Thread by @DonLueders

Controlling Custodianship of Information is How Agency Records Management Programs Limit Bureaucratic Power
Without a trustworthy agency records management system, Federal bureaucrats can deny access to agency information to anyone - even the agency's Secretary
🧵1/7

For many years after the 1950 passage of the Federal Records Act (FRA), agency records, almost exclusively maintained on paper, were routinely separated by records management staff between ‘active’ records and ‘dormant’ records.

Control of active agency records - these were the records in desk drawers, inboxes, office file cabinets, etc. - remained with the individual or organization that originally created them for as long as the records remained in active use.

After active records use began to drop - typically over a short period - these paper records would be recategorized as ‘dormant’. In compliance with the FRA, this change in status had two important implications.

First, the paper record was physically moved from wherever it was maintained in its active status to the agency’s onsite records preservation facility or an affiliated regional Federal Records Center.

Second, control (technically speaking, ‘custodianship’) of the paper record was legally transferred from the individual or organization that created the record to the agency, represented by the agency’s records management program.
2/7

Once custodianship had been transferred to the agency and the record was physically moved into a compliant preservation facility, the record was secured there through the remainder of its National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)-approved retention period, and access to the record was only granted by the agency’s records management program.

Even the record’s original creator could not access the record without express permission from the proper agency records management officials.

The transfer of custodianship to the agency and the accession of the paper record to a secure facility served a critically important purpose that very few members of the American public understand. As a country founded by The People, for The People, all recorded Federal government information belongs to the American people. It does not belong to the government. The government is only responsible for its faithful stewardship as servants of the American people.

As I noted a few weeks ago in the post below, the procedures for managing electronic Federal records were designed to closely follow the procedures that had been in place for paper records for decades. This included a digital agency ‘records center’ created to meet the Department of Defense’s DoD 5015.2 specification for an electronic agency records repository.

It was into these records repositories that dormant electronic records were to be accessioned, and custodianship of the record was to be transferred.

At least, that was the plan.
3/7
x.com/DonLueders/sta…

Earlier this month, the nation’s top vaccine regulator, FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks, was forced to resign after he refused to provide access to records in the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to associates of his boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dr. Marks had no right to deny Secretary Kennedy’s associates access to the VAERS records they were looking for because he was no longer custodian according to Federal records management regulations.

The VAERS records to which Dr. Marks denied Secretary Kennedy access should have been removed from the VAERS system and transferred to the FDA’s 36 CFR § 1236.20-compliant electronic records repository, where custodianship of the records would have been transferred to the agency. Because the dormant VAERS records now belonged to the agency, Secretary Kennedy’s associates would never have needed to ask Dr. Marks for permission to access them.
4/7
msn.com/en-us/news/pol…

But, as reported in this March 2020 Epoch Times article, no Federal agency - including the FDA - ever deployed DoD 5015.2-certified electronic records repositories into an agency production environment.

This meant that the VAERS records never left the system in which they were originally created. And their custodianship remained in the hands of government bureaucrats - likely forever - who were able to alter, hide, or destroy them anytime they wanted…or deny access to them, even to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
theepochtimes.com/us/the-illusio…
5/7

This same problem has occurred consistently at every Federal agency across the Executive Branch of the government since the earliest days of the Obama administration. It has resulted in empowering unelected government bureaucrats in ways the Founding Fathers never intended. And the damage it has done to our liberties cannot possibly be overstated.
x.com/DonLueders/sta…
6/7

If Federal agencies don’t implement top-to-bottom reform of their records management programs, and limit bureaucratic custodianship of electronic agency records, the Federal Administrative State will have more power than the President and they will continue to wield that power against anyone they see as a threat, including the American middle and working classes.
7/7