Copyright Watts Up With That
The following is part 2 a series of X (formally Twitter) articles from Don Lueders https://twitter.com/DonLueders/status/1985350748536729905 Part 1 is here. No one at NASA is managing any electronic information in compliance with the law. But don’t take my word for it. Take a listen to what the agency’s records management staff have to say. With the passage of the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014 , the definition of a Federal record was changed to include “ all recorded information ”. This meant that every item of digitally recorded information created or received by an agency must be managed through its entire lifecycle in compliance with the Federal Records Act (FRA), and no electronic information can be destroyed outside of a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)-approved retention period. In my five-plus years supporting electronic records management at NASA, I have worked with billions and billions of pieces of digitally recorded information in a staggering range of unique formats. During that entire time, I never saw one item of recorded electronic information managed in compliance with the FRA. Not one single item. NASA’s electronic records management program isn’t dysfunctional. Nor is it broken. It simply doesn’t exist. This is something I am capable of proving and I’m willing to testify to under oath. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Instead, let’s hear what some leading members of NASA’s records management program have to say. The following is a sampling of audio clips taken from recorded Teams meetings in which several senior NASA records management officials candidly admit that the agency has no functioning electronic records management system. As you listen to this first clip, notice this NASA Center Records Manager says that not only is his Center not managing the lifecycle of their records – they don’t even know where their records are. This is true of records managers across the entire agency. This NASA records manager says the agency has a process for managing paper records, but nothing for managing electronic records. This NASA records manager admits that none of her agency’s electronic information is being managed through a National Archives-approved records retention schedule. This records manager speaks about her past managers encouraging her to destroy agency information indiscriminately, in clear violation of the law. This NASA Center Records Manager admits that her agency has no real electronic records management program or even a strategy to create one. Finally, this is a clip from a NASA records management program all-hands meeting from earlier this year. Both of these women have leadership roles on the records management team. Listen as the woman on the left suggests the records management team is like the “cobbler’s children have no shoes”. What she is admitting is that even the NASA records management program does not manage their own electronic records. Then, when she jokingly says, “It’s not that bad…”, the woman on the right, who is her boss, says “It is that bad. It is.” Then they both have a good laugh. Every year, NARA requires each government agency to complete an annual self-assessment of their records management program. Every year, NASA gives itself high scores. They are lies. (I will post about this in more detail later in this series.) NASA does not comply with any Federal records management laws – they only pretend to. The damage this has caused cannot be overstated. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been lost. NASA’s most critically important classified information has been stolen. Information chaos causes unimaginable inefficiencies. And when the next Space Shuttle-like tragedy occurs (and it will occur – this is space travel, after all), no one will be able to understand why it happened, who was responsible, or how to prevent it from happening again because there will be no reliable records to refer to. Coming up in Part 3 of this series, I will explain how NASA’s contractors are fully aware of the agency’s records management crimes, how they have actively participated in it, and the shocking lengths they will go to prevent an employee from bringing these crimes to the public’s attention.
