Information Management
The National Archives and Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan Gao ID: GAO-08-1105 September 26, 2008To preserve and provide access to all types of electronic records, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been developing an Electronic Records Archive (ERA), including a base system for federal records and a separate system for presidential records, known as the Executive Office of the President (EOP) system. As mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, NARA must submit an expenditure plan to the Congress that satisfies six conditions. GAO was asked to determine the extent to which NARA's fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan satisfies the conditions and provide any other observations about the plan and the ERA acquisition. To do this, GAO reviewed the expenditure plan, interviewed NARA and contractor officials, and reviewed additional documentation.
NARA's fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan satisfies five of the six legislative conditions and partially satisfies the remaining condition. NARA satisfied the conditions that the plan follow capital planning and investment controls established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); comply with NARA's enterprise architecture; comply with the acquisition rules, requirements, guidelines, and system acquisition management practices of the federal government; be approved by NARA and OMB; and be reviewed by GAO. NARA partially satisfied the remaining condition: that ERA conform to the agency's enterprise life cycle methodology. This methodology requires, among other things, that the agency identify, communicate, and mitigate program risks. NARA has identified numerous project risks and reported them to OMB and the Congress, including the risk that it will not have the capability to process the Bush administration's presidential records at the time of the January 2009 presidential transition. However, the agency has not yet developed a plan to mitigate this significant risk. Instead, the agency intends to develop a mitigation plan at the end of 2008, when it expects to know more about the types and volumes of presidential records that it is to receive. This proposed schedule, however, will leave NARA little time to prepare for and implement the plan, decreasing the assurance that it will be adequately prepared to meet the requirements of the Congress, the incoming President, and the courts for information contained in the previous administration's records. In addition, GAO observed that monthly ERA status reports that NARA has been providing to the Congress since January 2008--while including useful information on the project's activities, expenditures, and risks--do not include summary measures of the project's performance against cost and schedule estimates--information that NARA does provide to OMB. According to agency officials, such measures are not included in the monthly reports because the reports follow an agreed-upon format. However, these measures provide an important perspective on project progress not otherwise available. If future reports do not include such measures, the Congress may be hampered in its ability to effectively oversee the program.
RecommendationsOur 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:GAO-08-1105, Information Management: The National Archives and Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan
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Report to Congressional Committees:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
September 2008:
Information Management:
The National Archives and Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2008
Expenditure Plan:
GAO-08-1105:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-08-1105, a report to congressional committees.
Why GAO Did This Study:
To preserve and provide access to all types of electronic records, the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been developing
an Electronic Records Archive (ERA), including a base system for
federal records and a separate system for presidential records, known
as the Executive Office of the President (EOP) system. As mandated by
the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, NARA must submit an
expenditure plan to the Congress that satisfies six conditions. GAO was
asked to determine the extent to which NARA‘s fiscal year 2008
expenditure plan satisfies the conditions and provide any other
observations about the plan and the ERA acquisition. To do this, GAO
reviewed the expenditure plan, interviewed NARA and contractor
officials, and reviewed additional documentation.
What GAO Found:
NARA‘s fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan satisfies five of the six
legislative conditions and partially satisfies the remaining condition.
NARA satisfied the conditions that the plan follow capital planning and
investment controls established by the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB); comply with NARA‘s enterprise architecture; comply with the
acquisition rules, requirements, guidelines, and system acquisition
management practices of the federal government; be approved by NARA and
OMB; and be reviewed by GAO. NARA partially satisfied the remaining
condition: that ERA conform to the agency‘s enterprise life cycle
methodology. This methodology requires, among other things, that the
agency identify, communicate, and mitigate program risks. NARA has
identified numerous project risks and reported them to OMB and the
Congress, including the risk that it will not have the capability to
process the Bush administration‘s presidential records at the time of
the January 2009 presidential transition. However, the agency has not
yet developed a plan to mitigate this significant risk. Instead, the
agency intends to develop a mitigation plan at the end of 2008, when it
expects to know more about the types and volumes of presidential
records that it is to receive. This proposed schedule, however, will
leave NARA little time to prepare for and implement the plan,
decreasing the assurance that it will be adequately prepared to meet
the requirements of the Congress, the incoming President, and the
courts for information contained in the previous administration‘s
records.
In addition, GAO observed that monthly ERA status reports that NARA has
been providing to the Congress since January 2008”while including
useful information on the project‘s activities, expenditures, and
risks”do not include summary measures of the project‘s performance
against cost and schedule estimates”information that NARA does provide
to OMB. According to agency officials, such measures are not included
in the monthly reports because the reports follow an agreed-upon
format. However, these measures provide an important perspective on
project progress not otherwise available. If future reports do not
include such measures, the Congress may be hampered in its ability to
effectively oversee the program.
What GAO Recommends:
GAO recommends that NARA develop a mitigation plan in case the EOP
system is not complete in January 2009 and include summary measures of
project performance in future reports to the Congress. Commenting on a
draft of the report, the Archivist stated that the agency had begun
including these measures and that there was no noteworthy risk that the
EOP system will not be complete. However, in light of the mission-
critical nature of the function and ongoing uncertainty about data
format and volume, GAO continues to believe that a risk mitigation plan
is needed.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
GAO-08-1105. For more information, contact Linda D. Koontz at (202) 512-
6240 or koontzl@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Recommendations for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Briefing to Staff of Congressional Committees on NARA's
Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan:
Appendix II: Comments from the National Archives and Records
Administration:
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
Abbreviations:
CPI: cost performance index:
EOP: Executive Office of the President:
ERA: Electronic Records Archive:
EVM: earned value management:
IOC: initial operating capability:
NARA: National Archives and Records Administration:
OMB: Office of Management and Budget:
SA-CMM: Software Acquisition-Capability Maturity Model:
SEI: Software Engineering Institute:
SPI: schedule performance index:
[End of section]
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
September 26, 2008:
The Honorable Richard J. Durbin:
Chairman:
The Honorable Sam Brownback:
Ranking Member:
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government:
Committee on Appropriations:
United States Senate:
The Honorable José E. Serrano:
Chairman:
The Honorable Ralph Regula:
Ranking Member:
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government:
Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives:
As required by law, the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA) submitted its fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan in December 2007
to the congressional appropriations committees, seeking the release of
$38.3 million of multiyear funds for the Electronic Records Archive
(ERA).[Footnote 1] ERA is a major information system that is intended
to preserve and provide access to massive volumes of all types and
formats of electronic records, including presidential records,
independent of their original hardware or software. NARA plans for the
system to manage the entire life cycle of electronic records, from
their ingestion through preservation and dissemination to customers.
Because of the system's complexity, NARA awarded a contract to Lockheed
Martin to develop ERA in phases, or increments, the first of which was
originally scheduled for completion in September 2007. In response to
schedule delays, NARA and Lockheed Martin agreed to a revised schedule
and strategy, consisting of a two-pronged development approach as
follows:
* First, they agreed to continue development of the original system but
delayed certain capabilities to later increments. According to NARA,
initial operating capability for this system, now referred to as the
"base" ERA system, was achieved in June 2008 as planned under the
revised schedule.
* Second, NARA is conducting parallel development of a separate system
dedicated initially to receiving electronic records from the outgoing
Bush administration in January 2009. This new system, referred to as
the Executive Office of the President (EOP) system, uses a different
architecture from that of the ERA base; it is being built on a
commercial product that is to provide the basic requirements for
processing presidential electronic records, such as rapid ingestion of
records and the ability to search content. NARA believes that if it
cannot ingest the Bush records in a way that supports search and
retrieval immediately after the transition, it may not be able to
effectively respond to requests from the Congress, the new
administration, and the courts for these records--a critical agency
mission.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, requires that NARA develop
an expenditure plan for ERA that satisfies six conditions, including a
review by GAO.[Footnote 2] Our objectives in reviewing the plan were to
(1) determine whether the plan satisfied the conditions specified in
the act and (2) to provide any other observations about the expenditure
plan and the ERA acquisition.
To assess compliance with the legislative conditions, we reviewed
NARA's fiscal year 2008 exhibit 300 submission[Footnote 3] to the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB), reviewed data on the agency's
enterprise architecture efforts, determined the status of an external
assessment of ERA, reviewed the agency's development life cycle
methodology, reviewed OMB's approval of the expenditure plan, and
analyzed the expenditure plan itself. To develop observations on the
ERA expenditure plan and acquisition, we analyzed the cost and schedule
information contained in the expenditure plan, reviewed agency and
contractor documents, and interviewed NARA and Lockheed Martin
officials.
We conducted this performance audit from February 2008 to September
2008, at NARA's College Park, Maryland, location in accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards
require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient,
appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and
conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence
obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions
based on our audit objectives.
In July 2008, we transmitted our briefing slides to your staffs on the
results of our review. This report transmits those materials and
includes the recommendations that we made to the Archivist of the
United States. The full briefing materials, including our scope and
methodology, are reprinted as appendix I.
In summary, we made the following major points:
* NARA's fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan satisfied five of the six
legislative conditions and partially satisfied the remaining condition.
- NARA satisfied the conditions that the plan follow capital planning
and investment controls established by OMB; comply with NARA's
enterprise architecture; comply with the acquisition rules,
requirements, guidelines, and system acquisition management practices
of the federal government;[Footnote 4] be approved by NARA and OMB; and
be reviewed by GAO.
- NARA partially satisfied the condition that ERA conform to the
agency's enterprise life cycle methodology. This methodology requires,
among other things, that the agency identify, communicate, and mitigate
program risks. NARA has identified numerous project risks and reported
them to OMB and the Congress, including the risk that it will not have
the capability to process the outgoing administration's records at the
time of the January 2009 presidential transition. However, the agency
has not yet developed a plan to mitigate this significant risk.
Instead, the agency intends to develop a mitigation plan at the end of
2008, when it expects to know more about the types and volume of the
presidential records that it is to receive. This proposed schedule,
however, will leave NARA little time to prepare for and implement the
plan, decreasing the assurance that it will be adequately prepared to
meet the requirements of the Congress, the incoming President, and the
courts for information contained in the previous administration's
records.
* Pursuant to a congressional mandate, NARA has been providing monthly
status reports on ERA to the Congress since January 2008. These
reports, which are intended to update the expenditure plan, have
included useful information on the project's activities, expenditures,
and risks. However, these reports do not include summary measures of
the project's performance against cost and schedule estimates--
information that NARA provides to OMB. According to agency officials,
such measures are not included in the monthly reports because the
reports follow an agreed-upon format. However, these measures provide
an important perspective on project progress not otherwise available.
If future reports do not include such measures, the Congress may be
hampered in its ability to effectively oversee the program.
When we transmitted the briefing slides to your staffs, NARA and
Lockheed Martin were in the process of negotiating the scope and timing
of the EOP system proposal. Agency and contractor officials
subsequently reached agreement on this proposal in late July 2008. This
agreement calls for NARA to pay the contractor $38.9 million to
complete the EOP system by November 21, 2008.
Recommendations for Executive Action:
To ensure that NARA can fulfill its critical responsibilities during
the upcoming presidential transition, we recommend that the Archivist
develop a mitigation plan for indexing and searching the electronic
records from the outgoing Bush administration in the event that the EOP
system is not complete. The plan should be completed in time to be
fully implemented for the January presidential transition.
To enhance oversight of the ERA project, we recommend that the
Archivist ensure that summary measures of project performance against
ERA cost and schedule estimates are included in future monthly reports
to the Congress.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
In written comments on a draft of this report, which are reprinted in
appendix II, the Archivist of the United States stated that he was
pleased to note the recognition of the progress made toward
implementing the recommendations provided in GAO's previous reports. He
also stated that information regarding the ERA project's performance
against cost and schedule was added to the report sent to the Congress
in August and will continue to be included in subsequent reports.
Regarding our finding that NARA had not yet developed a plan to
mitigate the risk that the ERA system will not have the capability to
process the outgoing administration's records at the time of the
January 2009 presidential transition, the Archivist stated that the
development of ERA is on track to deliver, by the end of November, a
system capable of bringing in, storing, and retrieving the expected
volume of presidential records. He added that there is no noteworthy
risk related to this development. The Archivist acknowledged the risk
that there will be some data formats that ERA will not be able to
ingest and index in a reasonable amount of time and stated that
developing definitive plans for alternative processing for these
records requires obtaining detailed specifications from the EOP.
We disagree with the Archivist's assessment of the ERA development
risk. As outlined in our briefing, because of the mission-critical
nature of the task, performance of the development team, and ongoing
uncertainty about the format and volume of records to be transferred,
we believe the risk of not having a fully functional system by January
2009 is significant enough to warrant a mitigation plan that addresses
alternatives to using the ERA system. The development of a more
comprehensive mitigation plan that addresses alternatives for
accommodating the Bush administration records (such as recreating the
administration's systems currently in use) would not require NARA to
wait for technical specifications for particular types of records.
Further, developing the plan before the transition would ensure that
NARA has adequate time to implement the alternatives, if needed, and
helps ensure that NARA will be prepared to quickly respond to critical
requests for these records from the Congress, the new administration,
and the courts.
We are sending copies of this report to the Archivist of the United
States. We also will make copies available to others upon request. In
addition, the report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site
at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov].
If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please
contact me at (202) 512-6240 or at koontzl@gao.gov. Contact points for
our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found
on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this report are
listed in appendix III.
Signed by:
Linda D. Koontz:
Director, Information Management Issues:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Briefing to Staff of Congressional Committees on NARA's
Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan:
Review of the National Archives‘ Fiscal Year 2008 Electronic Records
Archive Expenditure Plan:
Briefing for Staff Members of the Subcommittee on Financial Services
and General Government, Senate Committee on Appropriations, and the
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, House
Committee on Appropriations:
July 24, 2008:
Outline of Briefing:
Introduction:
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
Results in Brief:
Background:
Legislative Conditions:
Observations on the ERA Expenditure Plan and Acquisition:
Conclusions:
Recommendations:
Agency Comments:
[End of section]
Introduction:
Since 2001, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA or
the Archives) has been working to develop a modern Electronic Records
Archive (ERA). This major information system is intended to preserve
and provide access to massive volumes of all types and formats of
electronic records, including presidential records, independent of
their original hardware or software. NARA plans for the system to
manage the entire life cycle of electronic records, from their
ingestion through preservation and dissemination to customers. It is to
consist of:
* infrastructure elements, including hardware and operating systems;
* business applications that will support the transfer, preservation,
dissemination, and management of all types of records and the
preservation of and online access to electronic records; and;
* a means for public access via the Internet.
Because of the system‘s complexity, NARA awarded a contract to Lockheed
Martin to develop ERA in phases, or increments, the first of which was
originally scheduled for completion in September 2007. However, the
contractor was unable to meet the original cost and schedule milestones
due, in part, to productivity issues with its initial development team,
and acknowledged that it would not meet a September 2007 goal for
initial operating capability (IOC).
In response, NARA and Lockheed Martin agreed to a revised schedule and
strategy, consisting of a two-pronged development approach.
* First, they agreed to continue development of the original system but
delayed capabilities to later increments. According to NARA, IOC for
this system, now referred to as the ’base“ ERA system, was achieved in
June 2008 as planned under the revised schedule.
* Second, NARA is conducting parallel development of a separate system
dedicated initially to receiving electronic records from the outgoing
Bush administration in January 2009. This new system, referred to as
the Executive Office of the President (EOP) system, uses a different
architecture from that of the ERA base: it is being built on a
commercial product that is to provide the basic requirements for
processing presidential electronic records, such as rapid ingestion of
records and the ability to search content. NARA believes that if it
cannot ingest the Bush records in a way that supports search and
retrieval immediately after the transition, it may not be able to
effectively respond to requests from the Congress, the new
administration, and the courts for these records”a critical agency
mission.
As mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act,[Footnote 5] NARA is
required to submit an expenditure plan before obligating multiyear
funds for the ERA program. As in the previous year, the plan must
satisfy the following legislative conditions:
* meet the capital planning and investment control review requirements
established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including
Circular A-11;
* comply with the agency‘s enterprise architecture;
* comply with the acquisition rules, requirements, guidelines, and
system acquisition management practices of the federal government;
* conform to the agency‘s enterprise life cycle methodology;
* be approved by the agency and OMB; and;
* be reviewed by GAO.
On December 4, 2007, the agency submitted its 2008 expenditure plan to
the relevant House and Senate appropriations committees as required to
obtain the release of $38.3 million for ERA.[Footnote 6] As of July
2008, the committees had released $24.0 million of these funds.
[End of section]
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
As agreed, our objectives were to:
* determine the extent to which the agency‘s fiscal year 2008
expenditure plan satisfies the legislative conditions specified in the
consolidated appropriations act, and;
* provide any other observations about the expenditure plan and the ERA
acquisition.
To assess compliance with the legislative conditions, we:
* reviewed NARA‘s fiscal year 2008 exhibit 300 submission[Footnote 7]
to OMB to determine the extent to which the agency has complied with
OMB‘s capital planning and investment control requirements;
* obtained and reviewed data on enterprise architecture to determine
the status of the agency‘s enterprise architecture efforts;
* obtained and reviewed NARA‘s status of an external assessment of ERA;
* reviewed the enterprise systems development life cycle methodology
that includes processes for managing system investments, configuration,
and risks and reviewed related documentation concerning how these
processes were implemented for the ERA project such as minutes of
oversight boards and the risk management plan;
* obtained and reviewed OMB‘s approval of the expenditure plan; and;
* reviewed the fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan submitted by the
agency in December 2007 and analyzed it to identify any variances from
the legislative conditions.
To develop observations on the ERA expenditure plan and acquisition, we
analyzed the cost and schedule information contained in the expenditure
plan, reviewed agency and contractor documents such as ERA Oversight
Group and risk management reports, and interviewed NARA and Lockheed
Martin officials.
We conducted this performance audit from February to July 2008 at
NARA‘s College Park, Maryland, location in accordance with generally
accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we
plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence
to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on
our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a
reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit
objectives.
[End of section]
Results in Brief:
NARA‘s fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan satisfies five of the six
legislative conditions, and partially satisfies the remaining
condition”that ERA conform to the agency‘s enterprise life cycle
methodology. This methodology requires, among other things, that the
agency identify, communicate, and mitigate program risks. NARA has
identified numerous project risks and reported them to OMB and the
Congress, including the risk that it will not have the capability to
process the outgoing administration‘s records at the time of the
January 2009 presidential transition. However, NARA has not yet
developed a plan to mitigate this risk. Instead, the agency intends to
develop a mitigation plan at the end of 2008, when it expects to know
more about the types and volumes of presidential records that it is to
receive. This proposed schedule, however, will leave NARA little time
to prepare for and implement the plan, decreasing the assurance that it
will be adequately prepared to meet the requirements of the Congress,
the incoming President, and the courts for information contained in the
previous administration‘s records.
We have one observation:
* Pursuant to a congressional mandate, NARA has been providing monthly
status reports on ERA to the Congress since January 2008. These
reports, which are intended to update the expenditure plan, have
included useful information on the project‘s activities, expenditures,
and risks. However, these reports do not include summary measures of
the project‘s performance against cost and schedule estimates”
information that NARA provides to OMB. According to agency officials,
such measures are not included in the monthly reports because the
reports follow an agreed-upon format. However, these measures provide
an important perspective on project progress not otherwise available.
If future reports do not include such measures, the Congress may be
hampered in its ability to effectively oversee the program.
We are making recommendations to NARA to:
* develop a risk mitigation plan to ensure that it can index and search
electronic records from the outgoing Bush administration in the event
that the EOP system is not complete in time for the January 2009
presidential transition and;
* improve the utility of information provided to the Congress by
including summary measures of project performance against ERA cost and
schedule estimates in future monthly reports.
In comments on a draft of this briefing, the Archivist of the United
States generally agreed with our findings. He also outlined additional
actions NARA was taking to address the risk to presidential records and
agreed to include the project performance measures in future monthly
reports to the Congress.
[End of section]
Background:
The ability to find, organize, use, share, appropriately dispose of,
and save records”the essence of records management”is vital for the
effective functioning of the federal government. In the wake of the
transition from paper-based to electronic processes, records are
increasingly electronic, and the volumes of electronic records produced
by federal agencies are vast and rapidly growing, providing challenges
to NARA as the nation‘s record keeper and archivist.
Besides sheer volume, other factors contributing to the challenge of
electronic records include their complexity and their dependence on
software and hardware. Specifically, the computer operating systems and
the hardware and software that are used to create electronic documents
can become obsolete. If they do, they may leave behind records that
cannot be read without the original hardware and software. Further, the
storage media for these records are affected by both obsolescence and
decay. Media may be fragile, have limited shelf life, and become
obsolete in a few years. For example, few computers today have disk
drives that can read information stored on 8- or 5¼-inch diskettes,
even if the diskettes themselves remain readable.
Another challenge is the growth in electronic presidential records. The
Presidential Records Act gives the Archivist of the United States
responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of
presidential records upon the conclusion of a President‘s term of
office.[Footnote 8] The act states that the Archivist has an
affirmative duty to make such records available to the public as
rapidly and completely as possible consistent with the provisions of
the act. At the time of the last presidential transition, NARA met
these requirements by recreating the Clinton administration‘s computer
systems (software and hardware) that originally held the records and
developing simple search interfaces so that NARA personnel could search
for requested information. NARA reported that it took about 400 days to
process the 2 terabytes of data from the Clinton administration.
[Footnote 9] NARA believes that the electronic records of the Bush
administration are significantly more voluminous and complex.
In response to widely recognized challenges, the Archives began a
research and development program to develop a modern archive for
electronic records. In 2001, NARA hired a contractor to develop
policies and plans to guide the overall acquisition of an electronic
records system. In December 2003, the agency released a request for
proposals for the design of ERA. In August 2004, NARA awarded two firm-
fixed-price[Footnote 10] contracts for the design phase, totaling about
$20 million”one to Harris Corporation and the other to Lockheed Martin
Corporation. On September 8, 2005, NARA announced the selection of
Lockheed Martin Corporation to build the ERA system.
The contractor was originally to deliver an initial operating
capability (IOC) in September 2007, with completion of a second phase
to follow in November 2007. However, as previously discussed, the
project experienced schedule delays due to factors such as low
productivity of contractor software programmers, difficulties in
securing an acceptable contract to prepare the site that was to house
the system, and problems with software integration. In response, NARA
and Lockheed Martin developed a revised strategy and schedule. This
strategy included the parallel development of the ERA base and EOP
systems, using separate development teams, and the deferral of certain
functions to subsequent phases of the project.
As currently planned, the ERA system is to consist of six major
components.
* Ingest enables the transfer of electronic records from federal
agencies.
* Managed Storage enables stored records to be managed in a way that
guarantees their integrity and availability.
* Dissemination enables users to search descriptions and business data
about all types of records, and to search the content of electronic
records and retrieve them.
* Records Management supports scheduling,[Footnote 11] appraisal,
[Footnote 12] description, and requests to transfer custody of all
types of records, as well as ingesting and managing electronic records,
including the capture of selected records data (such as origination
date, format, and disposition).
* Preservation enables secure and reliable storage of files in formats
in which they were received, as well as creating backup copies for off-
site storage.
* Local Services & Control regulates how the ERA components communicate
with each other, manages internal security, and enables
telecommunications and system network management.
NARA currently plans to deliver these components in five separate
increments:
* Increment 1 was deployed in two releases. Release 1 established the
ERA base system”the hardware, software, and communications needed to
deploy the system. Release 2 enabled functional archives with the
ability to preserve electronic data in their original format, enable
disposition agreements and scheduling, and receive unclassified and
sensitive data from four federal agencies; according to NARA officials,
this increment was completed in June 2008.
* Increment 2, Release 1, includes the EOP system, which is planned to
handle records from the Executive Office of the President. This release
is to include the content searching and basic case management for
special access requests.
* The second release of Increment 2 and Increments 3 through 5 will
provide additional ERA functionality, such as public access.
Figure 1 shows the current incremental timetable for deploying ERA and
the functionality planned for each increment.
Figure 1: ERA Acquisition Approach:
[Refer to PDF for image]
This figure is an illustration of the timeline for the ERA Acquisition
Approach, as follows:
August 2004:
NARA awarded two design contracts to Harris Corporation and Lockheed
Martin Corporation.
September 2005:
NARA selected Lockheed Martin Corporation to develop ERA system.
Increment 1: September 2005 through July, 2008:
Release 1:
* Foundational system for ERA.
Release 2:
* Functional archives with the ability to preserve electronic data in
original format;
* Disposition agreements and scheduling;
* Unclassified and sensitive data.
Increment 2: November 2007 through September 2009;
Release 1:
* EOP System:
- Content search;
- Basic case management for special access requests.
Release 2:
* Initial preservation and access plans[A].
* Initial lifecycle management plans;
* Preservation framework (infrastructure for long-term preservation).
June 2008:
Initial Operating Capability: First use of the ERA system.
Increment 3: September 2009 through March 2010;
* Preservation processing;
* Description of records;
* Authenticity check[A];
* Preservation assessment[A];
* Full preservation and access plans[A];
* Public access;
* FOIA processing[A].
Increment 4: March 2010 through March 2011;
* Redaction{a];
* Expanded preservation and capacity;
* Collaboration with agencies[B].
Increment 5: March 2011 through March 2012;
* Expanded preservation and capacity.
March 2012:
Full operational capability: Full use of the ERA system.
[A] Functionality moved forward from previous increment.
[B] Functionality moved from Increment 2.
Source: GAO analysis of NANA data.
[End of figure]
As of March 2008, the life cycle cost for ERA through 2011 was
estimated at $453 million; total life cycle cost includes not only the
development contract costs, but also program management, research and
development, and program office support, among other things.
Tables 1 and 2 show the amount spent for ERA in fiscal year 2007, as
well as the reported spending from the program‘s inception to the end
of fiscal year 2007.
Table 1: Summary of Fiscal Year 2007 ERA Spending (Dollars in
millions):
Project category: Development contract”Lockheed Martin;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $30.3.
Project category: Program management;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $6.6.
Project category: Program Office Support Team;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $4.0.
Project category: Research and development;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $3.5.
Project category: Integrated deployment and support;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $3.2.
Project category: Independent verification and validation;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $1.2.
Project category: Security;
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $0.1.
Project category: Total:
Fiscal year 2007 spending: $48.9.
Source: GAO analysis of NARA data.
[End of table]
Table 2: Summary of ERA Spending from Fiscal Year 2002 through Fiscal
Year 2007 (Dollars in millions):
Project category: Development contract”Lockheed Martin;
Spending: $70.4.
Project category: System analysis and design contracts”Lockheed Martin
and Harris Corporation;
Spending: $40.8.
Project category: Program management;
Spending: $23.8.
Project category: Program Office Support Team;
Spending: $18.0.
Project category: Research and development;
Spending: $14.3.
Project category: Integrated deployment and support;
Spending: $5.8.
Project category: Independent verification and validation;
Spending: $4.0.
Project category: Security;
Spending: $0.2.
Project category: Net adjustments;
Spending: -$2.6[A].
Project category: Total:
Spending: $174.6[B].
Source: GAO analysis of NARA data.
[A] Recoveries of prior year unpaid obligations, adjustments to
obligations incurred, and obligations against prior years.
[B] Total number may not add up due to rounding.
[End of table]
In December 2007, NARA submitted a fiscal year 2008 expenditure plan as
required to obtain the release of multiyear funds for ERA. The agency
could not obligate these funds until the appropriations committees
reviewed and approved the expenditure plan. As of July 2008, the
appropriations committees have released $24.0 million out of $38.3
million of the fiscal year 2008 multiyear money. Approximately $14
million remains to be released.NARA‘s estimated ERA obligations for
fiscal year 2008 are $63.3 million. This includes the $13 million NARA
spent on EOP system planning and development from October 2007 to May
2008, of which $7 million was used to buy hardware. Table 3 shows how
NARA planned to distribute funds across the ERA program.[Footnote 13]
Table 3: Summary of NARA‘s Fiscal Year 2008 Estimated Obligations for
ERA (Dollars in millions):
Project category: Development contract;
Description: Activities performed under the ERA system acquisition
contract with Lockheed Martin (includes EOP);
Estimated obligations: $42.0.
Project category: Program management;
Description: Salaries and benefits, supplies, equipment, and
telecommunications;
Estimated obligations: $8.7.
Project category: Research and development;
Description: Research performed with other agencies;
Estimated obligations: $4.5.
Project category: Program Office Support Team;
Description: Labor, contracts, and materials to support ERA program
management;
Estimated obligations: $3.0.
Project category: Integrated deployment and support:
Description: Interagency agreements for ERA facilities[A];
Estimated obligations: $2.9.
Project category: Independent verification and validation[B];
Description: Verification and validation activities;
Estimated obligations: $2.0.
Project category: Total:
Estimated obligations: $63.3[C]
Source: GAO analysis of NARA data.
[A] ERA facilities include Allegany Ballistics Lab at Rocket Center,
West Virginia, and the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command at
Stennis, Mississippi.
[B] NARA contracted with Northrop Grumman to perform independent
verification and validation on policies and plans produced by the ERA
program and contract deliverables produced by Lockheed Martin.
[C] Total may not equal the sum of individual items due to rounding.
Note: NARA obligated $40,000 towards security, but this is not shown in
the table because the amount is equal to zero when converted into
millions and rounded to one decimal place.
[End of table]
We have issued several reports on ERA and its development.[Footnote 14]
In July 2007[Footnote 15] we reported that NARA did not fully comply
with its enterprise life cycle methodology because it had not yet
developed an agencywide risk management capability”it had a risk
management plan, but the plan had not been approved by the agency‘s
senior staff and agency head. This plan was subsequently approved in
July 2007. In addition, NARA is revising a project-level risk
management plan for ERA that was first written in 2006. Agency
officials expect this plan to be completed in August 2008.
Most recently, at a hearing in May on the ERA project,[Footnote 16] we
testified that the development of the ERA base was proceeding according
to the revised schedule, although it faced challenges in meeting
several testing deadlines. We also testified that the timely completion
of the EOP system was uncertain, in part due to ongoing negotiations
between NARA and Lockheed Martin on system capabilities and time
frames.
Further, we noted that the uncertainties regarding requirements and
dates were due, in part, to uncertainty about the nature of the records
to be delivered:
* NARA had received limited information from the Bush administration
about the types of data it will receive. The Archives received limited
technical information on systems used for e-mail, digital image
systems, correspondence tracking, and paper records management, but it
received only brief descriptions of 32 other systems identified by the
White House. NARA and the administration had held meetings on this
topic, according to NARA, but the administration had not yet provided
NARA with specific information required for it to plan for reliable
ingesting, indexing, and accessing of the electronic records involved.
* NARA was also uncertain about the volume of data that it was to
receive. It based its capacity requirements on an estimate that the
volume will be about 100 terabytes. (A terabyte is about 1 trillion
bytes or about 1,000 gigabytes.) This is about 50 times the volume of
the Clinton administration‘s electronic records.
Subsequently, NARA certified the completion of the first ERA increment,
meeting its revised June 2008 IOC milestone. However, NARA is
continuing to work to patch several outstanding flaws in the software
that it considers noncritical.
Also, NARA has received additional information from the White House on
two systems--those used for managing paper records and tracking
correspondence--but still lacks technical details on 28 other systems.
It has also updated its volume estimate for the Bush administration
electronic records to 140 terabytes.
As of July 22, 2008, discussions between NARA and Lockheed Martin on a
contract for development of the EOP system were still ongoing. NARA
expected to complete negotiations by the end of July 2008. During these
negotiations, the contractor continued development of the EOP system.
[End of section]
Legislative Conditions:
As discussed in further detail below, NARA‘s fiscal year 2008
expenditure plan fully satisfies five of the six legislative
conditions, and partially satisfies the fourth condition that the ERA
acquisition comply with the agency‘s enterprise life cycle methodology.
1. Meet OMB capital planning and investment control review
requirements:
OMB requires agencies to develop capital planning and investment
control review processes that help ensure that projects are being
implemented at acceptable cost and within reasonable and expected time
frames, and that they are contributing to observable improvements in
mission performance. The agency met this condition; it provides control
over cost, schedule, and performance through the activities of the ERA
Oversight Group, which meets weekly to review ERA progress, and the
Information Technology Executive Committee. These committees, which
meet regularly, include senior agency leadership and other agency
stakeholders. NARA has also implemented a policy and process for
semiannual reviews of ongoing information technology investments,
including interdependencies with ERA, through an agencywide capital
planning and investment control process.
2. Comply with NARA‘s enterprise architecture:
OMB requires NARA to include ERA in its agency-level enterprise
architecture, which is updated on a yearly basis. The current agency
enterprise architecture”version 5.0”includes ERA and has been submitted
to and approved by OMB. NARA‘s enterprise architecture consists of
several component architectures, including business, data, systems,
application, operations, and information technology security
architectures.
According to NARA, ERA is included in the target business and technical
architectures, and ERA technology dependencies and organizational
impacts are identified in the agency‘s sequencing plan.
In addition, OMB requires that any major IT investment be mapped to and
support the Federal Enterprise Architecture. The business case for the
investment must also demonstrate the relationship between the
investment and the business, performance, data, services, application,
and technology layers of the agency‘s architecture. NARA‘s budget
submission business case for the ERA system certifies compliance with
these requirements and was approved by OMB.
3. Comply with acquisition rules, requirements, guidelines, and system
acquisition management practices of the federal government[Footnote
17]:
The quality of software is governed largely by the quality of the
processes involved in developing or acquiring it and maintaining it.
Carnegie Mellon University‘s Software Engineering Institute (SEI),
[Footnote 18] recognized for its expertise in software processes, has
developed models and methods that define and determine organizations‘
software process maturity. NARA satisfied this provision using methods
consistent with SEI guidance. Specifically, NARA (1) conducted internal
assessments in 2002 and 2004 that used the Institute‘s SA-CMM[Footnote
19] methods to determine the maturity of ERA‘s system policies,
processes, and practices and (2) implemented a process to address the
assessment‘s recommendations.
In addition, in its fiscal year 2006 expenditure plan, NARA described a
plan to commission an independent appraisal of ERA in fiscal year 2007
that was to use a standard CMMI® appraisal methodology for process
improvement (SCAMPISM).[Footnote 20] However, NARA did not commission
the independent appraisal as planned. Instead, all available resources
from ERA that would have been involved in such a review have been
directed towards meeting the IOC date of June 27, 2008.
4. Conform to NARA‘s enterprise life cycle methodology:
The ERA project partially conforms to NARA‘s enterprise life cycle
methodology, which defines a set of processes that are to be used
throughout the program‘s life cycle, including processes for managing
system investments, configuration, and risks. In particular, the risk
management methodology calls for the agency to identify and categorize
risks, qualify the probabilities and consequences of the risks, specify
a strategy to mitigate each risk, communicate risk status, and act upon
risks that become unacceptable.
NARA conforms to several aspects of this methodology:
* NARA uses processes to manage investment decisions and system
configuration.
* NARA also identifies, ranks, quantifies, and communicates ERA risks
using an agency-level risk review board, a program-level risk review
board, and a technical risk review team. These bodies report top ERA
risks to the Executive Oversight Group, OMB, and the Congress on a
monthly basis. In recent reports, the highest rated risk to the ERA
program has been the risk that the agency would not be able to ingest
and process electronic records from the Bush administration during the
January 2009 presidential transition, in part due to the uncertainties
described earlier.
However, NARA has not yet developed a risk mitigation plan to address
this significant risk. As we have previously reported, effective risk
management includes developing risk mitigation plans that identify
planned actions and milestones for key mitigation deliverables.
[Footnote 21]
Instead, NARA officials believe the development of the EOP system will
adequately handle most incoming presidential records. In addition, NARA
intends to formulate a plan to mitigate the risk that incoming records
will not be processed by EOP. However, it does not intend to develop
such a plan until November or December 2008 when it expects to have
more in-depth technical knowledge of the records to be transferred.
According to NARA officials, it intends to handle presidential records
that cannot be processed by the EOP system by replicating the source
systems being used by the White House, as was done for the Clinton
transition.
NARA officials also stated that the agency has taken other steps to
mitigate this risk. For example, it has begun the process of soliciting
a contract to support the duplication of White House systems at the
Archives, as needed. They plan to have this contract in place by
November, after which the contractor will have to analyze the systems,
procure the necessary hardware and software, and build the duplicate
systems. NARA officials believe they have adequate time to complete
these steps before the transition. NARA is also working to identify and
prioritize those systems mostly likely to be the subject of requests
early in the transition and negotiating with the White House for the
prompt transfer of records.
However, ongoing uncertainties about the EOP system raise concerns
about the adequacy of NARA‘s strategy. For example, it is still
uncertain when the EOP system will be completed. In May, NARA officials
expected to complete negotiations with Lockheed Martin, and finalize a
development contract for EOP by June. As of July, NARA and the
contractor have continued negotiating about the details of the EOP
system requirements and capabilities, as well as the specific
development plans and final contract terms. As a result, the final
capabilities of the system and its expected delivery dates are not yet
known. In addition, the contractor met only one of the two agreed-upon
delivery milestones for segments of the EOP system during this period.
Although it demonstrated several added capabilities, such as access
control and Internet security, as planned on May 13, it has not yet
completed system integration testing for the final set of capabilities,
including backup and restore functions, which was due on July 17.
According to NARA officials, this delivery was deferred to July 31
because it needed more time to ensure that the software worked
correctly.
Considering these uncertainties and the limited time left to prepare
for the transition, delaying the preparation of a mitigation plan
increases the risk that NARA will not be prepared to ingest the Bush
administration records and positioned to respond to critical requests
for this information from the Congress, the new administration, and the
courts.
5. Approval by NARA and OMB:
The expenditure plan was reviewed and approved by NARA and OMB in
December 2007.
6. Review by GAO:
We completed review of the plan in July 2008.
[End of section]
Observation on the ERA Expenditure Plan and Acquisition:
The committee print of last year‘s appropriations act[Footnote 22]
required NARA to provide monthly status reports on ERA to the Congress.
These monthly reports discuss the program‘s cost, schedule, and
performance and are intended to serve as updates to the expenditure
plan. To provide the Congress with a sufficient understanding of the
system acquisition and permit effective oversight and to allow for
informed decision-making about the use of appropriated funds, these
updates should disclose a sufficient level and scope of information to
allow the Congress to understand what system capabilities and benefits
are to be delivered, by when, and at what cost, and what progress is
being made against the commitments that were made in expenditure plans.
Since January 2008, NARA has provided five monthly updates, covering
activities through May. These updates have discussed ERA‘s recent
activities and accomplishments, monthly funding obligations, overall
project schedule, and significant risks. The information they provide
can assist congressional oversight by ensuring that timely information
on the program is available to congressional decision makers.
However, these updates lack summary measures of the project‘s
performance against cost and schedule estimates. One way to derive such
data is through earned value management (EVM), a project management
tool that compares the value of work accomplished during a given period
with that of the work expected in the period. Differences between
accomplishments and expectations are measured in both cost and schedule
variances. NARA is required by OMB to use EVM in its program management
and reports summary EVM measures to OMB. For example, in a June 2008
briefing to OMB, NARA reported that ERA‘s cumulative cost performance
index[Footnote 23] was 1.027 as of April 2008. This represents a
favorable variance, meaning that the cost of completing the work for
the ERA development was lower than planned for the reported period.
However, in the same briefing, agency officials informed OMB that ERA‘s
schedule performance index[Footnote 24] was 0.893, an unfavorable
variance, meaning that the contractor had completed less work than
planned.
According to NARA officials, EVM variance data changes frequently and
would be out of date by the time they could be included in an annual
expenditure plan. In addition, they stated that such measures are not
included in the monthly reports to the Congress because they follow a
previously agreed-upon format. However, the data provide an important
perspective on project progress not otherwise available. This is
especially true for a project such as ERA, where the scope and schedule
have changed significantly.
If NARA does not provide summary information on variances in the
systems cost and schedule in its monthly updates, the Congress may be
hampered in providing effective oversight of the system.
[End of section]
Conclusions:
Although NARA‘s expenditure plan satisfies five of the six legislative
conditions mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, it has only
partially satisfied the remaining condition that the ERA acquisition
comply with the agency‘s life cycle methodology. Specifically, it has
not yet developed a plan to mitigate its highest-rated program risk:
that NARA will not have the capability to handle the Bush
administration records by the time of the presidential transition in
January 2009. Although NARA intends to develop such a plan at the end
of this year, the mission-critical nature of the task and the
uncertainty surrounding EOP system development underscore the need to
complete such a plan in time to ensure that the agency will have an
alternative means available for processing the Bush records, if
necessary. Without a timely mitigation plan, when the next
administration takes office, NARA may not be able to meet the
requirements of the Congress, the incoming President, and the courts
for the information contained in the previous administration‘s records.
NARA‘s mandated monthly reports to the Congress provide valuable
information about ERA‘s expenditures, activities, and risks. However,
these reports would help the Congress better understand what system
capabilities will be delivered and at what costs if they included
summary measures of variances in cost and schedule performance. Without
such information in future reports, the Congress may be hampered in its
ability to effectively oversee the program.
[End of section]
Recommendations:
To ensure that NARA can fulfill its critical responsibilities during
the upcoming presidential transition, we recommend that the Archivist
develop a mitigation plan for indexing and searching the electronic
records from the outgoing Bush administration in the event that the EOP
system is not complete. The plan should be completed in time to be
fully implemented for the January presidential transition.
To enhance oversight of the ERA project, we recommend that the
Archivist ensure that summary measures of project performance against
ERA cost and schedule estimates are included in future monthly reports
to the Congress.
[End of section]
Agency Comments:
In comments on a draft of this briefing, the Archivist of the United
States generally agreed with our findings and stated that he was
pleased with our recognition of the progress made in implementing ERA.
The Archivist also provided additional information on efforts under way
to mitigate the risk to presidential records during the transition, but
did not specifically address our recommendation to develop a risk
mitigation plan. He agreed to implement our recommendation that he
include project performance measures in future monthly reports to the
Congress.
A copy of the Archivist‘s letter is attached.
National Archives at College Park:
8601 Adelphi Road:
College Park, Maryland 20740:
July 22, 2008:
Government Accountability Office:
Director of Information Management Issues:
Ms. Linda Koontz:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Ms. Koontz:
We thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on the draft
report entitled Information Management The National Archives and
Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan (GAO-08-
1105) before submission to the Subcommittee on Financial Services and
General Government, Senate Appropriations Committee and the
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, House
Appropriations Committee. We are pleased to note the recognition of the
progress made towards implementing the Electronic Records Archive (ERA)
Program.
We also appreciate the insight into the Expenditure Plan observations
addressed in GAO's presentation. We would like to take this opportunity
to address the recommendations on your presentation. NARA has been
submitting the mandated monthly reports to Congress using a previously
agreed upon format. The Earned Value (EV) information requested in your
presentation is already provided on a monthly basis to the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB). We will add this information to the
Congressional reports starting with the August report. It should be
clarified in the report that the comment related to EV data changing
frequently was made in response to including this information in the
Expenditure Plan not the monthly report to Congress.
Regarding GAO's report for a mitigation plan for NARA's highest rated
program risk, as with the transition at the end of the Clinton
administration, the detailed migration plans will he developed when we
have more in-depth technical knowledge of the systems to be migrating
from the Executive Office of the President (EOP). This will probably
happen closer to November, 2008. Although the ERA EOP instance is still
on track to support the Presidential transition, NARA is working on
putting in place the contractual vehicle to ensure we are ready to
transition the records if this risk were to become a reality. NARA is
also identifying, based on experience with previous transitions, which
EOP applications are most likely to be subjects of requests soon after
the transition and directed ERA EOP development to those applications.
Finally, NARA is negotiations with the EOP to implement a transfer
mechanism for moving the electronic records to NARA's system as quickly
as possible.
Again, we thank you for the opportunity and look forward to our future
interactions as we continue the EPA acquisition process.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Adrienne C. Thoman, for:
Allen Weinstein:
Archivist of the United States:
[End of section]
[End of appendix]
Appendix II: Comments from the National Archives and Records
Administration:
National Archives at College Park:
8601 Adelphi Road:
College Park, Maryland 20740:
September 5, 2008:
Government Accountability Office:
Director of Information Management Issues:
Ms. Linda Koontz:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Ms. Koontz:
We thank you for the opportunity to review and comment on the draft
report entitled Information Management The National Archives and
Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2008 Expenditure Plan (GAO-08-
1105) before submission to the Subcommittee on Financial Services and
General Government, Senate Appropriations Committee and the
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, House
Appropriations Committee. Once again, we are pleased to note the
recognition of the progress made towards implementing the
recommendations provided in GAO's previous reports.
We would like to take this opportunity to update you on the status of
the efforts related to your observations since our last letter. The
report indicates that the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) monthly
status reports submitted to Congress exclude useful information
regarding the project's performance against cost and schedule. The
information requested was added to the report submitted in August and
will continue to be included in subsequent reports.
The report asserts that NARA has not yet developed a plan to mitigate
the risk that the ERA system "will not have the capability to process
the outgoing administration's records at the time of the January 2009
presidential transition." The most fundamental requirement for this
system is that it guarantees the survival of presidential electronic
records of the outgoing administration. The ERA development is on track
to deliver by the end of November a system capable of bringing in the
very large volumes of electronic records expected to be transferred,
establishing archival control over them, storing them safely, and
retrieving them. In addition, this system will have the ability to
index several hundred different formats, enabling full content
searching of records in those formats. There is no noteworthy risk
related to this development. The identified risk relates to the
probability that there will be some electronic records that the system
cannot index in their native formats. The system is designed to enable
versions of such records to be created in formats that are amenable to
search. The system will store both the original and new versions. NARA
has implemented a significant mitigation of this risk by including in
the Lockheed Martin contract provision for acquisition or development
of software to produce alternate versions of formats that cannot be
indexed. In fact, the contractor has been working for several months to
develop such software for several important applications, including e-
mail. We expect to have this capability available by the end of the
current administration, and development will continue thereafter. In
this context, it should be noted that it will take some time to ingest
the very large volumes we expect to receive. The residual risk is that
there will be some formats that ERA will not be able to ingest and
index in a reasonable amount of time. An additional mitigation is to
have alterative methods of processing records in those formats.
Developing definitive plans for such alternatives requires obtaining
detailed specifications from the Executive Office of the President
(EOP). The EOP has been providing NARA with such specifications on a
case by case basis. To date, NARA's preference has been to use this
information in its primary mitigation of the risk, by developing the
required capability within the ERA system.
Again, we thank you for this opportunity and look forward to our future
interactions as we continue the development of the ERA system.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Adrienne C. Thoman, for:
Allen Weinstein:
Archivist of the United States:
[End of section]
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Linda D. Koontz, (202) 512-6240, or koontzl@gao.gov:
Staff Acknowledgments:
In addition to the individual named above, key contributions to this
report were made by James R. Sweetman, Jr., Assistant Director; Monica
Perez Anatalio; Barbara Collier; Neil J. Doherty; Pamlutricia
Greenleaf; Charles C. Hinnant; Lee McCracken; and Tarunkant Mithani.
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] ERA's fiscal year 2008 budget authority totaled $63.3 million which
includes $4.4 million carried over from multiyear funds and $800,000
from recoveries of prior year unpaid obligations.
[2] See the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-161,
div. D, title V, 121 Stat. 1844, 2006 (Dec. 26, 2007).
[3] Agencies develop an exhibit 300, also known as the Capital Asset
Plan and Business Case Summary, to justify each request for a major
information technology investment. OMB sets forth requirements for the
exhibit 300 in Circular A-11, Part 7, Planning, Budgeting, Acquisition,
and Management of Capital Assets.
[4] We did not review the program's compliance with the Federal
Acquisition Regulation.
[5] Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-161, div. D,
title V, 121 Stat. 1844, 2006 (Dec. 26, 2007).
[6] ERA‘s FY 2008 budget authority totaled $63.3 million which includes
$4.4 million carried over from multiyear funds and $800,000 from
recoveries of prior year unpaid obligations.
[7] Agencies develop an exhibit 300, also known as the Capital Asset
Plan and Business Case Summary, to justify each request for a major
information technology investment. OMB sets forth requirements for the
exhibit 300 in Circular A-11, Part 7, Planning, Budgeting, Acquisition,
and Management of Capital Assets.
[8] 44 U.S.C. 2203(f)(1).
[9] A terabyte is about 1 trillion bytes or about 1,000 gigabytes.
[10] According to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, a firm-fixed-
price contract provides for a price that is not subject to any
adjustment on the basis of the contractor‘s cost experience in
performing the contract. This type of contract places on the contractor
maximum risk and full responsibility for costs and resulting profit or
loss.
[11] A record schedule is a document that describes agency records,
establishes a period for their retention by the agency, and provides
mandatory instructions for what to do with them when they are no longer
needed for current government business.
[12] Records appraisal is the process of determining the value and the
final disposition of records, making them either temporary or
permanent.
[13] ERA Monthly Congressional Report, May, 2008, Appendix B-
Planned/Actual Obligations by Month.
[14] GAO, Records Management: Planning for the Electronic Records
Archives Has Improved, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-
bin/getrpt?GAO-04-927] (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 23, 2004);Information
Management: Acquisition of the Electronic Records Archives Is
Progressing, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-802]
(Washington, D.C.; July 15, 2005); Electronic Records Archives: The
National Archives and Records Administration‘s Fiscal Year 2006
Expenditure Plan, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-
906] (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 18, 2006).
[15] GAO, Information Management: The National Archives and Records
Administration‘s Fiscal Year 2007 Expenditure Plan, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-987] (Washington, D.C.: July
27, 2007).
[16] GAO, Information Management: Challenges in Implementing an
Electronic Records Archive, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-
bin/getrpt?GAO-08-738T] (Washington, D.C.: May 14, 2008).
[17] We did not review the program‘s compliance with the Federal
Acquisition Regulation.
[18] SEI is a federally funded research and development center operated
by Carnegie Mellon University and sponsored by the Department of
Defense. Its objective is to provide leadership in software engineering
and in the transition of new software engineering technology into
practice.
[19] The Software Acquisition-Capability Maturity Model (SA-CMM)
identifies key process areas that are essential to effectively managing
software-intensive system acquisitions.
[20] CMMI is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the
Carnegie Mellon University. The CMMI is SEI‘s process model that
describes how to develop the processes needed for software development
and specific practices that organizations should follow.SCAMPI is a
service mark of Carnegie Mellon University. It is a method used for
appraising organizations using CMMI.
[21] GAO, 2010 Census: Preparations for the 2010 Census Underway, but
Continued Oversight and Risk Management Are Critical, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-1106T], (Washington, D.C.:
July 17, 2007).
[22] Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Committee Print of the
House Committee on Appropriations on H.R. 2764, Pub. L. No. 110-161
(Legislative Text and Explanatory Statement).
[23] Cost performance index (CPI) is the amount of work performed (or
earned value) compared to actual costs of work performed.
[24] Schedule performance index (SPI), work efficiency, is defined as
the ratio of work performed (or earned value) to the initial planned
schedule.
[End of section]
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