This meeting is relevant to the following initiative in the US National Action Plan:
1.4 Declassify National Security Information
Attendees
Government Offices Represented
- National Archives and Records (NARA)
White House OGP Liaisons
- Lisa Ellman, OIRA
- Nick Frazier, OIRA
- Remington Greg, OSTP
Civil Society
- Sharon Bradford Franklin, The Constitution Project
- Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists
- Liza Goitein, Brennan Center for Justice
- Tom Blanton, National Security Archives
- Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org
- Wayne Moses Burke, Open Forum Foundation/OpenTheGovernment.org
Discussion
This was a remarkably frank discussion between civil society and government representatives about progress to date and barriers faced in the National Declassification Center’s efforts to eliminate the backlog of classified documents in the declassification process. It was clear that the government officials share civil society’s commitment to cleaning up the declassification backlog and ensuring that the system is able to work properly into the future.
Civil society gained valuable insight into the true complexities that the National Declassification Center at NARA is facing and there were tangible discussions of ways that the two sides may be able to work together to solve some of those issues.
Given the comprehensiveness of the discussion, the meeting ran for a full 2-1/2 hours (despite a 1 hour planned meeting time). The meeting ended with the promise of further discussion, including conversations with the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB).
