6.4: Declassification

Strengthen open government by improving coordination and streamlining the declassification process

Other Information:

(www.archives.gov/declassification) - On December 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13526 in which he directed an overhaul of the way documents created by the Federal Government are classified and declassified. To oversee this initiative and to implement the changes, the President directed the creation of the National Declassification Center (NDC), now located within NARA. The National Declassification Center (NDC) will strengthen open government because it will improve coordination and streamline the declassification process. Streamlining the Declassification Process - The NDC will lead the streamlining of the declassification process throughout the Federal Government. In particular, it will accelerate the processing of historically valuable classified records in which more than one agency has an interest. It will oversee the development of common declassification processes among agencies. And it will prioritize declassification based on researcher interest and the likelihood of declassification. Certain records may remain classified for longer periods, including information concerning war plans, weapons of mass destruction, human intelligence sources and methods, and in certain cases, diplomatic relations conducted with other nations. The NDC gives NARA the opportunity to eliminate the backlog of some 400 million pages of classified records, including some pertaining to military operations and World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Coordination with Federal Agencies - The NDC will seek to promote among agencies effective, transparent, and standard processed, training, and quality assurance measures for declassifying documents. This will enable other agencies, as well as the NDC staff, to recognize each other's designation of classified information and interpret them correctly during the review process. In addition, the President has directed agencies to continually review their classification and declassification guidelines to make sure they are up to date and do not result in unnecessary classification or classification for longer periods than necessary. National Archives' Leadership Role - The President's order gives the National Archives a leadership role in ensuring that millions of classified records are declassified and made available for the people to inspect and for historians to mine to enrich the account of our nation's history much sooner than otherwise would have been possible. The National Archives has long embraced providing the public as much access as possible to the records that document the rights of our citizens so they may exercise them fully. The NDC will work to assist NARA in this mission.

Stakeholder(s):

• National Declassification Center (NDC)


• Federal Agencies

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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