The social challenge: keeping the record, keeping the trust

This article was originally published in the January, 2000, Newsletter of the British Society of Archivists.

Keeping the record, keeping the trust

Richard E. Barry [1]
Barry Associates

Turning the corner into the third millennium – as you wish on 1 January or 31 December 2000 – inevitably leads to both reflections on the past and forecasting the future. That’s all right. It is certainly in keeping with modern knowledge management (KM) practice to reflect on past experience and draw lessons for the present and future. People in our field, whose livelihoods depend upon others placing a high value on legacy records, should rejoice in such millennial fin de siecle practices.

In part, these issues are brought about or exacerbated by technological change. Shrink-wrapped boxes don't contain any warranties against negative social impact. Others are born out of changing social norms that may be heightened by emerging technologies, most of which is very precarious from a recordkeeping perspective. However, this essay is not about KM and not about technology as such[2]. It is about a few of the social, human factors and ethical issues – let us say 'social issues' for short – of some millennial proportion that are bearing down on ARM professionals:

Privacy and the sale of public records.
Public alienation from government.
The role of ARM professionals in ethical violations.

Privacy and the sale of public records

Walking the line between making records assets accessible for authorized purposes and protecting individual privacy is an issue facing ARM professionals that is both policy and technology driven. The sale of personal information by government agencies without the prior permission of the concerned citizens has become a popular way to supplement budgetary outlays in some state governments in the U.S., under the pressure of re-engineering and downsizing programs. Personal information is taken from government records that were created to serve particular citizen needs required by law, e.g., applications for driver's licenses, and is sold to commercial entities for other purposes, e.g., targeted advertising to the subject individuals. This is a violation of the voluntary Fair Practices Code which among other things disallows the use of personal information that was gathered with the individual's consent for one purpose for any other purpose without consent. The practice goes beyond such information as name and address, Social Security Number, age, sex, race and other details from a driver's file. In the past year the State of Florida has released 14 million photographs from drivers' licenses to the private sector, and other states have begun to follow suit[3].

It is important for ARM professionals individually and as a group to take a stand on the privacy issue both as it concerns recordkeeping and more generally[4]. When public records are used in ways that offend the general citizenry, the public also loses trust in the public records system and those who are entrusted with their care.

Public alienation from government

Perhaps the most worrisome social issue facing ARM professionals is alienation of the public from government that comes about with corruption or abuse of power. It is extremely difficult to deal with those issues without a culture that places a premium on accountability, a bulletproof recordkeeping regime and strong Freedom of Information (FOI) and whistle-blower protection laws that are rigorously enforced. Alienation happens whenever records are known to have been abused or not properly maintained by the professionals assigned to their safekeeping, when they are not made accessible to the public after a reasonable period of time, or when records and ARM professionals are not insulated from political or other inappropriate interference. Even when records are abused by others for their own ends, it reflects equally poorly on the ARM profession. We can help by promoting legislation, organizational arrangements, recordkeeping standards and a climate of non-interference in the recordkeeping process. As individuals, the best defense for ARM professionals is to better educate and inform ourselves through higher-level education and continuing education programs, including well implemented certification programs[5].span style="mso-spacerun: yes">

Recent examples involving abuses of power and defiance of accountability in public and private sector organizations that have contributed to public alienation in some of the world's most advanced democracies include:

Australia's 'Heiner' case that involved the unwitting (if naïve) co-option of a state archivist in the destruction of public records that were known to be the subject of upcoming litigation;[6]
Canada's 'Tainted Blood' case involving the hiding of records showing that Government blood supplies were tainted with HIV virus;
the U.S. 'Joe Camel' case involving litigious written and artwork documentation in a major advertising agency (representing the tobacco industry) that was alleged to have been destroyed not as part of a normal "business decision or made in connection with a document-retention program but to deny an adversary,"[7] and the Internal Revenue Service case, involving alleged decades-long, systemic withholding of archival records from the National Archives and Records Administration, aided and abetted by the agency's records management office[8]. This latter case may never have come to light in the absence of 'whistle-blower' protection laws.

Another, case that circulated on the Internet last year reported the dismissal of two French archivists for revealing the existence of records giving evidence to tainted French blood supplies. While the author is unaware of any major cases in the U.K., this could simply be a reflection of how such cases may fail to reach the public eye in the absence of effective FOI and whistle-blower protection laws. The absence of these social circuit breakers when coupled with legislation that permits certain government controls over the news media (e.g., in the U.K., the Official Secrets Act, and the press culture that comes about under many years of such a regime), makes it particularly difficult for the public to know when things are going wrong or to establish accountability when suspicious acts do come to light[9].

The role of ARM professionals in ethical violations

What responsibility should ARM professionals bear when laws are broken or there are ethical lapses in, or egregious violations of, good recordkeeping practices? Perhaps more than we have admitted or at least read about. The public debate going on in Australia over the Heiner case is almost totally silent on the role of the State Archivist. It is as though the State Archives wasn’t there. In the Hansard of the Queensland Parliament of 28 October 1999, the Premier, Mr. Beattie, trivializes the Heiner case charges and jokes that the victim’s petition has only one signature attached to it.

There are the lingering questions: Why did the Archivist submit to a request to destroy records within 24 hours without it raising a red flag right then? Perhaps she did raise a flag, but then that would be important to know. Should a disposition action have been taken on records independently of other records in the same series and in the absence of a previously established retention schedule? In these circumstances, should the common practice of appraising on the basis of function have been followed? Would the better part of wisdom, if not good practice, have been to actually read some of the records. That would have disclosed that they contained evidence of a pattern of child abuse in a state operated youth detention center.

The case remains a very tender subject among archivists there. No one has asserted wrong doing on the Archivists part, because she has stated that she was not informed that the records were litigious in nature. However, she has remained otherwise publicly silent, putting her professional colleagues in a difficult position of not wishing to challenge her reputation while also wishing to draw important lessons learned from the case.

This silence-of-the-lambs characteristic appears in many other cases. It gives rise to the broader issue: does the profession discipline itself and how? There are only a few mechanisms for doing that: independent professional reviews and professional disciplinary action if appropriate, by either a separate government body (such as exists in the U.S. for monitoring the conduct of scientific research), the national archives organization or the national and/or international professional societies. The national archives may be powerless to play such a role for a number of reasons either because it is a party in some of these cases[10] and would be in a conflict-of-interest position to judge its own practices or because it is limited in jurisdiction. In the Heiner example, since it is a Queensland State case and Australia has a very strong tradition (and laws) separating state and Commonwealth powers, the Director of the National Archives would not be welcomed into the fray (to put it mildly) and, indeed, has remained publicly silent on the matter.

This leaves monitoring of ethical practice of ARM professionals up to either the professional societies or a separate government entity. The former would be more desirable as a means of self discipline, but only if the societies are really up to the task[11]. This means more than issuing a code of ethics on parchment for people to hang on their walls or discussing ethics cases in the abstract. There was great controversy on the Australian archives list for over a year on the Heiner case as, almost single-handedly, Chris Hurley argued the need for the Australian Society of Archivists to take a strong public stand on the case. People just wanted it to go away. Finally a somewhat timid public statement was forthcoming from ASA. At the suggestion of this author, ASA requested the Society of American Archivists to endorse its statement. SAA declined. Since a couple of well known Canadian archivists were working behind the scenes with this author to try to marshal the professional community to use this case to draw public attention to the importance of the inviolability of records, informal inquiries were made with the Association of Canadian Archivists, but they had the same outcome. It was someone else's business. We weren't asked.

What about ARM professionals as individuals working in their organizations, especially those who are in management roles? If we don’t have strong policies within our organizations that clearly establish the inviolability of records and recordkeeping practices, are we not ourselves complicit when breeches take place? There are narrow lines of demarcation when it comes to: active complicity in the improper manipulation or destruction of records or other violations of recordkeeping laws or established principles of the profession; carrying out directions which we know are suspect without challenging them to higher authority; and just being silent in policy making or open discussion of social issues.

Perhaps such incidences aren’t as much on the rise as appears to be the case. Perhaps we simply have more experienced and aggressive investigative reporting today than in days past, more demanding publics and better laws. Perhaps it is just that such cases are more frequently reported these days, and more easily communicated internationally. One thing is certain. The emergence of electronic records and new forms of records, such as email, will bring light to more of these cases in the future because many more records are being created, it is much easier to collect and relate information from disparate sources and because, in the absence of trustworthy recordkeeping systems, they are more subject to unauthorized and illegal access, manipulation and destruction.

These technological and sociological threads weave a troublesome carpet on which archivists and records managers must walk. They also offer a challenge that, if effectively met, can significantly elevate public awareness of the importance of records assets and the professions that both guard and purvey them. They also highlight the importance for ARM professionals – at the individual, organizational, professional association and national archives levels – to: set and follow high standards of education and continuing education that take account of technological and social change; promote and support strong FOI and whistle-blower protection legislation; become the FOI focal points for their organizations (FOI and recordkeeping are natural allies); adopt a fair information practices code;[12] and finally to raise their heads from their desks regularly to consider the human and social dimensions of what they do.

[1] Rick Barry, Principal of Barry Associates, is an internationally recognized authority in the field of information management, records management and electronic records. He has consulted to the national archives of several countries in North America, Australasia, Europe and Africa.

[2] For a discussion of emerging technologies, see Rick Barry's papers "Catching Up with the Last Technology Train at the Next Station," originally published in Informaa Quarterly, the journal of the Records Management Association of Australia, February 1999, accessible at www.rbarry.com/febrb2.html; "Electronic Records Management: The Way We Were, The Way We Are - One Man's Opinion," published in the British Records Management Journal, vol 7 no 3, 1997, at www.rbarry.com/ukrmj-7.html; and other papers on the site.

[3] The U.S. Congress enacted the 1994 Driver's Privacy Protection Act to make it illegal for state governments to carry out such practices. The law is currently under challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that it violates states' rights.

[4] For excellent resource material on this subject, see the websites of two non-profit, public interest groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center www.epic.org/; and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility www.cpsr.org.

[5] For a thoughtful reflection on the U.S. Academy of Certified Archivists program by the head of the University of Pittsburgh masters program in archival studies, former editor of the American Archivist and respected Certified Archivist, see "Certification and Its Implications for the American Archival Profession: Changing Views, 1989 and 1996", by Richard Cox, at http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~rjc/.

[6] For an overview of the Heiner case, see "Records and the Public Interest: Shredding of the 'Heiner Affair' records: An up-dating summary", by Chris Hurley (Acting Director and Chief Archivist, National Archives of New Zealand) at http://www.caldeson.com/RIMOS/summary.html.

[7] "Top Ad Agency Defends Tossing Its Files Regarding Joe Camel," by Ann Davis, Wall Street Journal, 30 April 1998, Section B, Page 1, column 6.

[8] Davis, Shelley L., Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, HarperBusiness, New York 1997, ISBN: 0-88730-829-5. Available through Amazon.com. A review of this book by Rick Barry was published in Archives and Manuscripts, the journal of the Australian Society of Archivists, November, 1998. Ms. Davis was a government historian of long standing, including several years in the Department of Defense, with graduate-level course work in archival studies before becoming the first and last Historian of the IRS.

[9] Several years ago, while doing a study for the World Bank on its information disclosure policy, the author visited the U.K. to learn more about its model only to discover with considerable surprise that when public access to public records is authorized, some possibly anonymous person writes a précis of the requested documentation and this – not the original records – is what is given to the citizen.

[10] E.g., when a former Archivist of the U.S. was involved in agreeing to the destruction of Bush Administration email (subsequently prevented as a result of a civil suit by a non-profit public interest group, Public Citizen) and immediately afterwards was appointed to head the Bush Presidential Library.

[11] The Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) is taking a leadership role in beginning a more thorough discussion of this topic as proposed in "Archivists at Risk: Accountability and the Role of the Professional Society" by Sue McKemmish and Glenda Acland, unpublished paper presented at the ASA 31 July 1999 conference in Brisbane, Australia. The paper is accessible at http://www.archivists.org.au/events/conf99/mckemmish_acland.html.

[12] For a model code produced by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, see "The Code of Fair Information Practices", electronically accessible at http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/code_fair_info.html.