Exactly which parts of an
agency's Web site constitute federal records, subject to rules
governing retention and disposition, depends on the agency in
question.
Officials of the National Archives and Records Administration and
other agencies reached no consensus at last week's FedWeb 2002
conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
The debate over maintenance of Web records was just one of the
hot-button issues at the annual gathering. Other workshops tackled
such topics as Web site design and performance, security
requirements and the Government Paperwork Elimination Act.
"The federal government is using the Web for every conceivable
purpose," said William Lefurgy, deputy director of NARA's Modern
Records Program.
NARA wants to help agencies develop best practices for managing
records on Web sites, Lefurgy said. From NARA's perspective, many if
not most agency sites contain official records that need to be
managed as such, Lefurgy said. That applies both to what appears on
browser screens and to back-end databases and scripts.
NARA has drafted a guidance document for managing agency Web
records, Lefurgy said. Archives officials hope the guidance will
gain approval from the Office of Management and Budget by the end of
the month.
Consultant J. Timothy Sprehe, who joined the agency representatives
in a panel discussion, said he doesn't believe all things on agency
Web sites are public records, especially if they're copies of paper
documents, such as Federal Register entries. Dynamic content,
though, is a gray area.
Sprehe urged agency webmasters, content managers and records
officers to talk to each other and agree on ground rules for
retention.
The Energy Information Administration keeps a registry of its site
content so that if someone inquires about a document that was
removed, staff members can track it down, he said.
Carolyn K. Offutt, Superfund webmaster for the Environmental
Protection Agency, said she believes the electronic documents on the
site she manages - including all static pages, graphics, databases
and other dynamic content - are federal records.
Captured On Film
Someone from Offutt's staff takes a snapshot of the Superfund site
every three months. She praised NARA's effort to capture snapshots
of agency sites at the end of the Clinton administration.
In 1996, EPA gave NARA a proposed schedule for maintaining its Web
records, she said, but NARA rejected it two years later because it
might set a precedent. NARA still has not approved retention
schedules for Web content, she added.
As a regulatory agency, EPA makes decisions and issues standards,
and people have to be able to research the background of those
decisions and standards online, Offutt said.
Jeanne Young, a records manager for the Federal Reserve Board, said
she views her agency's site as a bulletin board. The Web is just a
distribution medium, Young said, and many records are not posted
there.
The board in fact has three Web sites'one public, one for the
agency and an intranet that "truly functions as a bulletin board,"
Young said. The internal site has links to such newspapers as the
Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, plus a market ticker.
"I think we'd be in a lot of trouble if we tried to incorporate
those as records of the Federal Reserve," Young said.
Web management documents are records, however, even though not
everything on the site is a record, Young said. Furthermore, board
regulators are opposed to considering the site a records repository,
Young said.
NARA can give guidance but must leave it up to agencies to
determine what is and isn't a record, she said.
Charles R. McClure, director of the Information Use Management and
Policy Institute at Florida State University, predicted that "many
of the people in this room are going to be just as cranky when they
see the new guidance as when they didn't have it."
Other FedWeb workshops focused on security and performance,
regardless of the records issue.
Selene Dalecky, an electronic product developer for the Government
Printing Office, said the staff of the GPO Access Web site measures
its effectiveness in many ways.
Basic usage data comes from analysis of log files and online
bookstore orders, Dalecky said. The staff periodically surveys
volunteers from government libraries, other agencies and the public.
GPO officials annually conduct an opt-in online survey of site
visitors.
Nora Rice, the CIO Council's program manager, urged agency
officials to present a unified, simplified view of agency business
processes to their Web users in order to reap the benefits of GPEA.
Larry Dusold, a webmaster for two sites developed by the Food and
Drug Administration, urged his audience to protect their Web sites
with an "onion skin" of multiple security layers.
High hurdles
If the barrier around the Web site is high enough, hackers will
decide it's not worth the effort to penetrate or deface it, said
Dusold, chief of telecommunications and scientific computer support
for FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Dusold discussed security measures that every public Web site
should have. The list includes turning off all unnecessary TCP/IP
services, using internal and external Web server monitors and
enforcing strict password rules.
Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com
09:00 CST
