I'm in ur kongres, openin ur gubmint

Change we can believe in:

The end may finally in sight to the seven-year battle historians and archivists have waged to overturn President Bush’s Executive Order 13233 of November 2001 that restricted access to presidential records. On January 7, 2009, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 35, the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009,” by an overwhelmingly bi-partisan vote of 359-58. H.R. 35 was chosen by the House leadership as the first piece of substantive legislation passed in 2009 as a symbol of government transparency.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. For those of you not up with your archival issues, EO 13233 was passed by President Bush in November 2001 and allowed any president to withhold access to the records of any OTHER president "reflecting military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, Presidential communications, legal advice, legal work, or the deliberative processes of the President and the President's advisers, and to do so in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), and other cases...".

For those of you who were wondering, that just about covers everything that a historian might possibly want to look at from a president's records. It's not up there with, say, EO 9066, but it is nonetheless a pretty odious directive, a pretty obvious subversion of the Presidential Records Act, and an extremely flagrant attempt to protect the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who, conveniently enough, would have had his papers released in 2001.

Welp, saddle up the horses, boys, 'cause it's time to go riding. Here are a few of the provisions of the act:

• Overturn Bush Executive Order 13233. Huzzah, huzzah, we already knew this though. Moving on:
• Establish a Deadline for Review of Records. No more of this 'waiting indefinitely for the president to give his permission' foolishness, which is always a good thing.
  
• Limit the Authority of Former Presidents to Withhold Presidential Records.
  Basically, EO 13233 said that if a former president didn't want his records released, he could tell the incumbent so and said incumbent would have to withhold the records. This was, of course, specifically inserted into the EO so that Democratic presidents could not overturn executive privilege for the papers of some of the, um, more 'ethically dubious' GOP CinCs.
  

  No more! The incumbent MAY withhold the records, but is no longer required to do so. Obama, coincidentally, has promised to support this kind of transparency in government. I'd be sweating if I were Oliver North right now.

• Require the President to Make Privilege Claims Personally. Not that former presidents have to physically go down to their presidential libraries and stop the researcher, but that any privilege claims expire once he does. In other words, Ronald Reagan DOUBLY has no way to withhold his papers now.
• Eliminate Executive Privilege Claims for Vice Presidents. This is a pretty obvious F-U to Vice President Cheney. Not that I'm complaining.

A similar bill actually passed in the House in 2007, but died when President Bush threatened to veto. It is unlikely that President Obama will do the same. Assuming people in the senate are non-stupid, this will be a boon to archivists, historians, and the general public alike. I for one am very excited about HR 35. If you're an information professional, you should be, too.

Sarah Palin's e-mail chicanery (Warning: Political)

I thought we had enough of this from the CURRENT administration, but no.

Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor's office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too.

The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be "open and transparent."

[...]

She is allowed to keep e-mails confidential if they fall into certain categories, such as "deliberative process," said her press secretary, Bill McAllister.

[...]

"I don't hear any public clamor for access to internal communications of the governor's office," McAllister said.

No, no, Mr. McAllister, that's not how Public Records Laws work. The question is not whether there IS public clamor for the records; the question is whether there COULD be public clamor, say, I don't know, if she were to run for the Vice Presidency of the United States? Admittedly I have not read the Alaska Public Records Law, but I am reasonably certain that there is not a clause in there that says "unless it would be politically inconvenient." There is a reason these things are in place, you know.

Also, it's pretty clear to me that Gov. Palin and you both know that this is sort of a disingenuous argument at best, seeing as how the whole reason that she would use a Yahoo Account is so her emails wouldn't be trackable by the State of Alaska's email system.

No one in the Palin administration could say if the governor is saving her Yahoo e-mails. If she's emptying her e-mail trash, they are zapped from Yahoo's storage system within days or at the longest, months, Yahoo says.

"If you are asking do we have those e-mails, then the answer is no," said Anand Dubey, director of the state's Enterprise Technology Services. "We don't control Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail or anything like that."

This to me seems awfully convenient, particularly in the wake of the 1100 emails that WERE on official Alaska servers which were withheld from a FOIA request on the grounds of 'executive privilege.' One has to wonder what is in the emails that aren't technically subject to Alaska public records laws. Except that they are. Unless the Governor's personal attorney says that they aren't. Hmmm.

I don't know. I just think it's very frustrating to give an email seminar in which you instruct people not to send business email from their personal accounts, and then read about a vice-presidential candidate for a major party who specifically instructs HER staff to do just that. It's enough to make a grown records manager cry.

Dean Dawson, state-records manager, is working on an e-mail-archive system for state employees, who tend to want to hang onto e-mail forever, he said. E-mail records should be kept as long as paper records of the same type — for instance, three years for general correspondence, he said. Top executives such as commissioners and the governor often must keep records longer, under state schedules.

Introducing Dean Dawson, ladies and gentlemen! The man with the most thankless job in the state of Alaska. (I would say 'in the United States', except you have to contend also with Missouri's records manager... or Texas's records manager... or the guy at NARA who has to archive the emails of the Bush Administration... Ah, right, this is why I am not working for the U.S. government!)