper, or electronic—and to remove the cloak of secrecy from as many of the records of our democracy as possible, providing access to all who may seek them. As President Harry S. Truman, a person of uncommon wisdom dispensed with uncomplicated brevity, observed simply: "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix."