leary: good morning, everyone, and welcometo this public meeting of the public interest declassification board, which in good federalbureaucrat fashion we call pidb. i am bill leary, the acting chair of the publicinterest declassification board, but i'm thrilled to say this is my last day as actingchair of the public interest declassification board, because the president has just announcedtwo new appointees to the board -- a new chair, [kevin] morrison, who's dean of the nyulaw school, and an old friend of mine, jamie baker, who many of you, i'm sure, know,who among other government jobs was legal counsel to the nsc during the clinton administration,which is my -- i and nancy and others know him very well.
him very well. the pidb is a committee -- iknow most of you know this, but just on the odd chance that there's a newcomer here-- the pidb is a committee that was established by congress which advises the president andexecutive branch officials on policies regarding the classification and declassification ofnational security information. our primary mission -- did this go off? i don't know(inaudible) or not -- sounds like it did from there. our primary mission is to encourage,foster, the greatest amount of release of classified information. to act as an advocateon behalf of the public for declassification, and to also advise the president generallyabout how to improve the system from our perspective. in recent years, the president charged uswith designing a fundamental transformation
of the security classification system. candidly,i don't think we've figured out a fundamental transformation of the security classificationsystem. i've yet to hear of one. if any of you have one, please pass it on. (laughter)we're still searching. but in the process, i think we have made a number of useful recommendationsto the president in three reports to the president, some of which have been adopted by the administration others of which have not. we,re meeting this morning to discuss our recommendation to the president regarding technology investment for declassification.we recommend it in our 2012 report, that the administration should encourage more collaborationto determine how to employ existing technologies and develop and pilot new methods to modernizeclassification and declassification, starting
with the self-evident proposition -- thatunless something along those lines is done, the current system will come closer and closerto collapsing of its own weight. one year ago, we held a public meeting thathighlighted the administration's plans to build a strategy to do just that. we heardfrom the deputy chief technology officer of the united states, mr. alex macgillivray,or "amac," as some of you know him, who spoke about the president's desire for moretechnology and expertise that would support more fully the administration's commitmentto open government. today we're going to have an opportunity to learn what they'vedone in the year since that commitment was made; we're going to hear from john fitzpatrick,the senior director for records access and
information, security management at the nationalsecurity council, who's going to give us an update on these efforts. we're also going to share information about the pidb's declassification technology working group and its work at bringingtogether agencies to collaborate in support of this broad recommendation. finally, we'veset aside time at the end of our meeting to hear from you about whatever you think weought to hear. but i'd like to begin this morning by thanking the national archives,as always, for their hosting of this event, for the many ways in which they support pidb,and by introducing the deputy archivist of the united states, debra wall, who i learnshares some interest with my oldest son. she -- one of her many achievements is that shehas a degree in film, like my son. as i was
telling her earlier, i was thrilled to findsomeone who managed to make a success of herself (laughter) with a degree in film. gives mehope. debra became deputy archivist of the united states in july 2011. she previouslyserved as the agency's chief of staff, a senior special assistant to the archivist,and before that as director of the life cycle coordination staff, where she led effortsto develop policies, processes, systems, and standards relating to the life cycle of records.among other jobs at the national archives, she was also the manager of the archival researchcatalogue database and other information technology projects. she joined nara in 1991 and holdsan undergraduate degree in history and government from georgetown. she has a master' s certificatein information technology project management
from gw and has served as a member of theinternational council on archives' committee on information technology and the committeeon descriptive standards. clearly, she understands the importance of harnessing technology tomeet the challenges of security classification. please join me in welcoming debra wall.wall: good morning, and welcome to the national archives. i bring regards and regrets fromarchivist of the united states, david ferriero, who's out of town on personal business. ok. well, i am honored to be the deputy archivistof the united states, supporting the mission of the national archives to bring our government'srecords to the people in promotion of open government and transparency. as caretakersfor the declaration of independence, the constitution,
and the bill of rights, we hold the pledge"we, the people" as a serious responsibility, and so, too, the responsibility to preserveand make accessible the billions of government records that we hold in trust for the americanpeople. "innovate to make access happen" is ourguiding open-government principle here; we're committed to engaging and collaborating withthe public to fulfill that mission. i want to thank the public interest declassificationboard for holding this morning's meeting to further these open-government initiatives. pidb plays a much-needed role in supportingour open government initiative. the board continues to advocate for policy improvementsthat bolster greater public access to historically
significant government information. the board'sbeen a committed champion to modernizing out-of-date policies and practices that delay access torecords. and i think the members were drawing attention to the many risk facts-- the manyrisks facing our government agencies as they continue to struggle with the exponentialgrowth of government records common in today's digital information age. driving technological solutions to respondto the onslaught of digital information coming our way entails an integrated and innovative fix. i'd like to share some of the ways we at the national archives are meeting our open government initiative to innovate to make access happen. the national declassificationcenter continues to refine its processes and
find meaningful ways to bring access to researchers. since the successful retirement of the ndc's 341 million-page backlog in 2014, the ndchas made significant efforts to engage with the public and develop ways to prioritizerecords most sought-after by researchers. to expedite researcher demands, the directorof the ndc, sheryl shenberger, initiated an indexing on demand review process which providesresearchers with a formal channel to request records on topics of interest. this new reviewprocess complements the primary review process of the ndc, where the ndc reviews millionsof pages annually from newly accessioned records. this dual process model provides researcherswith sought-after records while ensuring another backlog of unreviewed records never growsagainst the national archives. sheryl and
her staff are also designing a means to systematicallyreview previously exempted records from automatic declassification -- in essence, those recordsof highest researcher interest, and likely the most historically significant informationheld by the ndc. in collaboration with our office of the chiefrecords officer, sheryl and her staff are also working to develop metadata standardsfor electronic classified information. while still grappling with the many challenges ofpaper records, the ndc is looking forward to what future declassification review willlook like and planning to ensure it will be able to meet the challenges imposed on allof us by electronic records. for her leadership and dedication to the successof the ndc, sheryl was recently awarded the
meritorious executive presidential rank award,in recognition of her accomplishments and leadership in review, declassification andrelease of permanent government records. sheryl and her staff exemplify open government andtransparency principles in their daily work, and we're honored to have sheryl workingso diligently on behalf of the american people, so congratulations, sheryl. (applause) she's looking very embarrassed. so hand in hand with the challenges of declassificationof significant historical information and the ensuing growth of electronic records arethe challenges we face in modernizing records management for the digital age. in 2011, thepresident issued his managing government records memorandum, committing to develop a 21st-centuryframework for the management of government
records by reforming records management, policies,and practices within agencies. the archivist of the united states and the acting directorof omb in 2012 signed the managing government records directive, mapping a new course forthe government-wide administration of information and records management. we at the nationalarchives are assisting agencies in meeting the requirements of the directive under theleadership of our newly appointed chief records officer of the united states, laurence brewer.is he here? laurence brewer. his office issued two new guidance instructions concerning metadatafor the transfer of permanent electronic records -- that was in 2016 this year -- and revisedformat guidance for the transfer of permanent electronic records, and that was in 2014,in support of the directive. we also published
the 2015 senior agency official reports online,in response to public interest in agency progress -- agencies' progress are meeting the goalsof the directive. these reports describe agency efforts to meet the first two goals of thedirective -- that agencies will manage email electronically by the end of this calendaryear, and that agencies will manage permanent electronic records electronically by the endof 2019. sharing the sao reports online provides needed transparency and oversight of the workbeing completed by agencies to meet the goals of the directive. we continue to support the work of the freedomof information act advisory committee, directed by our office of government information services.the committee completed a study and provided
recommendations to agencies and the archiviston improving and modernizing foia processes throughout the government. the committee,in the past two years, documented the successes and challenges in fulfilling the government'sfoia requirements, and not surprisingly, many of the committee's findings parallel therecommendations of the pidb: consistent use of technology to improve training processes,improve management practices, minimize backlogs, and thoroughly search for requested records,among other recommendations. ogis [office of government information services] and thecommittee carefully examined a hallmark government-wide statutory program to strengthen its valuesfor the citizens using foia. in our commitment to innovation at the nationalarchives, i'd also like to share with you
two of our newest programs aimed at engagingthe public in helping us bring access to historical records of significance: the innovation huband the history hub. the innovation hub is both a virtual and a brick-and-mortar spaceaimed at facilitating archival collaboration with our community of users. it's locatedin this building, and the innovation hub has a meeting section and a scanning section,where users may scan records using our state-of-the-art equipment at no cost in exchange for providinga copy of their scans for us to use in our online catalogue for the benefit of all ofour users. the history hub is a virtual crowdsourcing platform offering discussion boards, blogs,and community pages as a means for our staff to communicate and assist researchers workingin our records. both of these crowdsourcing
platforms allow us to build upon the workof internal and external stakeholders and be to provide 20th -- for 21st century access to experts and researchers interested in america's historical records. indeed, collaboration with our community ofusers is key to making innovation and access happen here at the national archives. in aprilof this year, we had the privilege of hosting the annual conference of the digital publiclibrary of america. the dpla is a public-private partnership, working to provide public accessto digital holdings of its large-scale digital library. the dplafest included a series ofworkshops, hackathons, and collaborative discussions, including a breakout session by where thepidb highlighted how declassification review
is a process critical to open government initiativesand transparency of government information. we at the national archives are committedto making access happen for our stakeholders; it's what we're about and it's why wecome to work every day. i want to thank the public interest declassificationboard, the agencies, public interest community, and everyone joining us today to add to thismorning's discussion. vital to the success of nara's open government initiatives isthe continuing conversation we share with our internal and external stakeholders, andthat this engagement is essential to help us improve our services and help us serveour democracy by providing access to high-value government records. so thank you today forcoming and for your support of our mission
and our work. (applause)leary: thank you, debra, and once again, let me thank the national archives for all themany different things they do to support the work of pidb, which quite literally couldnot function without the support they give us. i now have the particularly pleasant taskof introducing two of my favorite people, john fitzpatrick and nancy soderberg. ourfirst speaker is john fitzpatrick, who now has the job i once had at the nsc. he'srisen to the top. (laughter) in that capacity, he chairs the classification reform committee,a white house-led steering committee that pidb recommended the president establish inour 2012 report as a way of bringing high-level
attention to the necessity of devising reformsand changes to the classification system. he also chairs the records access and informationsecurity inter-agency policy committee, and he serves on the inter-agency security classificationappeals panel, iscap. prior to joining the nsc, as i'm sure all of you know, john servedas the director of the information security oversight office, one of whose tasks was toserve as the executive director of the public interest declassification board. so this isa very incestuous relationship (laughter) that we have with john. and prior to thathe had some 27 years of experience in the intelligence community. in short, as i havesaid before, john knows more about these issues than any person alive, inside or outside ofgovernment. please join me in welcoming john
fitzpatrick. (applause)fitzpatrick: thank you. thank you, bill, thank you, everybody. i'm a little frightenedby that last notion, and if it proves to be true i'm not sure i can make any publicremarks. (laughter) but first let me thank everyone here for comingtoday. engagement by the public in matters of the public interest declassification boardis essential. and i know from my experience here -- it's also gratifying to the membersof the board and to the nara staff, so thank you for making time for overcoming metro'ssafetrack phase 2 obstacles and whatever else you put aside or overcame to join us heretoday. let me also thank the board for the invitation, and again, that extrao-- i wishmy kids could have heard that introduction.
(laughter) i'm sure i would have gotten,you know, the eye-roll emoji anyway, (laughter) but i'd have felt better. it's good to be back in the warm embraceof the national archives and the information security oversight office, and of course theboard. it's been only five months, but a very busy five months since i left, and idraw my experience here at nara every day and now down the street. as bill mentioned, i served as the board'sexecutive security for not quite five years, and during which time it was really a privilegeto get to know the members and to assist in the board's work. they are each of themextraordinary and honorable public servants,
impressive in so many ways, and i have learnedmuch from them and am grateful to call them friends. their work -- as you know, or you wouldn'tbe here -- is vital to the ongoing dialogue about the activities of our government inthese increasingly complex times. the challenges that we face as a nation in a world fraughtwith threats and dangers and difficulties argue for national security strategies andactions that display a strong will and stiff backs. and yet, even as we might agree onthe need for such a posture, we also need to ensure that the american people commonlyunderstand and have trust in the reasons that these actions are taken. and we hope to ensurethis through openness and transparency programs,
through declassification programs, and bykeeping open a dialogue, as we have here, about how those programs are doing and howthey might do better. this requires a balance be sought by the way openness and security,and we must be open to different viewpoints about whether that balance is being appropriatelystruck. and if some feel it is not, then to listen to ideas about how it might be betterstruck. and so the work of the board in examiningsystematic elements of security classification is vitally important. and if you've beenfollowing along, and i recognize a lot of faces so i know that you have, you're awarethat the board, through its reports, has made recommendations that have altered and improved elements of that classification system. it's
done so with ideas that have made it intothe executive orders that guide the system, and it has done so in engaging with the publicand with agencies, some of whom are here, whose missions depend in part, and some inquite large part, on the efficacy of that classification system. the board enjoys aunique perch of, but not precisely within, the government it advises. this makes it idealnot only for looking at things broadly and strategically, but also for speaking hardtruths. for making -- i'm not quite sure i ever heard a member -- i couldn't quotea member saying to an agency or about a program, "that baby's ugly." (laughter) but iknow that they're willing to say that, so, quite -- so certainly more diplomaticallythan that, but it is the kind of perspective
and point of view that's necessary in thecritical review of the system. and while here my job was to help the boardto get the best input to formulate and communicate these observations and to make sure nobodyactually says "your baby's ugly," now part of my job is to take those ideas andhelp target them so they inform decision-makers as they consider and take action about thesystem. so let's talk about a few of those ideas,and some of them have been mentioned and others will be discussed in more detail this morning.the board's 2012 report recommended a white house-level body be created to take theseideas and work with agencies specifically on their implementation. that is the classificationreform committee that bill mentioned and that
i chair -- it was quite the accomplishmentfor the board to get the white house's attention on the need for such a body and to reallyturn it into an implementation-focused committee. the committee serves as a sounding board forissues and for their potential solutions and the policy mechanisms by which those ideaswould find their way into future executive orders. it's also the venue to review ongoinginitiatives about agencies and their practices, and their ability to share best practices. one of the big resources of the administrationhas been the open government national action plan, now in its third iteration, commonlyreferred to as nap 3.0. and the nap is home for certain of these initiatives in the areaof declassification. we'll review a few
that have been thrusts of the board's attentionin driving recommendations over the years. the dod, in partnership with the departmentof energy, state, and other agencies, have a commitment through the nap to work to improvedeclassification of a class of data known as formally restricted data, or frd. thisrelates to past operational utilization and nuclear weapons. and dod launched this initiativethrough its national action plan commitment, and established a process and an interagencygroup to consider such decisions. and as happens, there's been considerableturnover in the department personnel who created and sponsored, and actually did the work ofthat committee. and that impacted operations after the committee -- the working group gotitself started. but that topic remains on
the agenda of the crc. the department of defensepersonnel who are filling those chairs are aware of that priority, and we hope to havefuture results come from that body, that prove continued attention is being paid in thatarea. we're going to hear a lot today about greaterutilization of technology, and it's been a key thrust of the board for a great periodof time. last year, you heard from -- as bill said, you heard from amac, you also heardfrom -- i'm sorry, alexander macgillivray, the deputy chief technology officer at thewhite house. and you heard from cheryl martin from the university of texas at austin advancedresearch lab, where study and proof of concept work was being done under cia sponsorshipfor technological tools to aid in declassification.
then concepts were proven in that work. andin the current version of the national action plan, there is now a commitment to developa plan to implement technological tools to help automate declassification review. theinteragency declassification reform committee will develop that plan to expand the use oftechnological tools that were piloted by cia and nara to help automate declassificationreview. and i'm excited to say this effort has takensome very positive steps. we were working, of course, before i came to the nsc -- thiswas a topic of great interest by the board, and a lot of activity simply to get it knownthroughout government. this work was done at cia's initiative with a longstandingpartner and information management technology.
the university-affiliated research centerthat is at the university of texas is a specialist in this area, and so i had worked with themconsiderably over time. the difference here in what was, i'll say, differentiates thiswork is that it was about developing specific applications that would be put in an agency'sproduction line to actually assist declassification. you don't have to spend very much time aroundnara to have the opportunity for companies to bring you their wares and talk conceptuallyabout how discovery tools could do this, how searching in this way might yield this. buti would emphasize that the difference in the cia's work and the work with the universityof texas has taken that beyond the step of would and could, and the cia is now in the-- shall and will part of that. not to speak
for their programs specifically, because that'snot in -- in my purview, but i -- through the work of the committee, and cia's continuedinvolvement and continued sharing of information about that work. i can say they've taken the results of thosepilots and brought them into their information technology development program -- their nextgeneration information management, which is about declassification but also so much more-- and to take these and platform on their systems. and so an actual application, withfolks doing declassification review in cia will have, at their -- at their disposal intheir production line. now, that leads to a couple of questions.and i think i don't want to steal nancy's
thunder. i know she's going to talk aboutresource needs. to do any of these things, resources are needed. and it takes the commitmentof an agency, cia has taken upon itself to -- to see that it's in their interest tomanage their information systems this way and invest in that. our thrust, both wheni was here with the board and now through the work of the committee, is to try to fosterthat idea in a broader investment scenario. and a strategy for agencies to learn fromthese capabilities, take advantage of what the cia is developing in their environment,and ask the question and hopefully deliver some answers: how could i do that where mywork is done? and there's a[n] absolute need to partnerwith the national archives, which has a leadership
position in government, which has standardsand authorities that you cannot do records management, digital records management, electronicinformation management and declassification without the right steering from -- from thepolicies and directives that come from the archives, or that the president and the nationalsecurity council develop and have nara and isoo oversee the execution of. and so we have in the committee, the opportunityto keep this topic in the field of view of decision makers. bill mentioned my, sort of,long career in the intelligence community where i was a security official. and securityis one of those supporting functions that is not itself a mission, right? it supportsmission, it's not a mission. and so i worked
for a lot of mission managers, and of course,their -- whatever their mission is, it is -- it is where they are focused, straightahead. and occasionally, they'll look in their peripheral vision and say "how wedoing on security? we got it? we're good? ok." and then back to the mission. and youdon't really get reform unless you have a leader -- and not a security leader, buta mission leader -- say, "not only is that important, i'm going to move that over here,and i'm going to make that in my main point of view." and what happens when a mission manager doesthat is all the people that work for him say, "hey, that security stuff," or "thatclassification stuff, that' s a little more
important than i thought. if the boss is payingattention, i'm going to pay attention." it's essential in reform to make -- to findopportunities where that happens, and to encourage more of them. and i think what we are seeingin the cia's activity around the findings of these pilots and to move them into theirproduction line is to say, "we want to -- we want to have more of that." so we've worked through the committee. weset up a -- and now this is, since i've come to the nsc -- set up a subgroup of thecommittee that's focused specifically on the technology, and got them, i'll say,much smarter on what it was that the university of texas did, and what cia's plans are todo with that, and started then to imagine
what are the possibilities. now, we're doingthat with technology professionals in the agencies, and the usual suspects that talkedabout security policy and whatnot on classification. that's not -- that's a necessary but notsufficient set of minds thinking about this. and so we've had a partnership with theoffice of the chief technology officer inside the white house, and the office of scienceand tec-- technology policy with gsa's 18f, which is an information technology con-- myword -- consultancy, operated out of gsa, but tied directly to administration prioritiesand information technology management, which has resources that include presidential andinnovation fellows, who are brought in with experience and specialties in these areas.and so we've thrown this room together with
these kind of resources and begun to say,all right, if cia is doing that, what could other agencies do? and how would we lay outa strategy and the right amount of executive direction that that strategy must be followed?which is really the part where i say, the leader says that this is what you need tobe doing, and get agencies to go there. so we were a work in progress. i don't havethe plan that's in our commitment that's got to be delivered in this year of the administration,because this is the last year of the administration. it will include this work that we're doing.we have a proposed work plan, and there's a little bit of acquisition work that needsto be done to turn this proposal into a project, where these agencies -- nara and cia, anda few others -- will work with the experts
in 18f, and the presidential innovation fellows,to deliver a couple of specific things. one of those things is a landscape map of agenciesand these capabilities. i am fond of saying we are trying to go fromnothing to something in this area, and really calling out how much nothing there is, isa hard thing. i can have the opinion that agencies aren't doing enough here, but whenyou're talking in an environment of information technology professionals who are helping togovern all of the billions of dollars that the usg spends in it, they're talking aboutplaces where there is money to invest and how best to use it. and we're trying topoint out this is an area where few to mostly none (laughter) agencies have spent anything.that's -- that -- we actually are going
to have to show our work to prove that that'sthe case, and then we'll have the ability for executive direction come in and say, "that'ssimply not sufficient, and here are the things we want to do." then we want to look at this in terms of opportunities.if the cia is building a capability within its icite, and within the ic's new informationtechnology environment. that is a top-secret sci intelligence community collaborative itenvironment. anything that is built there is built in a way that it could be used byothers. the whole strategy of icite is not to have every agency building its own versionof a thing, but to have one agency build a thing that everybody needs a version of. sowe're trying to leverage the icite's dynamic,
and ic's -- and the cia's existing workto say if you're going to build in an icite, who else in icite could use that and sharethat capability, so you can build it once and use it many. then the strategy will also look at thosewho aren't in icite who may be in other environments where something similar couldbe done. and then the true have-nots -- which, as i said, is a lot of agencies from a technologystandpoint -- if they were to have something, what would it be and where would you do it?so these are strategic, yeah, alternatives that our team will use -- i'll say fact-basedresearch to document what we have and don't have, and what are the alternatives for movingout. anything that happens in this space is
going to be multi-year, crawl-walk-run. that's the way it development works. ifyou're going from nothing to something, you don't get from nothing to somethingwithout synching up in the budget cycle. and the next budget cycle is in the next administration.and so we have to take the very purposeful view that we can get out of this strategysome specific things to do, and executive direction to go do them, and then let theagencies that have this need, and really are looking for the spo-- both the sponsorshipand the resources, but the assurance that that's the direction we're supposed togo. so that's the gap that we're hoping thatthis project will fill. we will continue to
work both in the interagency with the boardand with isoo to keep folks apprised of how we're doing in getting there. if we arenot getting there, people will say it. if this baby turns ugly, people will say it.but right now, because it is something we haven't -- we've long said this kind ofthing is needed, and we're now in the process of producing this thing. i'm very encouragedand motivated by the encouragement that the board has given this topic for -- for a good,long time. i'm going to (coughs) highlight only oneother thing, and it's not a specific thing to the classification reform committee. well,actually, two other things. we're at a stage in the administration where the punch listfor what an administration is going to try
to do and going to be able to do has alreadybeen written, and they're working off of those things. that consumes all the energythat there is to do anything in the executive branch, and agencies have their own versionsof those lists. we also know that in the sort of typical historyof the classification system that the direction, the policy direction that comes to do thingsdifferently or to do new things comes in the form of the executive order, current one,13526, which -- which bill, in his prior role, shepherded through as he did other predecessorsbefore that. so we can look ahead to a -- what i simply refer to as the 45 administrationas having the need to consider the need to consider this executive order and what changesare needed. and what would be the process
to engage the public and engage agencies,hear from the board about recommendations about what changes, tweaks, augmentations are needed in that? i put that idea in everyone's head, not, to promise how that work will bedone because that'll be the decision based in the direction of the next administration,but to predict that it will be taken up at some point. and that the voices of folks inthis room, and certainly the board, are going to be important input on how that gets done.so that's a -- that's a bit of a look ahead. i also want to highlight an initiative that,to some degree, grew larger than anyone anticipated it would be, and for all of the right reasons.and this has been covered in the -- in the
press in the last few months, and it relatesto a declassification effort with regard to records of the dirty war in argentina in the'70s. as things happen, the president was planning a visit to argentina. the calendar-- the fluke of the calendar was that the -- his visit would fall on the day, the fortiethanniversary of a coup that led and kicked off all of these troublesome events in the-- in the history and government of the people of argentina. and so it drew attention toa request that the government of argentina had placed only a few months before, to seeif there were more records that the us had that could assist the government and the peopleof argentina in ensuring that they knew everything they could know about that period, and ifthere was an opportunity to reunite families,
and make up for human rights abuses, to bringpeople to justice, that it could be done. in the early 2000s, the state department undertooka declassification review, extensively through its holdings about that period, and this wasa boon to the people of argentina, and it is the kind of thing you read about, or thatinform history books there. and so when this opportunity came up, the question came tothe -- from the policy folks to us, what could we do here? and we pulled agencies togetherand asked that question, what could we do here? what do you have, and what would ittake for you to find that over what period of time? we were very encouraged by the response. again,i'm going to use that example of when your
leader takes something that you're not thinkingabout and makes you think about it -- declassification of historically significant records in thiscase -- things happen that don't otherwise happen. there was not going to be this initiative.since then, you may have had the opportunity to hear ambassador rice talk about this, oreven the president when he visited argentina, and president macri during that visit talkabout this activity. the project is to expand, to look beyond thestate department's original collection that was reviewed, and to review records of otheragencies, including law enforcement, intelligence agency records that were not reviewed thefirst time around, to take another look at the state department, withholdings that occurrednow a dozen or more years ago, and to see
if time has changed any of those decisions.and to look at other record sets, or to take advantage of the fact that other record setsare already being reviewed, and i cite here the president's daily briefs of -- of thenixon and ford administration. so instigated by a fluke of the calendar,much goodness and goodwill found between the governments of argentina by the presidentmaking this commitment. and so while it's not in the reform category exactly, it isa noteworthy depiction of what declassification can do. the classification reform committee-- and bill mentioned the i-- the interagency policy committee that i also chair, they are,you know, superman and clark kent, maybe, or bruce wayne and batman. i'll have tofigure out the right analogy. one was made
out of the other. the records access informationsecurity ipc is a standing body, and it has agency representation, and it was augmentedin very specific ways to create the proper reform perspective, to include the historianin the department of state in that to have a historical point of view to include otherresources from the executive office of the president, to bring in folks to include theopen government program activity as well. and so i highlight that, and it will deliverdocuments over time, some of them in a few months and some of them in -- all the wayout through next year. i'm going to stop there. i've probablygone over my time in any case, but i want to thank you for your attention, and again,thank the board for inviting me to come up.
(applause)leary: thank you very much, john. that's all very encouraging. these things -- thekind of thing john was talking about doesn' happen overnight. it takes a lot of persistence.and fortunately, john's a very persistent person, so i'm confident it will happen.just one comment, one thing that john mentioned about the new administration's likely interestin issuing the new executive order, and that is indeed one particular project in our workplan for the next six months or so, to talk about and devise some proposed amendmentsto the current executive order, which is a very good executive order, i think, is -- notbecause -- i mean, i was simply chairing the effort, but i think building upon the clintonexecutive order, which was a path-breaking
change in policy in this area, it made a lotof further enhance-- well, it's like the recommen-- like, establishing the nationaldeclassification center, for example, which was one of the board's first recommendations.but anyway, i mention that because we are going to have our next public meeting willbe on december 8th, and we will, at that session in particular, be soliciting ideas from thepublic about what should go -- go in that -- that pot of recommended ref-- amendments,revisions to the executive order. now, i want to introduce nancy soderberg toshare her thoughts on the challenge and opportunities of security classification that it's facingas she transitions from her role as chair of the pidb to an emeritus member. i'veknown nancy since we worked together in the
clinton administration -- technically, shewas my boss, but we worked together, where she was an enthusiastic champion of declassification.indeed, she was the major advocate of some prototypes of the argentina project that johntalks about regarding the declassification of her records related to the american rolein central america. she is a national s-- security expert with vast experience at thewhite house, the united nations, and in congress. she was the us representative for specialpolitical affairs at the united nations from 1997 to 2001, and staff director of the nscand deputy assistant to the president from 1993 to 1997. from 1985 to 1982, she servedas a foreign policy advisor to senator edward kennedy. she was president of the connectus fund, a nonprofit organization that focuses
on us global engagement. and currently, nancyis the president and chief executive order of soderberg global solutions, and a distinguishedvisiting scholar at the university of north florida. please join me in welcoming nancysoderberg. (applause) soderberg: well, thank you, bill. to say iwas his boss at the white house is a huge exaggeration, and anyone who's worked withbill realizes that he's a master of getting you to do what he wants, but letting you thinkit was your idea. secretive in marriage as well, but -- but thank you very much for this. i wanted to first of all thank the deputyarchivist and david ferriero, the archivist for their strong support. and it was lovelyto have debra with us. it's great to have
john fitzpatrick back, and i also just wantto commend you for your dedication to classification reform. as executive secretary here, he wasinstrumental in everything that we did, and his stewardship of the classification reformcommittee is admirable. and we're all very proud, because that was one of our first recommendations,the creation of that committee, and i reported in 2012. and i also want to thank the president forhis announcement yesterday of our two new appointees to the board. trevor morrison willserve as chair, and jamie baker will be a new member. and as bill mentioned, we haveboth had the privilege of working with jamie in the clinton administration. i think you'llfind him as sa-- both of them just superb
new members with broad expertise and commitmentto the vision of this board. i also want to take a moment to welcome our-- our emeritus members, admiral bill studeman and former congressman david skaggs. and ithink you'll find that the emeritus members unique to this board are remarkably engaged,dedicated, and have devoted an enormous amount of time. i look forward to joining them andcontinuing to support the effort of this board. but i want to just thank you all for yourcontinued work. what i thought i would just do briefly beforewe hear from the members of the board, and then you as the public, is to just highlightthe work of the board over my tenure, as three years as -- as chair. and i think there'sreally three areas that we focused on. one
is process, two is the need for technology,and the fourth is try to set some priorities. and i think we've made progress in all ofthose, and i'm confident that the committee will continue that work, as well as havingit involved in the white house. on process, we've already heard about theclassification reform committee, but we take great pride in the establishment of that,because it really is the government's internal effort to serve as a catalyst for reform andtransformation. we can do that as an outside board looking in, but it won't happen withoutthat good system in place which we now have. john mentioned the progress on the frd, thesort of need to get more review of the very interesting historical processes with ournuclear weapons that are kind of held by the
dod and -- and doe. and i think that's animportant progress. the second i wanted to just highlight the technology, and we'llhear from laurie shortly about the technology working group's work. but i want to justemphasize that technology -- we do not have the right system in place now. we're studyingit, we're thinking about it, but it needs to happen now, and it needs to happen withthe leadership that's currently in place before they leave office. we did have a chance during our time as chairto visit the center for content understanding, the ccu, at the university of texas. and we'veseen firsthand, as both john and others will mention later about the national archives,the cia has figured out how to manage and
digitize the technology. last year in june,you all had a chance in our public meeting to hear from cheryl martin of exactly howthat works, but it still has not been implemented government-wide. and our current declassificationprocesses simply do not work in a digital environment. they cannot keep up with thepace of petabytes and beyond of digital records that are now being created. so we need an investment strategy for theinteragency to meet the technology needs of the digital age. and as john said, there -- theclassification reform committee and the office of science and technology, they are reviewingthis. but frankly, the time for action has come, but i know john is very much aware ofthis, but i'm encouraging you all to begin
to ask questions of how can we put this inplace before the president leaves office? and i think john could benefit from a littlebit more prodding from the outside. we are simply not doing enough to manage the overwhelmingamount of government documents. and therefore, we are not doing enough to ensure that you,the public, have access to information regarding what your government is doing. and that needsto be corrected. the current security classification systemis also too antiquated to be effective in today's fast-paced environment, and theexponential growth of digital system is only exacerbating by the many challenges. a lookat classification and declassification is two sides of the same coin. if we don't-- if it's not classified correctly in the
first place, it's going to be clunky onthe other side. we put forward some recommendations in our first report on that, and as john -- asbill mentioned, they've been fairly strongly rejected by the internal system, so if othershave any ideas, i think that would be a -- a task that the pidb must actually continuegoing forward. secondly, i would talk about a government-widestrategy for the management of classification technology. it is just simply unsustainablewithout it, and the -- pidb's role, it was established to make sure that the governmentgets the balance right between what needs to be kept secret and what you, as the public,have the right to know. and that balance is skewed very heavily in favor right now ofkeeping everything internally, and away from
the public, because the system is not manageable.it doesn't mean there are not great people working on it days in and days out, but itjust doesn't work. and so we've been urging president clint--president obama to move quickly to ensure that a new system is in place before the endof his term. which means now. and the only way that's going to happen is strong presidentialleadership, making john work even harder, and an increase in resources. this is notfree, it is not easy, and it needs both presidential leadership and an increase there. we needfunding of more pilots, we need funding to get the cia's existing technology expanded. let me also just touch the need to prioritizewhat we do classify. today, we are spending
time and money reviewing and declassifyingdocuments that are of little interest -- or, frankly, no interest -- to the public. andin our second report in 2014, we put forward ideas to prioritize the presidential records.and i encourage you to look at the report on our website. we also can give you -- sendyou hard copies. ideally, what we'd want to do is do both automatic reviews and prioritization.but under the current resources, we have to choose. i would commend the cia in this effort.they have been releasing interesting historical documents. they did on bosnia at the clintonpresidential library, the pidbs that have been forward. the nsa has also been releasingsome interesting documents on the william friedman collection relating to the history-- the history of cryptology. bill studeman's
very familiar with that. the ndc has institutednew review processes, and as john mentioned, the argentina case. getting the historically interesting documentsout into the public is crucial in terms of what the public has the right to know. andi think we need to do a better job of that. we are also hopeful that president obama willdo exactly that, and set up a system for the expedited release of his own historicallysignificant documents, preparing to do that now shortly after his release is somethingthat i think would set a important precedent for the other presidents that follow him.president obama has championed open government since his inauguration, and we very much areencouraging them to do that before he leaves
office. i also want to just encourage you all to takea look at the reports that we have done, and encourage the pdb to continue the work thatwe've had. and i'll just reiterate before i close, the time for reform is now on thetechnology front, and encourage the administration to do that now, encourage the work of john.the digital age is well underway, but the government has not caught up to that twenty-firstcentury technology. and simply put, our agencies are ill-prepared to manage the vast volumeof electronic data. and one of the roles here is to get that, as john was saying, into theinbox of the president in the last seven months of his office.
and as a board, we've continued to underscorethese points. i know we'll continue to do it under our new leadership, but it's absolutelyessential that we have that conversation with you, the public, to actually make it happen. so in closing, let me just thank members ofthe pidb for their work in this area, particularly my friend bill leary, whose -- was first ideato put me on this board in the first place, and to the fellow members, the emeritus meeting,david ferriero, debra wall of isoo. and i can't leave this podium without also thankingthe amazing isoo staff that assists the board. and [where bill cira, who's sitting righthere, ellen knight, and neena way in the back [shavdev?], who are just extraordinary inwhat they do, and there's been a lot of
transition. and you wouldn't know it fromtheir hard work. we were seamlessly [stored?]. and i also want to mention dave powers, who'sleft here and moved over to the white house with john. so we're very, very well servedin that respect. we're also very grateful to president obama,and lisa monaco, who is an extraordinary partner in all this work, none of this would be ableto happen without their strong support. i'll echo john fitzpatrick's invitation to haveinput into the executive order. that is an extraordinary invitation. those, as bill leary,who actually is the -- he's very shy about taking credit, but he essentially is the reasonwhy we have any of those executive orders -- orders to begin with. and while they'reunder the radar screen, they're incredibly
important to getting information out. so takethem up, push for inclusions in that. lastly, i'll just welcome new members trevormorrison, the new chair, and james baker. and thank you for the support of our work,and we look forward to hearing from the members next, and then a public discussion. thankyou very much. (applause) leary: thank you, nancy. when i -- as nancymentioned, when i recommended that the president appoint nancy as the second chair of pidbwhile i was still at the nsc and had some influence, i expected that she would bringenergy and enthusiasm and collegiality to the work of the public interest declassificationboard that she certainly is not disappointed. we have benefitted enormously from her leadershipof the pidb for the past three years, and
we look forward to her continued active involvementas an emeritus member. we -- i was about now to, according to thisscript, present you with a letter from the president, which hasn't quite yet made itover here. (laughter) you know how those things work, better than most. it's on the way,though, i am assured by john. it's being signed as we speak (laughter) by the presidenthimself. it's not an autopen signature, so you -- and i'm just going to read thetext of the letter. that's all right. "dear nancy, i extend to you my sincerethanks for your valuable service as chair of the public interest declassification board,and my gratitude for your service to our nation. the institution of the presidency is largerthan any one person, and i am proud of the
dedicated individuals who serve our nationand help me faithfully execute the duties of this office. as chair of the public interestdeclassification board, you responded to my request to study a fundamental transformationof the security classification system. your leadership resulted in insightful recommendationsfound in the transforming the security classification system report, including the establishmentof the classification reform committee, a presidential body that helps policymakerslimit secrecy to the minimum degree required to meet legitimate national security considerations.i commend your service as chair. "your efforts to increase government transparencyand openness, essential tenets underlining the democratic principles of this country,will benefit our nation for years to come.
please accept my sincere thanks for your serviceto my national security team, and to the american people. sincerely, barack obama." (applause) now we are going to move on to comments from our members, and that includes emeritus. that's just a sort of fig leaf we use to meet legalrequirements here, but they are just as active, if not more active, and full participantsin our deliberations. and i'm going to ask each of them, the official current memberssitting up front, david skaggs and bill studeman sitting in the first row here, to make somecomments. and then the floor will be open to all of you. i'm going to start with lauradebonis at the far end, who has served on our -- the technology working group, and ihope is going to tell us a bit about that,
as well as maybe some other things. laura?debonis: (inaudible) hello everyone, and thank you again for coming. i am laura debonis,and i've been a pidb board member since march 2015. as a brief background, in thepast, i've worked at google on google books, at harvard's berkman center for internetand society, associating social network safety technologies, and now i serve as a board memberat the digital public library of america. for the pidb, along with the fabulous admiralbill studeman, i am currently co-chairing the declassification technology working group,which we started about a year ago now, and have had four very productive meetings ofto date. the mission of the working group is to studyagency technology investments for classification,
declassification, and records management withinthe executive branch. this group is comprised of agency technologists who are deeply familiarwith their respective agencies' readiness for the digital age. our goal with our meetingsis to broaden the dialogue between members, enable discussion of best practices, facilitateideation and problem solving, and create cross-agency communication about the technology challengesagencies are facing with their records management. as i mentioned, we have had four very productivemeetings this past year, and we look forward to continuing them in the year to come. thefeedback from group members is that the meetings have been extremely helpful to their technologystrategy and planning, which we are of course very, very pleased to hear. as a board, wehave found the technology working group meetings
to be helpful to our own goal of gaining insightinto the landscape of technology issues facing the agencies and declassification today. usingwhat we have learned over this last year, we have written a whitepaper about our takeawaysand observations that we hope will be useful to the broader community. we are distributingthis today to you at this meeting, and are also posting it to our blog. we look forward to any feedback you mighthave from reading the whitepaper. we hope it will encourage discussion about the futureefforts of the working group, as well as where pidb should overall next focus its advocacyefforts. we also hope that this whitepaper will be helpful to john fitzpatrick and theclassification reform committee in shaping
its government-wide technology investmentstrategy for all agencies, which we continue to feel is critically important. not justfor the future of declassification and records management, but more broadly as well. thankyou. sandy, over to you? leary: next is sandy ungar. i hope all ofyou had a chance to read sandy's wonderful op-ed in the washington post, what was it,a week ago monday? if not, go back and read it, talked about some of the issues we'retalking about this morning. sandy? ungar: thank you, bill. thank you, laura.because my op-ed piece has been distributed to you with my most recent thoughts on thesesubjects, i will try to be particularly brief in order to leave some of my colleagues'time to speak. while we're thanking everybody,
i just want to say make sure that everyonerealizes what a charismatic and effective leader nancy soderberg has been for the pidb.she has brought extraordinary experience and depth of knowledge, and a way of dealing withthese issues, from which i have learned a great deal. i'm grateful to nancy personally.i think we all are for -- for her leadership. just a word, because maybe no one else willdo it, about this unusual institution of the public interest declassification board. theidea originally, i believe, as senator daniel patrick moynihan and others in congress whowere worried, with good reason, about government secrecy. and i must say, (laughter) it'shumbling now to think how simple the problem was at the time that the pid-- pidb was created,and how much more severe the problem has become,
how prescient senator moynihan and otherswere about it. in my particular view, the genius of this institution has been that it'sbrought together people -- admittedly, appointments run out, and people have to take on emeritusstatus. and it's a little clumsy keeping it all together. but we've had a very -- awonderfully broad selection of people serving on the board, people who have served verydistinguished careers in the intelligence community. even a member, a former memberof congress who has a very particular perspective, people who have worked in the white house,other -- increasingly, people who know a great deal about technology. and even the occasional journalist, of whichi'm -- i'm one. laura introduced her background;
i spent about half my career in journalismand half in higher education. worked for the washington post and others in the so-calledprint world, obsolete as that may seem now, and then in radio, and both public interestradio and at the voice of america. and then for my last two big jobs have been in highereducation, one as dean of a school of communication, and then president of an absolutely wonderfulsmall liberal arts college in baltimore. i just have a few things i want to add tothe dialogue today. one is that i have a sense, after a long service now -- i've had threecongressional appointments to this board, appointed by senator reid. i have come toappreciate just how utterly difficult it is to get priority attention for these issues.that when there's a crisis, there's a
leak of a major nature, when something comesout, suddenly everybody is concerned about security, and even a few are concerned aboutover-classification, and -- and the need for more efficient declassification. but givenall the other crises we can front -- the budget issues, the -- the utter decline of civilityin american politics, and so many things that are happening, it is really difficult to askpeople, "now, wait a minute, put everything else aside -- or don't put it aside, butstill sit up and notice what's happening," namely that the public is being ever moresystematically excluded from knowledge about the workings of its government, particularlyin the field of national security and foreign policy.
this is a crisis. it has great complexityto it and many different sides to it. there are so many good intentions, and there issuch slow progress on fixing this. i have tried over time to adopt an attitude of constructiveimpatience, which i think is necessary on all of our part. the -- the numbers of electronicdocuments that are being created when president obama leaves office, and another tsunami ofdocuments will be upon us for review and processing. and they simply can't all wait 25 yearsto be looked at. i mean, that is such an obsolete concept that we can't tolerate going onthat way. i think the two particular [inaudible] ofthe board in recent -- well, i'd like to say weeks or months, it's actually now alreadyyears -- has been a sense, a system of prioritization.
probably not perfect; i had a very thoughtfulcomment sent to me by an archivist here about my piece in the washington post recently onthis subject. but it's cut -- we have to find a way to get crucial information out.we cannot wait until nobody has heard -- essentially, no one has heard about the wars in afghanistanand iraq, before we find out how we got into them. and that is -- that is what will happen,unless some changes and reforms are made. there is such a -- a desperate need for technologyto process things. i'm sensitive to and respectful of the worries about members ofthe intelligence community who are serving the public interest. there are worries aboutmistakes being made by machines, but so many mistakes are made by humans that's really-- it's really hard to -- to say we don't
dare introduce more machine and electronicprocessing into this work. we had several recommendations in our studyingpriorities report, and there's one i want to call attention to, especially to remindpeople about it, which is to end this -- if you'll excuse the expression -- utterlyridiculous system of pass-fail review of documents. in other words, when people are meticulouslyreviewing documents, as soon as they come across one sentence, one phrase, one elementthat causes problems, the old system is simply then to put the document aside, not to redactit, not to -- to come up with a compromise on it, and then wait for it to be reviewedin the course of -- of events again, perhaps 25 years later. and without benefit of whatwas found the first time, or what was understood
the first time. this is a waste of human resources,it's a waste of time, it's a waste of intelligence, and of -- of good intentions. so i hope that this constructive impatiencewill come into play a little bit more as we try to figure out just what we're goingto do before -- hopefully before the next crisis or two or three that -- that come up.i would note that i was particularly involved with the story of the publication of the pentagonpapers, shockingly, 45 years ago this month. but it was only five years ago that the pentagonpapers were officially declassified. so it took 40 years after the leak of the pentagonpapers, and i suspect in part because the archivist, david ferriero at the time, thought,"wouldn't it be interesting if we were
to take a look, after all, about these documents that there was so much controversy about?" so we've just got to do something aboutthis and do it urgently. it is fundamental to the health of the -- healthy functioningof a democracy. it is necessary to preserve and to build civic engagement, which is neededmore than ever in this country right now. but if we don't know if -- and if youngpeople don't come have a systematic appreciation of history, how will they ever, ever be ableto move this country forward? thank you. sol? (applause)watson: hi. i'm solomon watson. i've been on the pidb since march of last year. i wasa lawyer for the new york times company for 32 years before i retired. i got there a littlebit after the pentagon papers decision had
been decided, but became part of the dna ofall of us there. and as sandy has pointed out, there is a well-known story about theprocesses leading up to the publication of the pentagon papers by the post and the newyork times on june 13th, 1971, and the resulting landmark supreme court decision. there isalso a story about the declassification of the papers, and their being made availableto the public 40 years later, june 13th, 2011. and that's what i'm going to talk a littlebit about this morning. that story, which reflects an apparent governmentalinterest in continuing security, secrecy, and what some might call bureaucratic actionor inaction on the papers, is a cautionary tale, because to some extent, it has impacton what happens today. on the face of it,
as sandy indicated, it should not take -- shouldnot have taken so many years, 40 years, for the papers to have been declassified. thegovernment's rules with respect to how long sensitive national security information isto remain classified were clearly not applied to the pentagon papers. for many years before2011, an argument was made by skeptics that the papers ceased being sensitive when leakedand published in 1971, and that they should have been declassified shortly after the vietnamwar was over in 1975. now, one of the outcomes of the pentagon paperslitigation was that it made the public very skeptical about the government's claimsfor needs about national security secrecy. that the papers remained classified so muchlonger than required raised questions among
archivists, historians, academics, and thepublic at large about the system of classification and declassification. those papers had beenkept secret, despite numerous efforts over the years to declassify them. attempts weremade under the freedom of information act, and a system known as mandatory declassificationreview. perhaps reflecting public skepticism, it has been written that there may have been-- may have been -- official knowledge that some of those requests were being consciouslylost. no attempt to have the papers declassified prior to 2011 was successful. there was anabsolute lack of transparency with respect to their treatment. the declassification reviewof the 7,000 pages of the papers, i'm told, took, about 10 days, because members of thestaff had great familiarity with them and
were motivated to see the papers declassified. we celebrate that release of the papers becauseit meant that, for the very first time, the american public could see the actual pentagonpapers. until that time, no one, other than those with a top-secret clearance, had seenthe actual pas-- the papers. in the press release announcing the declassification ofthe papers, the ndc, noting that the project could not have been -- could not have beensuccessful without the help of the intelligence community, the defense community, and thedepartment of state. and there is an interesting, illustrativefootnote to this story. it was reported that during the 2011 declassification review, oneorganization initially suggested that there
were 11 words on one of the 7,000 pages thatshould be redacted. while that suggestion was not followed, the fact that it was evenmade so many years after the pentagon papers study was delivered to the government andwritten about in the newspaper was taken as evidence of what many would call a continuingculture of risk aversion and secrecy within the government. in addition to these cultural issues, andnotwithstanding progress made in many quarters, there remains a substantial number of institutionalbarriers to effective classification and declassification procedures. to remedy this, the governmentshould make timely declassification of information part of its normal way of doing business.and this should include a government-wide
strategy for technology, and indeed, a programto transform the risk-averse culture. without transparent rules with respect to timely declassification,the public perception will remain that national security information, even if properly classified,is being withheld improperly and for too long. as a member of the pidb, i have seen thesechallenges, but i am an optimist. more importantly, i have seen great leadership, a growing spiritof collaboration, and a can-do attitude. these factors, with appropriate resources and support,will help ensure that the public has access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentaryrecord of significant united states national security decisions and activities. after all,that is our mission, and that is our right as citizens. thank you. (applause)wainstein: hi, this works? ok. good to see
everybody. my name is ken wainstein. i'vebeen on the pidb since 2013, i believe. and let me just start off as -- as sandy and soldid talking about the pentagon papers. i wasn't working at the washington post at the timeof the pentagon papers. i think i was reading newspapers at that point, but i -- i did -- probablythe comic pages. but actually, i had a sort of interesting perspective on it, becausemy father was involved in one of the organizations that helped to draft some of the pentagonpapers. so some of his friends were prominently in the leaked papers. he actually was oldfriends of daniel ellsberg's, and ellsberg reached out to us in the aftermath of the-- of the leak. and so i heard from a young age the perspective of people on the inside,who were -- who felt aggrieved by the fact
that there was this leak of classified information.and there were some very personal impacts that friends of my father's felt becauseof what people thought about the papers and the fact that they, you know -- and the thoughtabout the war. but then since then, i've been able to sortof balance that against or with the public interest, and the benefits of disclosure ofthat kind of information that never in favor of leaks, as someone who has worked in intelligencecommunity and law enforcement for many years. but the disclosure of important informationthat really is introspective about the government and what it did, what it did well, what itdid not so well. that's really important that it be -- to the extent is -- is possible,that it be out there for the public to see.
so i think that actually was a very good casestudy of, you know, that balancing. very sensitive information. i don't know what was in those11 words, but i can tell you, there are -- there is certain information, names of sources,that kind of thing that those don't -- the importance or the sensitivity of that informationdoesn't age off until the person's dead, and there are still ramifications are forpeople. so i don't know what those 11 words are that sol was taking about, but i couldsee myself being in the position of authority in an agency saying, you know, i don't -- itdoesn't matter to me that maybe this information's already out there, this is 40 years down theroad. but this about a human life. i've got to be very careful about it. so it's-- i just highlight that, because it's -- these
are very difficult issues sometimes. but what i'd like to focus on in my remarksis the frontend of the process, the classification aspect of this. we're the public interestdeclassification board, which is -- i mean, that's not a misnomer, but it only capturesone half of this, which, as nancy said, classification and declassification are two sides of thesame coin. and i do have some insight, along with others who have been involved in thisprocess, into the -- into the classification, you know -- the motivations and the processesthat go into classification decisions. and i agree with everybody who's spoken so far,that the system has just -- it's broken. and not -- you know, not by anybody's faultnecessarily, but you have a situation where,
you know, people who are classifying officials-- like myself when i was working in government -- the incentive system is to be cautiousand to classify by default. and that's just natural human nature. in order to push backagainst that -- and especially push back against that now, with the sort of exponentially increasing volume if information that comes through -- it's going to take real strong leadership. andif -- if we don't see that, if we don't see those -- any changes, we're going tocontinue to see the problems that we're -- we're seeing. i mean, over-classification, obviously, ithas a number of different ills related to it. it -- it's antidemocratic in a sense,because it prevents the public from seeing,
to the maximum extent possible, what its governmentis doing. it damages information sharing among agencies, and between federal agencies andits state, local, foreign, tribal and foreign counterparts. and also, i think it just -- itbreeds a level of distrust by people about the government, because there's a -- peoplejump to the conclusion, or move to the conclusion that over-classification is a result of adesire to keep secrets for nefarious reasons. and by and large, i've not seen that inmy government years. i didn't find that things were over-classified to avoid the disclosureof embarrassing facts, that kind of thing. has that happened? sure. but the overwhelmingmajority of over-classification is just because of innate cautiousness, and because it'snot a priority.
and -- but nonetheless, despite that, i thinkit breeds suspicion, it gives justification for leaks, and i -- as i said earlier, i -- youknow, i see how damaging leaks are. and every time there's -- there are hearings up onthe hill, or there's a big issue about a -- a leak, i end up speaking about it or testifyingabout it. and one of the things people -- and i'm on the, look, we -- we need to stopleaks side of the debate, generally -- but, you know, what people throw back at me is,"well, come on, there's over-classification here. and we need to get some of this informationout that shouldn't be classified in the first place," which is a very strong counterargument.and for the purposes of the next time when i go up to testify, i'd love to have thatcounterargument negated. i'd like there
not to be over-classification. but i thinkthat's, at this point, we're a long way away from that. so anyway, we have the innate cautiousnessof people who are doing the classification. we have procedures that generate a resultin automatic classification. and so we're just seeing this exponential growth of thebody of classified information that we're dealing with. and it's going to require,you know, a multistep process. and many of these are steps that the board, in particular,right before i joined, made recommendations about. you know, we need to refine the policiesand procedures for classification, but revise the classification system itself. training.there has to be a training and sensitizing
of government officials to the need to -- tominimize classification to only that core, classified, and sensitive information. andthen lastly, a technological solution. and i tell you, i was -- i went to austinwith the pidb a year and a half ago or so, and was here when ms. martin gave her presentationlast year. and i'll admit, that i was a bit of a skeptic before i went. but i wasreally amazed at the -- you know, the content analysis that there's -- their technologicalsolution provides. as i remember, it was, like, 98% accurate, which is a heck of a lotbetter than i thought, and i think a heck of a lot better than most, you know, humanclassification or declassification can -- can do.
so that's inevitable. that's the onlyway we're going to get ourselves out of this mess, and so i -- i applaud everythingthat's being done on the -- that score. john, i know, is carrying the flag over atthe white house. but as john said, this is -- it's not the secu-- it's not the missionthat people are focusing on. it is ancillary to the mission, and it's going to take leadershipby this administration, by the next administration, and by all of us who are involved in thisto one extent or another to make it a priority, because it's -- it's only going to getworse. lastly, let me just say thanks to -- to nancy.i want to join what -- my colleagues in applauding her work. she has been everything that sandyand john and others have said about her, but
i will say one other thing, which is we are-- the pidb operates in a space where we don't have line authority, necessarily, over prettymuch anybody, right? so our effectiveness is in getting our word and our position andour sort of moral high ground out, and that requires an understanding of the government,an understanding of the pressure points, an understanding of the people. and the processesof the government including the interagency process. that is something that nancy hasbrought to this job, and it's -- it's a rare commodity. and the -- to the extentthat we've been successful in changing opinions and mobilizing people, it's been largelydue to nancy's efforts. so i just want to join my colleagues in thanking her for that.and also in, you know, acknowledging the president's
kind words, which i thought were very nice. and, look, don't feel bad that it's notdone yet. as somebody who doesn't get his holiday cards out until valentine's day,i can kind of relate to the president. but i just want to join everything the presidentsaid as well. thanks. (applause) (background dialogue; inaudible) studeman: good morning, everybody. i'm bill studeman. i have been on the pidb for, countingmy emeritus time, over a decade. so i'm really the old guy, literally and figurativelyhere. and let me just make a couple comments about things that you've already heard about,mindful that the clock is ticking beyond here.
i've been co-chairing the technology workinggroup, as laura said, and we have been actually quite aggressive. it's not only the fourmeetings, but we've done agency visits, we've had the staff go -- pull people infor visits. we've had offline discussions. so this is really, i think, one of the mostimportant things about the working group, which is that we are able to make progresscould be call all these people together into these -- into a forum where they have to shareinformation perspectives, where we get briefed on common things of core interest to the technologyfuture, and what's really happening, in the both records management area and classification-declassificationarea. it's sort of like management by nagging, if you will, which is one of my favorite waysto manage, actually.
and i think that you have to recognize thatthis is more than just about text-- the ccu project at texas -- deals with text. ultimately,it's about geospatial data, it's about graphics, it's about video, it's -- thewhole media world is shifting, and records management -- part of this, and the archives,and the declassification world has to deal with all of that. we've been looking mostly at tools. theccu project really is the only viable tool we've found so far. we have to open theaperture and get more ideas about tools in. so piloting and prototyping, trying to causeagencies to actually come together is -- the ccu project shouldn't just be cia. nsa hasshown a lot of interest. we're talking about
trying to bring it up there, also get someof their money, maybe resources transferred over so we can accelerate the -- the toolin proper textual settings. and i think it's important to accelerate. time has gone ontoo long. this is a rather difficult, tricky tool to contextualize into the environmentwhere you're working. so it's not just a question of bringing up some software, andyou're off and running. the pilots and prototypes, and the whole alternativefutures for dealing with the technology part of this really does suggest that there hasgot to be a public-private dimension to all of this. and this has been a government-only kind of thing for a long time. i think there's a lot already going on out there on the privateside. cia, as part of its implementation of
icite has gone to silicon valley contractor,the silicon valley people, and the people who deal with it and communications, and -- andinformation at large. probably could have a lot to offer here, so we need to figureout a way to get that aperture opened, and -- and access them. the other thing is i think we actually needto someone analysis study. we have no idea what the size and scope and nature of thisproblem is in the context of the world going digital. and it went digital 25 years ago,actually, so we're in the digital era now. so we need to probably get some data, youknow, on the size and scope of the problem at some point. i want to -- i think it'simportant for you all to recognize that, in
the context of tools, declassification toolscan also be used as classification support tools. so if we make progress on declassificationside, there might be aids to classification that could come out of this that are important. so again, i think recognizing that this isa dramatic paradigm shift in the size and scope and the information that the old paradigmthat we had that's already been talked to here by numerous speakers just absolutelywon't work in the future. some entirely new direction, some entirely new strategies,some -- some dramatically new paradigms apply, wrap technology around it, is the only waydown this road and the prioritization. and that may mean that the old way of doing businessis going to cause you to have to leave behind
things that you like, and that risks haveto be taken. but i think the only way you're going to move forward is if you take thatroad. so thank you very much, and i appreciate you all being here. (applause) leary: let's go to the public. ok. this floor is now open for comments, questions.i'm going to ask you to -- to be as concise as possible in your remarks, and please identifyyourself. aftergood: hi, i'm steve aftergood withthe federation of american scientists. three quick points. john mentioned the release ofthe argentina documents, which was a great accomplishment. i wanted to mention a closelyanalogous case in which people in indonesia
are seeking declassification of us recordsfrom the 1960s. but because of the fact that the president was not traveling to indonesiaon a significant date, that request has not moved. my point is that there's a -- there'san element of arbitrariness that amounts to a structural problem in the way we declassify. second quick point. if there's a singlefestering wound in historical declassification policy, i think it would be the continuingfailure to release declassified records concerning iran in 1953, in the foreign relations ofthe united states series. it's an issue that people have been clamoring over for atleast 25 years. we were told repeatedly these records are about to come out. if you, pidb,have the bandwidth, i would encourage you
to talk to the historian of the state department,dr. randolph, who's here. find out the facts of the matter. if you concur that there'sa problem here, then i would encourage you to use your authority with the secretary ofstate, with the administration, to say get this stuff out. it's not a -- it's nota technology problem, it's a policy problem. i encourage you to talk to dr. randolph. third quick point. one agency that has notbeen mentioned here is omb, and i think they are central to the solution of this problem.your whitepaper talks about the need for leadership and resources, but there are dozens of agenciesthat classify records. and if we take this as a -- if we tackle this problem agency byagency, it's never going to be solved. i
think it's a government-wide problem, itrequires a government-wide solution. i'm talking about the declassification of historical records. omb should be advised that there's going to be a train wreck unless we have astable s-- increase over the next five years in funding available for declassification,including new declassification technology. the way to do that is perhaps a 1 to 5% taxon the information security budget. in other words, whatever the information security budgetis, we need to allocate 1 to 5% of that for declassification, including declassificationof technology. and that would advance the ball, would not make us dependent on visionaryleadership in individual agencies, which is hard to come by. thanks.leary: thank you, steve. sir.
binder: michael binder, air force declassificationoffice, speaking for myself and not for the department of the air force or the departmentof defense. i'd like to ask of the board three requests in three areas. one has todo with security classification guides. i used to work for the department of energy.we had beautiful guides. they were nearly all classified. if you looked at the guide,it would say, "if you say this, that's unclassified. if it's this, it's cla--it's confidential. if you say this, it's secret." in the department of defense, itsays, "if you're in this area, it's unclassified to secret." and one of thereasons why is because isoo encourages us to produce unclassified security classificationguides. those are not very useful for an automated
system. so what we want to do is to produceclassified scgs. however, producing classified scgs when they were unclassified before willupset the public, so i would ask the pidb to back us in our desire to produce classifiedscgs, which would not then be available to the public. the second area has to do with the distinctionbetween information and record. in the handout, there were a few places where i saw the word "information," and i think the word "record" would have been appropriate. it's very importantto maintain the distinction. there is practically no information, i would contend, that is over-classified.there is a tremendous abundance of records that are over-classified. information is classifiedby original classification authorities. they
have the expertise of subject matter experts.these things are sent out for review, and they generally do not over-classify information.that classification may expire, the records that are based on the information have notbeen reviewed, and therefore those records have become over-classified. so it's importantto maintain that distinction. and the third area, touching on some thingsthat john fitzpatrick talked about, having to do with resources, the military departmentsare top-down organizations. in my organization, we can appeal to our ses that we should getsome money to run a pilot, which is something that we want to do to develop an automateddeclassification review tool. but we need people like the pidb to go to the secretaryof defense or the secretary of the air force
and talk to them about the need for more resources,and to impress upon them the need for making that effort. and therefore, when my boss,my boss's boss, goes and appeals for more money, he's talking to someone who is alreadyamenable to that idea. that's it. leary: thank you.goitein: hi, liza goitein from the brennan center. i have a question for nancy soderberg,and responding to something you said, we were -- you were talking about the -- pidb'srecommendations from, was it 2012? i forget. and you were saying that a lot of the sortof frontend recommendations had been sort of rejected from within, i guess, the administration.and this was news to me, and not in the sense that -- i mean, obviously, we haven't seenthese recommendations acted on, but by the
same token, we also haven't really had muchcommunication at all with the classification reform committee, which is frankly one ofthe disappointing -- when i say �we,� i mean civil society. and the lack of communicationbetween the crc and civil society has actually been a bit of a -- a bit of a disappointment.and so having not had that communication, it was not clear to us whether the inactionwe were seeing on those recommendations was simply -- it could have been a number of differentthings. so i'm curious whether you could tell us any more about s-- what happened tosome of those recommendations, and -- and why, to the -- to the extent that these recommendationswere actually considered and rejected. do you have any, you know, feedback for us, aswe consider what recommendations we want to
make for the executive order for the nextadministration? soderberg: sure. first of all, the reformcommittee is here in the terms of john fitzpatrick. so accost him on the way out, i'm sure he'dbe happy to -- to chat, and maybe there's a way to have a direct discussion with thepublic, and -- and the re-- and the committee. that might be helpful in terms of organizingsomething formal where people have a chance to think about it before december. i would say inaction is rejection. when weput out the report in 2012, we went and talked to a number of the various departments aboutit. in a formulation of the report, we, prior to issuing the report, we had a number ofconversations. and i would say we got a lot
of blowback on our recommendation for a two-tieredclassification system, particularly the elimination of confidential. the state department'sconversations back and forth are confidential, and their argument was that it was simplya mean -- instead of being unclassified, it would bump up to secret, and more informationwould be classified. we got some of that. the frd, we initially had talked to both theleadership of doe and dod, and, you know, it's a third rail for some of these. thechanges in personnel may make that a bit easier, and i think the committee -- and john maywant to follow up with some of you on that issue -- is they are moving forward. the retirementof kyl and lott makes it easier as well. so we did actually do an internal review ofwhat had implemented and what had not been
implemented of those reports. so if there'sanything specific that you're interested in, we'd be happy to kind of give you asense of -- of what's -- what's happening. and i personally am more than happy to talkabout which ones are really hard and why, (overlapping dialogue) so that you could geta sense of the executive order. i mean, we might want to do some internal thinking onthe executive order as well, which i personally haven't done. others may have.goitein: (inaudible) recommendation are truly (inaudible) declassification of things thatwere operation sensitive or date sensitive. do you have a sense of (inaudible)?leary: that -- you know, that's related to the two-tier recommendation.goitein: no, no it's a separate recommendation
(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)leary: i know, it's a -- it's a separate recommendation, but they're thought of intandem, i think, by the agencies. and i -- everything that nancy said is correct, of course, abouttheir reaction. i still think that the administration of the agencies have not really grappled withthose two related issues. i think they just dismissed them as impossible. i mean, particularly,the -- the steadfast resistance of the state department pretty much put an end to any seriousconsideration of how maybe to modify those recommendations. we, i think, were carefulto say in our report that these were big changes. they might require some refinement. and icertainly believe that, and people within agencies who do this work on a day-to-daybasis are the best ones to refine it. but
i still think there is some merit in seriouslyconsidering those two related options. both of which have been simply ignored.soderberg: as -- as ken mentioned, it's counterintuitive -- at least it was to me-- that automated technological release of information and review of documents is muchmore accurate than people doing it. i thought, "oh, you have to --- when we -- when westarted this four or five years ago, i thought, oh, well, we'll have to convince the agenciesto be less risk averse and in automating things. in fact, the opposite is true. the ccu project,it was in the 90% of accuracy, and -- versus when people do it, it's, what, in the seventies,or something like that. so that's a socializa-- (inaudible) very small sample, but i thinksome work on that to try and get them to recognize
that this is actually a safer and more -- less-- you know, less risky way to do it. and what i fear is that it's going to takeanother wikileaks or some other big crisis before people focus on this. it's reallyhard to get people to focus on this. and, you know, the system is broken. it's goingto only get more broken. and i think obama has a chance to set some things in motionthat'll make it less broken, but a fundamental transformation of how documents are classifiedand declassified, you know, i'm fearful that it will take a big, catastrophic eventto get that focus needed. and i think we -- we're hoping that the president can use the timein office to try and set some of this up. but i -- i come back to the executive order,which i think is really crucial to doing this.
and i appreciate john's leadership in gettingthat out the door. studeman: real winner is the people checkingthe machines. so it's a combination of the two and probably that means a different workbreakdown structures (inaudible) whole issue of how you do the work is probably going tochange. leary: yes, sir.yokley: good morning. leary: oh.yokley: morning. my name is john yokley. i'm the ceo of a small business in bethesda. i'mfirst going to cover a little bit of background, and then an issue in regards to technologyadoption for declassification. my company has been working to try to automate declassificationfor about seven years, when i recognized that
this would become an issue, and it's definitelybecoming an issue. ptfs is under contract to two government agencies to do declassificationmanually right now. so the last time i spoke in front of the pidbat the public -- in the public forum was in 2007. and we were starting to develop sometools and technology at the time, and i ask the question who will certify the redactorthat i'm building to see that it really works? and i was -- i think it spawned someconversation, but i was told that, ok, nsa does that. so we called nsa, and they said,"we don't do that." but turns out that seven years later, nsa formed a declassificationteam, and now they've developed some common criteria for testing redactors, and ptfs waspart of the team to provide some input. so
there is progress being made, but it's pretty-- it's been pretty slow. in 2011, the us air force piloted a semi-automateddeclassification tool built by our company. it had great success, and there was two teamsfrom the air force that were brought in, and they redacted the exact same documents, andit showed a ten-- tenfold increase in productivity. that pilot was briefed to the erwg [externalreferral working] group out at national archives in maryland. the odni recently visited usin may to get some information on what we're doing. so one thing that was talked about earlierwas cloud. so the icite -- the icite has come to be, it's going to help with technologyadoption, because now external referral will
truly be possible once people have been connected.we built a tool that allows that to happen. it's a workflow solution, but it reallycan't happen. and it can't happen until people have connectivity and their data isstored. so we're excited about that, and -- and as well as utarl's [university oftexas advanced research laboratory]tool, but that tool is one piece of the par-- of thepuzzle, and it's one part of it, and we can use a plugin like that with (inaudible)services to -- to help redact. the issue that we're seeing now -- and we'vegot others that want to use and -- and try to attempt to automate -- the issue that iwant to bring up today is that we are being told that the department of energy is mandatingmanual review to support kyl-lott. now i know
that kyl-lott might be going away, but that'swhat i'm being told right now. so i just want to bring that up as a topic to be -- tobe addressed, because i think that we could, in fact, help more. but people are afraidto -- to do these pilots, to do more pilots to try to test the technology, because there'sroadblocks and obstacles. so -- so any feedback in that area would be appreciated.leary: thank you. why don't we -- andy, do you want to say anything about that?andy: well, i'm not really sure what he's referring to. but i do have perspectives onthis. i do think the automated tools have great potential, and i do think that thereis possibilities to facilitate kyl-lott using automated tools. i think it's a very earlystage of effort that could be done. certainly,
at the department of energy, we're beginningto look at things like that as well. you know, one of the comments that i heard-- since i have this opportunity, one of the comments i heard -- which i agree with 100%-- is that if you want to reduce over-classification, you actually have to start classifying lessinformation at its origin. and that means the government needs to make some decisionsupfront about the risk equation they make, and have a higher risk level to not classifyinformation. that's across the board. and secondly, the public tends to misconstruethat when the government classifies less information, it equates immediately to release of information.and that's not true, because we have a group of tools that we use to control information.some of it is classified, and some of its
controlled information. and if all you'redoing in the end is moving from classified to controlled, you're not really gettingany benefit for the public. and so that's something to think about. if -- if all we'redoing is on the confidential issue, moving from confidential to some form of controlled,or going from confidential to secret, we really have changed the paradigm, but we haven'tgotten any benefit for the public. and that really needs to be the goal for release and(inaudible). so that's the two thoughts i have. so i'mnot against tools that can facilitate kyl-lott but it has to be done in the right away, andit has to be done in a way that makes sense -- that gives the same consistency and controlto the information that we think are very
important. if it needs control, to be controlled.soderberg: can i just clarify your -- your answer to him, though? it's my understandingthat under the current system, the -- the frd information, to the extent that it'sreviewed at all, is reviewed by a two-eyes-per-page process.andy: yeah, not two eyes. so what happens in kyl-lott is that kyl-lott is a system.what we do is we train other agency reviewers to recognize what is rd and what is frd, andto flag that information for a second check to say by doe that whether it is frd or rd.so in that process, people tab documents in their collections, saying, "this is potentiallyrd-frd," it gets the quality check. and then in the referral process, which is a separateprocess within ndc, doe goes and says yes
it is, yes it isn't. so for example, inthe kyl-lott process that we do, you know, there's human error in this process. we'vesaved around 9,000 pages of stuff that was rd-frd. in the referral process, 200-some-thousandpages of rd-frd have been picked up. so the system works. and in that process, over 300million pages have been processed, and, you know, are cleared for public release. so i don't -- i'm a believer in kyl-lottand what it does. can you make it more efficient for the other agencies by having an automatedtool? sure. but like every other automated tool, there's a lot of work to be done.it's not a slapped together, a quick tool, and say "you can do it well.' so that'smy perspective.
leary: thank you, andy. david, i think westill have time for a few closing remarks. (inaudible)david: well, you may have time for it (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).leary: all right. (laughter) well, that's good. well, thank you all for coming. i'llremind you again that our next public meeting will be december 8th, and we are -- we'llat that time be particularly interested in recommendations for changes to the currentexecutive order on security classification. thank you.
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