Federal Records

Document Removal by Agency Heads Needs Independent Oversight Gao ID: GGD-91-117 August 30, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed whether current laws adequately protect federal records and the information they contain when senior federal officials remove documents upon leaving office.

GAO found that: (1) current procedures used to review document removal by agency heads are not adequate to ensure that the government's interests are protected, since no independent review of documents is made before they are removed; (2) the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) does not control or keep records of departing agency heads, as it does for departing presidents, and all eight of the former agency heads it reviewed removed documents when they left office; (3) agencies were unaware of classified material in two removed collections and failed to ensure that required security restrictions were followed for a significant amount of classified material in a third collection; (4) at least half of the document collections reviewed contained original documents that agencies did not know had been removed; and (5) once documents are removed, government access to documents is not ensured.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.