REVIEW OF RECORDS ADMINISTRATION IN THE AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-00433A000100080004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 19, 2001
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 5, 1972
• Content Type: MF

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JAN 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT . Review of Records Administration in the Agency
1. This memorandum is in response to your request for an
Inspector General review of records administration in the Agency.
The report is for information only; it contains no recommendations.
Our conclusions appear in paragraphs 9 through 17.
2. Records administration is not a subject that lends itself
readily to examination by conventional inspection techniques. While
we do have an Agency Records Administration Officer, a Records
Management Board, a central records repository, and a regulation
defining the Agency's Records Administration Program
do no rul e_ cords Administration Program. What we have
instead is a complex of separately administered and loosely coordi-
nated records administration efforts, each of which is designed to
meet the particular needs of the component it serves. Some of them--
as in RID and CRS--are individually massive programs involving huge
quantities of various types of records and employing hundreds of
people.
3. Because of the diversity and size of the various Agency
records programs, we did not attempt a comprehensive survey of them.
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Instead, we made what can best be termed a review of the c1%nt
health-Off-records administrati
. The inspectors
assigned to the task were then winding up a survey of the Central
Reference Service and were thus familiar with one of the large
records programs in the Agency. They reviewed prior surveys,
studies, and reports on various aspects of records administration
within the Agency and read quite widely on the general subject of
records management in government and in industry. They interviewed
all of the Agency's senior Records Management Officers and several
at lower levels. Finally, they did a fair amount of general
rummaging about to determine if the findings of prior reviews are
still valid and to see if there are any glaring records admin-
istration problems needing immediate and serious attention in any
of the six areas covered reports administration,
correspondence administration, forms administration, records
maintenance, records disposition, and Vital Records administration.
4+. This office has twice in recent years undertaken surveys
of the Agency's Records Administration Program as a whole, but in
neither, case did we succeed in publishing a report of our findings
a. The first and most comprehensive survey was
carried out in 1965 and 1966 as one of several functional
surveys suggested by Colonel White, who was then DD/S.
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Although the survey was completed, no report was issued.
The first draft text argued for centralized control of
records administration. The Inspector General considered
the text to be too harshly critical of then-existing arrange-
ments for records administration and to give too little
weight to the requirements for compartmentation of sensitive
files, especially those relating to counterintelligence.
He had the draft rewritten by a second inspector. That,
too, was unacceptable, and it was rewritten by yet another
inspector. By then, the text had become-so watt doyn
that t it it no ton er supported the recommendation for central-
ization and the effort was andoned. The surviving text
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is appended at Tab A.
b. The second survey was made at your request in 1970.
Although. entitled "Information Management in the Agency,"
it is commonly referred to as the paper on the information
explosion. Advance copies of the report were distributed
to several components in March 1971 for review and comment.
The exceptions taken by the DD/I were so numerous and so
serious that we decided toe._formal_public_ation of the
report until we had completed our survey of,_the Central
R fedX=,?Sevice, which we felt would give us a better
basis for'judging the validity of the DD/I's objections.
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The general thrust of the paper is in support of movement
toward centralization or consolidation of at least some
of the information handling elements of the Agency--generally
in line with proposals that are now under consideration.
Appended at Tab B are the summary and conclusions of the
draft report plus the chapter on records management.
c. The Clandestine Service's Information Services
Division (then known as RID) was closely examined in our
1970 survey of OPSER. That report of survey was issued.
The ten-page chapter on records management in the CS is
appended at Tab C.
d. Our report of survey of CRS is now in draft form
,and will be distributed soon. Our findings are generally
favorable.
e. One of the better papers on the subject of records
administration was written ' n 196 when 25X1 A
he was assigned as a pecial Assistant to the DD/S. It is,
in our view, a thoughtful and succinct appraisal of one
aspect of records administration--the records disposition
problem. A copy is appended at Tab D.
5. We also studied :a number of case histories of records manage-
ment programs in industry involving the classical problems of creation,
maintenance, and disposition of records that are similar in many
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respects to the problems faced by the Agency. While the industrial
records programs resemble our own in such areas as forms administration,
establishment of records control schedules, and the building of central
records centers; the most successful of the records management programs
in industry differ from our,program in three notable respects: they
are centralized, the command structure is intimately involved in the
management of them, and immediate'
r s onsibilit is fixed er
=WON" high
command level than it is in the Aaaucv.
6. Headquarters Regulation
(revised 25 September 1963), 25X1 A
which is reproduced and appended as Tab E, establishes the Agency
Records Administration Program and enumerates the responsibilities
of the CIA Records Administration Officer. It specifies that the
Program shall be administered on a decentralized basis through
programs established, directed, and maintained for their respec-
tive jurisdictions by the Executive Director-Comptroller, Deputy
Directors, and Heads of Independent Offices. Each is to designate
an individual who will be responsible for the development and
administration of the Records Administration Programs for components
under the senior official's jurisdiction.
7. The two prior unpublished Inspector General surveys of
records administration/information management arrived at essentially
similar conclusions, which may be paraphrased thus: while complete
centralization of'records management is probably not'feasible--given
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the diversity of our work and the way we are organized to conduct
our business--some movement in the direction at least of centralized
policy formulation and authoritative review is desirable; our organ-
izational arrangements for records management have remained largely
static while the techniques for information collection and infor-
mation handling have constantly undergone change.
8. Those who are closest to the problems of records admin-
istration from having worked as Records Management Officers are
quite critical of our Records Administration Program. Their
criticisms appear to us to stem primarily from the frustrations
trying to carry of the assigned responsibilities-in, the
absence of e i uJty. The following is a summary of
views on which they are in virtually complete agreement.
a. The CIA Records Administration Officer is assigned
numerous, broadly stated responsibilities, but his authority
is limited to little more than approving records control
schedules and directing the activities of the Records
Center. He must discharge his other responsibilities, if
at all, largely through persuasion and cajolery.
command sub "on and rada are such as and
little respect for his position. He wears three hats:
as CIA Records Administration Officer, as chief of the
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Records Administration Branch of the Support Services Staff,
and as chairman of the CIA Records Management Board. He
reports to the Chief, Support Services Staff, in each of
these roles.
b. The CIA Records Management Board, which is composed
of the Agency's senior Records Management Officers and is
chaired by the CIA Records Administration Officer, has a
limited charter and no authority. Since its chairman does
not report xsc'A ,y_to the DD(the Board's views, are
sub.1_ect pd_,,UuLaion before reaska xg the ,DD/S ,
already weak role. The members question wheth1
c. There is a wide range in the grades of records
officers, but most of them are relatively low. The CIA
Records Administration Officer is a GS-1)+; the DD/S&T
/I
Records Management Officer is a The records officers
feel that pegging their jobs so low on the GS scale is a
clear signal that we place little value on records manage-
ment in the Agency. The Clandestine Service selected a
GS-16 as i q;,,,4, p ,gement Officer, but he does not
appear to have been given authorities commensurate with
his grade.
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d. Records administration is an activity that is
routinely left to the various echelons of records officers.
It receives priority attention within the command structure
only when it becomes apparent that a crisis is approaching
or'is at hand.
e. Records management in the Agency is looked upon as
being largely a clerical-type function. Those who specialize
in it are marked as employees who are not qualified to do
anything of more worth.
f. Many of the records officers have other assigned
duties that occupy higher priority within their components
than does records administration.
g. Records administration in the Agency is based less
on sound records management policies and practices than it
is on the storage space available in the Records Center;
thus, our efforts are heavily oriented toward the disposition
aspect of records management. We pay insufficient
to the equally important aspects of records creation and of
policing files looking toward the day when they must be
retired.
h. In similar vein, records officers believe that our
no-more-construction policy has had the effect of focusing
our records administration efforts on controlling. the volume
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of paper flowing into and remaining in the Records Center
to the practical exclusion of the other necessary elements
of an effective records management program.
i. We encountered a substantial body of opinion holding
that not all Agency records are so sensitive that they must
be stored in the Agency's own Records Center.
for example su Bests in his s u (at Tab fl) that
it might be possi,bto mouse GSA storage faciliis for same
of ourre ors .
J. The Records Center has been used as a sort of Fibber
McGee's closet in which we have housed, in addition to our
retired records, such things as the Vital Records needed for
emergency relocation of Headquarters, the Presidential
Libraries collections, analysts technical reference materials,
the Agency archives, NPIC models, and the supplemental dis-
and the decisions on destruction have sometimes been made
Pvj (extra copies) of publications.
k. Our records retention criteria have been unrealistic,
without regard for the archival value opts. As a
consequence, we retain some records for inordinately long
periods and almost surely have destroyed some that should
have been kept. The r o Ls le are strongly'_in favor
of establishi:g.anA ency archival program headed b
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qualified ~~ebtviatC.,a
needed to do the ajob
ity
1. Conserving storage space by converting records to
microfilm or something similar to it is very costly--
prohibitively so in some applications (inactive files, for
example). Although the users much prefer to work with hard
copy, space limitations necessitate ncreasiing resort to
microfilming.
9. Each of these
complaints or criticisms by those involved in
is valid in some degree. It is true that we
do not have a strong and orderly organization for records admin-
istration in the Agency; yet, it is our conclusion rrrt.,review
that the mechanisms we have getting the Job done reasonably well.
We are likely always to be plagued with problems in managing our
records, but we probably are in better sh ri ht now than we,.y
been at any time within the past ten or fifteen years.
10. The recent progress we have made toward bringing our records
holdings under control came primarily as a result of decisions and
of instructions issued by the Executive Director-Comptroller aimed
at a key link in the records cycle: disposition. The first step
was the decision made in 196+ and reaffirmed in later years not to
request funds for construction of another records storage building.
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This was followed in mid-1968 with a directive ordering a purge of
inactive. files in Records Center, since we were then about to run
out of unused space at Records Center. The purge got off to a
rather slow start, but within a couple of years substantial progress
had been made, and after three years there had been a net reduction
of .13,850 cubic feet. Although the bulk of the .gain made possible
by purging has already been realized, the purge continues, and the
CIA Records Administration Officer reports that we are continuing
to show a small net gain.
11.. Colonel White also authorized installing motorized shelving
in the'Records Center and the renovation of a Butler Warehouse to
increase the storage space While it might have been
cheaper on a cost-per-foot basis to build a new building, new con-
struction would have given only a few years' respite from our storage
problems.
12. Although we are still realizing some net gain from the
continuing purge, we would finally reach a point where purging could
no longer offset new accessions. So, in July 197 onel White
issued a directive limiting each Directorate to a net increase of
1,000 cubc fep~ ofstorage s ace at the Records Center in FY-1972
and specifying that this limit wQ l b educed b_y_ 50 cubic feet
each successive year until at the end of 20 years the net increase
.allowed would be zero.
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13. To avoid offsetting increases in file holdings at
Headquarters, he instructed the DD/S to cease issuing additional
safes and other file equipment in the Washington area unless the
requirement were fully justified. The CIA Records Administration
Officer reports that there was a small net reduction in Headquarters
holdings during the period of the larger reduction at Records
Center.
14+. We believe that these steps are beginning to bear fruit.
While it can be argued that they attack only one aspect of the
records management problem--disposition--the fact of the matter is
that, in a decentralized system such as ours,, ntl of storage
space is ~.a.y- the ,only means available for forcing the attack
on the other__-as~~c of records,naemet . Storage is the one
aspect of records management in which discipline can be enforced
by directive. If the Directorates are unable to stay within their
storage space limitation by purging old documents, they will have
no choice but to improve control over records creation and maintenance.
We see evidence even now of substantial progress -icethese areas.
15. One of the consequences of the purge has been a sharp
increase in the size of the Agency's relatively small archives. As
old files were reviewed, many documents were identified for permanent
retention. When the purge began in July 1968, the. archival materials
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occupied about 6,000 cubic feet at Records Center. By January 1971,
this volume had grown to about 16,000 cubic feet. There is good
reason for believing that, as we shorten the retention periods for
inactive files, there will be a continuing increase in the size of
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