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How the National Archives and Records Administration Preserves the Electronic Communications of the President of the United States

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How the National Archives and Records Administration Preserves the Electronic Communications of the President of the United States 1 Digital Preservation and Social Media in the White House: How the National Archives and Records Administration Preserves the Electronic Communications of the President of the United States Julia Alforde School of Library, Archival and Information Studies University of British Columbia 23 November 2019 2 If the United States House of Congress Impeachment Inquiry into 45th President Donald Trump taught Americans anything, it is that the people of the United States must demand transparency from their government. The incomplete record of what took place between world leaders, politicians, and lawyers affiliated with the United States (U.S.) government made it difficult to establish admissible and contextually relevant evidence during court proceedings. The communication logs presented during the trial were decontextualized, insufficient evidence of the allegations against the president involving the withholding of military aid. What most Americans don’t know, is that a higher degree of transparency can be accomplished through the implementation of a trusted recordkeeping system. However, due to the variation in electronic communication channels and the novelty of a few in particular, such as social media, the steps taken by records managers to capture these communications have not been enough to ensure transparency. The difficulty in acquiring and preserving modern modes of communication has been persistent, but awareness and research into these technologies has made great strides forward in recent decades. This paper will explore the U.S. government Executive Branch’s adoption and usage of electronic communication and what the National Archives and Records Administration is doing to preserve the records being created. Under the Federal Records Act, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the U.S. government record keeper, or as the Chief of Special Access and FOIA Staff, David Mengel, defines it, NARA is “the custodian for the permanently valuable records created by or for the Federal Government.” 1 2 It is an independent agency that manages all of the records by and for U.S. government agencies, and permanently preserves them. NARA was established in 1934 by the 32nd president of the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt, and has since preserved the nation’s essential documents, and has helped to hold government leaders accountable. 3 NARA preserves 2-5% of the records created by and for U.S. agencies and stewards holdings consisting of tens of millions of analogue records and several hundred terabytes of electronic data. 4 These electronic data comprise the electronic records in NARA’s care, which are exponentially increasing in number. According to the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) 2 Project “an analogue or digital record that is carried by an electrical conductor and requires the use of electronic equipment to be intelligible by a person.” 5 Since 1999, InterPARES has conducted research into how to define the electronic record and how to assess its trustworthiness, and in 2005, the Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence Standard (CAN-CGSB 72.34) was published in order to explain how to rely on electronic records (and what they must possess) to be used and considered admissible in legal proceedings. 6 However, it is the records manager who must first acquire these records in order for them to be useful in any archival capacity by deciding which records are worth preserving, and determining which of those will remain active, and which must be set aside for the long run (a 1 “About the National Archives of the United States | National Archives.” 2019. National Archives of the United States. 2019. https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html. 2 Mengel, David J. 2007. “Access to United States Government Records at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration,” 1–13. Page 1 3 “About the National Archives of the United States | National Archives.” 2019. National Archives of the United States. 2019. https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html. 4 Ibid. 5 InterPARES 2 Project. 2008. “The InterPARES 2 Project Glossary.” 2008. http://www.interpares.org/display_file.cfm?doc=ip2_book_glossary.pdf. 6 Landwehr, By Regina. 2007. “Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence Standard (CAN-CGSB 72.34): A Case Study from The University of Calgary.” 3 process beginning at the record’s creation). Records management is primarily concerned with the legal requirements involved in recordkeeping, such as discovery (including e-discovery), retention, disposition, and auditing. Yet, in order for these functions to be manifested, the records manager must also consider record requirements such as preservation, migration, security, and risk. Records management is performed using a record-making system and a recordkeeping system. A record-making system is a set of rules governing how records are made and which tools and methods are used (i.e. integrated business and documentary procedures, records forms, record-making access privileges, and record-making metadata). A recordkeeping system is a set of rules for the storage, use, maintenance and disposition of records, associated information, and the tools and methods used (i.e. classification schemes, retention schedules, a registration system, a record-keeping retrieval system, a recordkeeping metadata system, access privileges, and audit and transaction logs). To perform records management duties, recordkeeping requires the provision of appropriate technical infrastructure, and is consistently looking towards new technologies and how to manage their intricacies for capture and preservation. When it comes to new and emerging technologies, records managers must make sense of unfamiliar environments, such as social media, in order to diligently continue their duties into the future. The Obama Administration was the first presidential administration in the U.S. to make use of social media. The Administration boasts that they were “the first to have @POTUS on Twitter, the first to go live on Facebook from the Oval Office, the first to answer questions from citizens on YouTube, [and] the first to use a filter on Snapchat.” 7 Barack Obama’s firm online presence was partially due to the opportune time frame in which the Obama campaign ran for and won the presidency. During the campaign leading up to the 2008 presidential elections, social media was gaining popularity and quickly becoming a powerful communication tool, giving political figures the ability to amass followers and broadcast their political platforms to millions of voters. On the other hand, the Obama campaign was creating novel approaches to social media use. They launched a campaign that relied upon the widespread use of social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, Vimeo, iTunes, and Myspace), surpassing their political opponents in social media adoption and online recognition. 8 The use of the social media platform named ‘Twitter’ by politicians since 2008 has seen an exceptional increase in popularity, inciting both questions of ethics and of preservation. The ethical concerns of increased social media use rest upon the uneasy realization that the communication channels of influential politicians are now in the control of poorly regulated tech giants with little integrated records management functionality. However, these concerns have neither stopped nor slowed the use of Twitter by politicians. In fact, Twitter (and other social media platforms) have become so ingrained into political and personal communication, that those channels of communication are passed down from one president to another. For example, the Obama administration “revamped” the WhiteHouse.gov website and created the Twitter handle ‘@POTUS’. Now, both of these accounts have been migrated to obamawhitehouse.gov, and @POTUS44, respectively. The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, now uses the original @POTUS and whitehouse.gov accounts. 9 The accounts were migrated, wiped, and made new for the incumbent. From the beginning of the Obama Administration, throughout it, and into 7 Schulman, Kori. 2016. “The Digital Transition: How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age | Whitehouse.Gov.” The White House, President Barack Obama. 2016. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/10/31/digital-transition-how-presidential-transition- works-social-media-age. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 4 the Trump administration, social media has become an integral communication tool which places an exceptional responsibility on the shoulders of NARA, who must craft and implement policies to account for this new rapid-record-making phenomenon. The U.S. executive branch is subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 which has governed the official records of the president and vice president since 1981. The Act foremost dictates that the official records of the president belong to the American public, and not the individual. 10 The act was introduced following President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and his subsequent attempts at record destruction. 11 The Act also lays out the following two points: 1. [The requirement] that the President take all practical steps to file personal records separately, and 2. [Establish] preservation requirements for official business conducted using non-official electronic messaging accounts: any individual creating Presidential records must not use non-official electronic messaging
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