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>> Thank you for joining us for Records Management Training for Federal Agencies. This is a Records Management Seminar delivered by the United States National Archives and Records Administration's National Records Management Training Program. In this session Laurence Brewer discusses records management training available for Federal Agency records officers and other records management staff. Now let's join the session. >> Paulette: Laurence Brewer is a Senior Manager at the Office of the Chief Records Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration here in College Park, Maryland. As a Director of the National Records Management Program, Laurence has a leadership role overseeing the scheduling and appraisal of Federal records, developing records management regulations and guidance, supporting records management training for employees across the Federal Government, and evaluating the effectiveness of records management programs in Federal agencies. Prior to joining NARA, in 1999 Mr. Brewer was a records management contractor responsible for managing records management programs at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia Department of Transportation. He has more than 20 years of experience in records and information management, and has earned his certified records manager designation in 1998. >> Laurence Brewer: Well, thank you, Paulette. So welcome to this briefing on NARA's records management training activities. We are glad you could join us today. We have a number of things that we want to cover. There are really three, as I go to the next slide, areas that I want to focus on. First, I want to give you a bit of recap on 2013 and the activities that we did last year and some of the initiatives that we're pushing forward in 2014, and then we'll take a look ahead at what our emphasis and focus is on records management training, and probably spend most of this presentation on this final piece, which is the training requirements for agency records officers that is laid out in the records management directive. I'll go over all of these things as we get to them in time and try and explain them as much as I can, and then we'll have plenty of time to talk about them. I would like to add before I go into the next slide that if you are able to attend or tune into the last bridge meeting that we held in December, I gave roughly the same presentation to that audience, so if you did tune in then you'll hear a lot of the same content, so in that case it would probably be a refresher for you. But we wanted to make sure that we gave everyone another opportunity to listen in and that we could focus in on it, using iLink [assumed spelling] and the interaction that we have set-up for you today. So looking back on 2013, there are a couple things that I wanted to highlight. First, a few statistics on what we were able to accomplish. Last year we trained over 2,900 customers net nationwide in classrooms and in our field facilities in College Park and out across the country. We also awarded 315 certificates of Federal records management training. We'll talk a little bit more about the knowledge areas, or as we call them here the KAs, and if you complete the KAs 2 through 6 then, and pass the exams related to those then you are able to get a certificate signed by the Archive of the United States and we were able to award 315 of those last years. We also continued our emphasis on online training, and we offered 40 virtual training classes, and that includes basics records operations and vital business information, and it really shows how we have really tried to move when you compare FY13 to FY12 and previous years, how many more offerings we were able to provide using online delivery, and the response has been truly fantastic. All the courses are sold out, they're in high demand, and we are reaching so many more people than we were able to in the past. The other thing that I wanted to emphasize that we completed last year and are continuing in FY14 is taking one of the knowledge areas, in this case knowledge area 6, and we developed a pilot last year where we were delivering it online using both synchronous and asynchronous instruction. So what that means is there was time online for the students with the instructor and then there were, let's call them homework assignments or offline assignments that were done as individual and group activities, and then the course would then reconvene with the instructor. So it was a hybrid of both instructor led and working on your own, and that was our first attempt to do that for one of the six knowledge areas. Also in FY13 some more details on some other things that we were able to do. We continued to offer our free online briefing series that is in NARA's YouTube channel, up on the main archives.gov website. These are really instructive videos and briefings that have been recorded on specific subjects, and I encourage you to browse around the YouTube channel for content of interest to you and your programs. There's a lot of very current information that really brings some of the standard curriculum more up to date. The other thing that we're working on is continuing to update and revise the existing knowledge area curriculum. In FY13 we did complete updates and revisions for all of the courses, and we're continuing to do that as we move into FY14. And we completed development of a new course, which we're going to be offering in FY14, one is in the spring, and then another time in the fall in September. This is a course on managing the lifecycle of national security information, so it relates particularly to agency staff who are working with classified or security sensitive records. So really it brings together the two communities of records management and national security and classification so that we can reach those individuals who work with those kinds of records to make sure that records management is addressed. Another thing we were able to do is record one of our more popular courses. The legal counsel course has always been a free course, a one-day offering that we offered in the Washington, D.C. area and it featured Jason Baron, who was the Director of Litigation at NARA before he retired last year. And we decided before Mr. Baron left NARA we would record it and make it available on NARA's YouTube channel in the Learning Management System that we operate. So that is recorded content. If you need to reach general counsel staff in your agencies this is a great place to start to get an introduction for counsel staff with the proper background and context of records management. Another thing that we worked really hard on last year and that we're continuing to work on in FY14 is Capstone training, which relates to a bulletin that we released a couple of months ago I believe, and it was titled A New Approach to Managing e-Mail. And because of the newness of the approach we have developed some training sessions, some FAQs, related materials, and we have recorded some sessions that are available on the website and in the Learning Management System, and we also have some additional content in terms of Q&A sessions and lessons learned sessions that are coming up. In fact, we have one scheduled for February 4th, and a lot of that content will be recorded and made available in the YouTube channel and the Learning Management System. So please stay tuned for that. It's a very important policy piece on how to manage e-mails electronically. So looking ahead to FY14 and the work that we are doing this year for the remainder of this year, as I mentioned, we're going to continue working on converting the remaining knowledge area courses to online delivery. So we have completed the pilot for KA6 and captured some lessons learned, and now we're going to focus on knowledge areas 2 through 5, and try and get all of those converted into online delivery by the end of this fiscal year so that we can then offer them widely beginning in FY15, that is at least the goal. We are also updating the instructor led basic records operations course and offering it in the D.C. Metro area. This is something that we haven't done in the past year, and we've found that there is a lot of demand for training at the basic level, and we have found that there is an audience and demand for having that material in the Washington, D.C. College Park area. We have been offering it in field locations, but as we needed to focus on teaching the knowledge areas in the past we haven't had the instructors and resources to be able to do the knowledge areas and basic records operations. So we are finding some time to get it done this year, so if that's a need that your agency has please take a look at the schedule of the offerings that we have on our website and in the Learning Management System and please let people know. Another activity that we're focusing on in FY14 relates to ERA, which is the Electronic Records Archive, and this activity is to develop specific video FAQs that will help people who are using the Electronic Records Archive system for scheduling records and transferring records to NARA to have at their fingertips video help where and when they need it. These video FAQs are intended to be timely and cover the main points that we have learned are areas where people need the most assistance, so that's something we're working on this year that we hope we'll have rolled out toward the end of the fiscal year, beginning of next fiscal year. There are a couple other development activities that we are working on. One is something that we hear all the time, we do a lot of training and offer training for records liaisons, records management staff, but there's a gap that we have learned exists with records management awareness training for senior agency officials. So we are working this year to develop that kind of a briefing, and it's going to be brief, but it will focus likely on issues, like use of secondary e-mail accounts, alias accounts, protecting records from unauthorized disposal, and protection from removal from the agency, for example, when senior officials leave service. And it will cover a lot of the same issues that you would see in a basic records management course, but we expect to emphasize some of the more higher level issues that we find are common with senior officials. And the last thing I wanted to highlight is a vital records course that we would develop for online hosting, it would not be instructor led, it would be a module that would be available to agencies and staff who need it when they need it. So, for example, following a flood or a disaster or some other event where vital records becomes an issue for continuity of operation, we wanted to make sure that we had something as a pointer for agencies to have their staff look at and review so that the nature of their recovery and the steps they need to cover as they're going through their recoup processes. We don't want to -- we want to make sure that records management is not lost in the shuffle as agencies are working through those activities, so we felt the best way to do that was to have something readily available online that we could point to. So before we move into the next part of the presentation, where we will focus on the requirements for agency records officers, I wanted to pause here and ask Paulette to open up the lines to see if any of you have any general questions about what we are doing here at NARA in terms of training activities emphasis and any other general questions you might have about records management training and our program here? >> Paulette: Patsy says how critical is it that records officers attending trainings like this, how critical is it that records officers attend trainings like this one today? >> Laurence Brewer: Patsy, that's a good question. I do believe what we are talking about today is critical for agency records officers. A lot of the content that we're talking about today has been discussed and offered to agency records officers. I mentioned our bridge meetings that we hold every other month, our bimonthly records information discussion groups are targeted towards agency records officers, so we do try and cover all of the important things in those meetings, which are also recorded. And, of course, we communicate via e-mail and records management communications, and then we have our own blog on our public website, Records Express [assumed spelling], where we make sure that anyone really can go to the mainarchives.gov website and look at Records Express and see what is important from a day-to-day basis. So, yes, I assume you will probably think this information is important, I would agree, and what we try and do here at the National Archives is offer many ways where we can reach agency records officers and other records management staff with what we feel are the important things that agencies need to know about and implement within their agencies. >> Paulette: Okay, so Richard says I received my certificate in 2010, is that still valid and does it ever expire? >> Laurence Brewer: That's a good question, and I do have a slide at the end where we will talk about that, so I will answer your question in due time. >> Paulette: Todd says when you say agency who does that refer to? Are you talking at the level of, for example, the Department of Defense? >> Laurence Brewer: Yes, but also -- we would also include components when we refer to an agency. For records management within the Government we have the concept of record groups, where a records officer is assigned to each record group and has authority to sign record schedules and transfer records, and the record group is typically identified at the component level and up. So, for example, Department of Defense would be an agency, as would Navy and most of the components under that. So, and then the same for other agencies, for the Department of Agriculture, they would have their own record group and agency records officer, as would like Agricultural Marketing Service would have its own record group and 115 signatory. So the answer is we identify agencies very broadly, so we don't limit them at just the departmental level. >> Paulette: All right, we're good to go. >> Laurence Brewer: Okay, so let's continue on to the next slide. So we're going to focus on the training requirements for agency records officers as they are identified in OMB/NARA M-12-18, which is the OMB/NARA Managing Government Records Directive. And we're going to talk specifically about record requirement 2.3 of that directive. Let me give you a little bit of background on what this directive is. One of the things that NARA was working with the Administration on is raising the profile of records management. So before we issued this Managing Government Records Directive there was a Presidential Memorandum signed by President Obama that laid the foundation for records management across the Government. And NARA then took that authority and that memorandum and worked with the Office of Management and Budget to develop a directive which is M-12-18 that would apply across the Government with very specific goals and action items that all agencies would need to meet and report to NARA and OMB on. This directive was released on August 24th, 2012, and it's available, it's up on our website. And it has a number of requirements about maintaining records electronically, about managing e-mail electronically, about creating tools to improve search technologies, so that records can be found when they're stored digitally, but it also includes two requirements around records management training. So I would encourage you to go to the website and read OMB NARA Managing Government Records Directive, if you have not already read it. But today we're not going to talk about the whole directive, we're going to talk only about requirement 2.3, which is a specific requirement that applies to agency records officers. The language in the directive is on this slide, so there is a deadline for this requirement, as there are for the various other requirements that are in the directive. And it refers to the designated agency records officer for each agency and the requirement is that they would need to have our certificate of Federal records management training, which you obtain by completing knowledge areas 2 through 6 and passing the exams. We have said in the directive and in the memorandum that new records officers would need to possess the certificate within one year of assuming the position. So there's really two things that I wanted to emphasize here. The first is designated, which we'll talk about a little bit more, but an agency records officer is designated by the agency via letter to the National Archives. So when we talk about a designated agency records officer it is that person that we have, NARA has on file as the person who is authorized by the agency to sign record schedules, transfer records to NARA, and have the authority as delegated to that person by the agency head to oversee records management for the agency. The other thing that I wanted to highlight that we'll talk about in a little bit is that new records officers would have one year to meet the requirement, so what you have to keep in mind that is a records officer was appointed in, for example, November of this year, they would then have until November 2015 to comply with this requirement. I want to spend pretty much the balance of our time together talking about NARA Bulletin 2014-03, and the reason why is this is a bulletin that we released in early December that gets into the details of how NARA is implementing the Managing Government Records Directive 2.3 requirement that we just talked about. So in this document you will find details on the process for how agency records officers would comply with Requirement 2.3, and then there are a number of points of contact that you would need to know as you move through the process, if you're an agency records officer. So I've included the URL there, that you can click on and go right directly to the bulletin, and just wanted to give you one stat, as we go through the presentation and you keep in mind how this has been met to this point. As of earlier this month our Learning Management System, which keeps track of statistics of records officers who are in compliance, 26% of the designated agency records officers already have their certificate. So we're looking at trying to get the remaining three-quarters of agency records officers in compliance with the requirement, and because it is still quite a large number we'll talk in a minute about some of the processes that NARA has put in place to help agencies meet the requirement. So I want to talk first about the applicability of the 2.3 requirement in the directive. So it's generally the first question that people want to know, does this mean me, do I have to do anything? So, as I mentioned before, under the who does it cover, it is anyone who is a designated agency records officer. And the easy way to find out is we keep track on our public website of all the designated agency records officers. So if you want to know what all the agencies are that we would work with in the Federal Government you could go to this website and you would find a complete listing of every agency and every designated agency records officer. So in terms of scope this is the list that we are referring to, and these are the individuals that we are tracking in our Learning Management System as those who would need to comply with requirement 2.3. So hopefully that's clear on who the requirement does cover, and then I decided to put in some slides so you have an idea of who it does not cover. Obviously, anybody who has the certificate already does not need to meet the requirement because they are already in compliance. Another question that has come up is it does not apply to any records officers of the Judicial and Legislative Branches of the Government. So that would mean, for example, GAO would be out of scope for complying with the directive. And the reason for that is that the Presidential Memorandum and the Management Records Directive and 12-18 specifically applies to Executive Branch agencies, and it says that in the very first paragraph of the directive. We do, however, and I want to emphasize this point, that even though records officers and records management staff and Judicial and Legislative agencies are not required to comply NARA does encourage those agency records management staff and those agency records officers to follow the guidelines that we've outlined in the directive, and we would certainly encourage them to obtain their certificate, as well. The requirements of 2.3 also do not apply to any records officers who are appointed after December 31, 2014. So once we reach the deadline if you are not a designated records officer at that point and you're appointed anytime after January 1st, 2015 then the processes that we are going to talk about in the bulletin would not apply to you. So it's a little confusing and just want to make sure that this is clear, all agency records officers do need to comply with the 2.3 requirement, but what this point is saying is that the bulletin that we've previously talked about, 2-14-03, the processes that we have outlined in that bulletin go away after December 31st, 2014, so then it would be back to business as previously conducted, where agency records officers would need to take the courses that we have offered in the face-to-face environment and as we develop them online they will soon be available. The requirement 2.3 also does not apply to agency records liaison officers or other records management personnel who are not the designated agency records officer. So the reason why we do this is we were clear on what the responsibilities of an agency records officer in terms of responsibilities, but we were less clear on what records liaison officers are tasked with, and even less so for program staff, who may be wearing records management as a second hat. So we didn't want to require the certificate and the procedures that we've outlined in the directive and in the bulletin to those who aren't doing it as their primary job. Okay, I wanted to take a step back at this point and look at the process by which records managers would obtain the certificate of Federal records management before we release the bulletin and the managing government records directive. So we have, and we still have, knowledge areas 2 through 6, which comprise the certificate series, and the way it would work is you would go to a classroom. It was very face-to-face centric, and you would sit through all five of the courses and then take the exams, pass the exams, and then you would receive your certificate of Federal records management training. After December 2014 we will revert to this process, and we will hope that by that point in 2015, 2016 we will also be able to offer you an online offering for knowledge areas 2 through 6 so you won't have to actually go to a classroom. But either way, whether you're taking it in a classroom or online, past practice and post December of 2014 the practice will be you take the classes, complete the classes, complete the exams, and then you will receive the certificate. I've included a link here at the bottom of the slide, if you wanted some more background on the certificate process for Federal records management training, there's a lot more information and detail on our website at this URL. What I want to emphasize here on this slide, basically, is two points. First, we really believe that there is value in terms of the goals of the NARA certificate program for all records management staff to work towards achieving it, especially for fulltime records managers and I would think for any agency staff person who is doing records management more than 50% of their time. There is a lot that NARA can help and advise you on in building the skills needed to promote effectiveness and efficiency within your agencies. And you see some of the goals that are intended through the certificate program to help staff who want to put in the time and are able to commit to taking all of the courses. We also believe that there is real value in the classroom experience, and some of those, the bullets that I put at the bottom of the slide sort of highlight some of the value. We think it's a good chance to really engage with your colleagues and your peers to see what challenges other agencies are facing because more often than not they are the same challenges that you may be facing in your agency, and it gives you a chance to interact, not only with your instructors, but with other agency staff at different agencies and different records management levels to give you a very broad range of experience on the challenges and best practices in records management today. And I just wanted to emphasize, too, when I say instructor led courses I'm not necessarily talking about a face-to-face course where you would go to a NARA facility and take the knowledge areas, it would also apply to, for example, knowledge area 6, that we offered last year virtually, and as we continue to rollout the knowledge areas in online offerings you can still through the online offering interact with your colleagues, chat, go to bulletin boards, discussion boards, and get the same kind of experience. So really what I wanted to emphasize with this slide is that there certainly is value in content, but there is also value in the way that we learn this content. Keeping that in mind, we have a challenge in that there are 74% of agency records officers currently who do not hold the certificate of Federal records management training and need to do so by this December. So we realize that everyone is busy and they have a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure records are managed peripherally, in agencies. And what we wanted to do is help agencies meet the requirement and develop some processes to facilitate that. So what I'm going to talk about are some new approaches that are outlined in the NARA bullet 2014-03 that will help agency records managers to meet the requirement. And there are two concepts that I'm going to introduce here and talk about in much more detail in the following slides. The first is an exemption, and what I mean by the exemption is that if you meet certain criteria as an agency records officer you will be exempt and not required to obtain the certificate, but NARA approval is required before you are approved for an exemption. So we'll talk about exemptions first, and then the second concept that we will talk about are exceptions. The exception process is outlined in bulletin 2014-03 and through this process you would obtain the certificate of Federal records management training and NARA approval is not required for you to do so. So let's turn first to exemptions. So what we have done in the NARA bulletin that we referenced in a earlier slide is lay out a couple of criteria that if you are an agency records officer you can review, and if you meet these requirements then you can write to NARA requesting an exemption. So in this slide we just wanted to go over very quickly what these criteria are. There's the first, which is a combination of ICRM or CA certification, and that is the Institute of Certified Records Managers, so anyone who has a CRM. And then the CA is a certified archivist certification. So if you have either an ICRM or a CA and coupled with that you have three years' experience as the designated agency records officer then you can write to us for an exemption. The other track is if you do not have the professional certification, but you have served as the designated agency records officer for seven years then you also qualify for an exemption. So in order to obtain the exemption you would need to have your senior agency official for your agency submit a written request to the chief records officer of -- at NARA, who is Paul Wester [assumed spelling], and we will review it, and it needs to be submitted to NARA before December 1st of this year. And the reason why we have the December 1st date is based on the third bulletin on the slide is that NARA has requested we be given 30 days to review each request, so if we receive it on December 1st then we should be able to turn it around before the deadline at the end of the calendar year. We don't really need a whole lot for the exemption request. We just need to know a brief description of the experience, which of the relevant exemptions from the previous slide that makes the case for the individual, and then just enough additional information about what the person's experience and certification is for us to evaluate the request. So, for example, the one thing that we do not want are long letters, full resumes and any other background materials, it should be sufficient to write a brief letter, typically referencing the criteria in the bulletin and the experience and certification that supports the request. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that through the exemption process NARA will not provide the certificate of Federal records management training, so if, for example, an agency records officer qualifies for the exemption, but they really want to have the certificate of Federal records management training signed by the archivist then they would have to work through the next process we're going to talk about, which is the exception process. So looking at exceptions, if you do not qualify for the exemption because you don't have the experience or the certification, we have developed a straightforward process that's outlined in the NARA bulletin where we have set-up a separate dedicated section of our Learning Management System for agency records officers, and we have placed the electronic versions of all the course materials so that all the agency records officer would need to do is get access to this section of the LMS by contacting us via e-mail to let us know that you're interested in working through the exception process. And then we will grant you access where you could then review the materials, and then take the knowledge area exams 2 through 6 without attending the classes. The only constraints is that you will have two attempts to score higher than 75% on each of the individual examinations. So, for example, if you are unable to score higher than 75% on knowledge area 2 then you would be required to take the face-to-face class and then retake the exam. You wouldn't have to retake all of them, just those courses where you were unable to score 75% or higher. And, again, this is a straightforward process, it doesn't require prior approval, so we don't need to receive a letter from your SAO. You simply need to get in touch with us via e-mail and let us know that you're interested, and then you can work through the process, and assuming you complete all of the exams we will then send you the certificate of Federal records management training. So before I -- first of all, let me just say that that's basically the substance I wanted to talk about in terms of what's going on in training in NARA and the agency records officer training requirements, but before I open it up for the phones and your questions I have a couple of slides where I tried to anticipate some of the questions you might have because we've heard them before, they've come up at bridge meetings, and we've received a number of e-mails on these subjects. So let me go through these first and see if I can answer some of your questions you may have, and then we'll open it up to everyone on the line. So the first question is if you are approved for an exemption can you also get an exception and take the exams? So the answer is, yes, if you do qualify for an exemption and not required to do anything, but you do want to obtain the certificate then you would simply just need to let us know via e-mail that you want to work through the exception process and we will grant you access to the Learning Management System, you can pass the exams, and then we'll send you the certificate. The second question is what if I have been a records officer for 10 years but in multiple agencies? So if you go back to the criteria that we have established for exemptions, one of them is seven years' experience as a designated records officer. You do not need to serve as the designated records officer for one agency for all of those seven years, so if you were the designated records officer for PTA for three years and SEC for four years then you would qualify for the exemption. The question that we had earlier on how long is my exemption exception certificate of Federal records management training good for? And the answer is none of them expire. The certificate does not expire at this point. So if you already have it then you are in compliance with the 2.3 requirement, and there is no refresher or recertification at this point. The one thing I wanted to mention, though, is that this is something that is on our radar. We hope to take this up in FY15 in terms of developing a recertification course or a refresher course where we can reach out to individuals who have their certificate to offer them updated content and just really to make sure that those individuals who have received their certificate can remain current on new developments in records management. So that's something that we hope to work on next year, so please stay tuned. Why aren't other records management personnel afforded the exemption exception opportunity? As I mentioned before, the directive requirement 2.3 specifically focuses on the agency records officer, and the reason why we have limited that scope is because we know what the position description of an agency records officer is, we know what they need to do based on the requirements in the code of Federal regulations, and when you get outside of those requirements, when you start talking about records management personnel and agency program staff they're generally not doing it fulltime and it's less clear on what activities they are actually doing. So we wanted to be sure that we are testing against and certifying for those individuals whose primary work is that of an agency records officer. A common question that we have received is how much does it cost to obtain the certificate? And it's a good question. Our current rate if someone were to sit for the face-to-face knowledge areas 2 through 6 it will cost $1,350 to get through every one of the knowledge areas. And it's not -- I mean we think the cost is very reasonable, it's probably comparable to going to one conference, like AIM or ARMA, so we think our rates are competitive. But the question really has come from those who are interested in working through the exception process, reviewing the materials online, and taking the exams online. And what we have done is for the period where we are working with agency records officers and for the remainder of calendar year 2014 we are going to offer that section of the LMS and the content and the exams at no cost to agencies. So this is one of the things that we are hoping will help agency records officers meet the requirement. It would mean that you don't need to come to a facility or register for any of our knowledge areas, you could simply contact us, get access to the materials in the Learning Management System, take the exams, and assuming you score higher than 75% we would then mail you the certificate. And then the last frequently asked question I have is what are the deadlines for exemptions and exceptions? These deadlines are clearly outlined in NARA bulletin 2014-03. The exemption request, which constitute the letter from the agency, senior agency official to NARA, to Paul Wester, our Chief Records Officer, the deadline for that is December 1st of this year, so then we have 30 days to review. And then the exception request, where you would contact us for access to the LMS must be received by December 31st, 2014. We are keeping the content within the LMS open until January 2016 [assumed spelling] to account for the one-year rule, where if, for example, a records officer was designated on December 31st of 2014, they would then have one year from that date to come into compliance with requirement 2.3. So we do need to keep the section of the LMS and the exception process valid through December 2015 just to account for individuals who are designated at a very late stage. So, with that, let me just say thank you to all of you for attending. I hope the information was useful and clear. And, Paulette, if you could do so, please open up the lines and we'll start taking some questions. >> Paulette: Okay, all right, thank you so much, Laurence. All right, so what I will do is I'm going to go up to the questions that we had that were not answered, and we'll start there and then we'll work our way down. Okay, so, Mona, I believe we answered your question about whether or not the certification expires. And then, here, let's see, Veranda Curry [assumed spelling] says isn't the CFRM different from the CRM? >> Laurence Brewer: Yes, they are completely different. The certificate of records management training is our certificate that we offer here at NARA, and it is specifically focused on records management in the Federal Government. The CRM is a professional certification that is offered by the Institute of Certified Records Managers, which is a private nonprofit body, and it's not specific to the Federal Government, it also covers private sector records managers, as well, and it is a completely different certification. >> Paulette: So let's go to the next question, this one is from Patsy, how soon in 2015 do you anticipate to have the online KA courses 2 through 5 up and available? >> Laurence Brewer: That's a good question. I can't give you a precise timetable at this point. We have a lot to do this year in terms of development. Our goal is to get the development done by the end of this fiscal year and be able to start rolling them out in FY15, but we really need to see how things go this year in terms of the development activities, so I can't give you a firm timetable at this point. >> Paulette: Okay, Mona says until NARA develops a recertification program for new certificate holders what would you propose that a current non-expiring certificate holder do in order to stay current? >> Laurence Brewer: That's a good question, and we try and get as much information out to records managers on our website. So I mentioned a couple of sources earlier. I think a good first place to look is the records management blog that we have on the public website, called Records Express. We try and make sure that whenever we have important or significant releases of information and records management policy that they are available there on Records Express. And we also talked about NARA's YouTube channel, which I think is a great resource for newer content as we develop it. We generally try and capture through recorded briefings and other recorded content for meetings and packages also make it available on the YouTube channel, so I think that's also another great resource. And then there we have a very robust records management web page on archives.gov where you could find information, not only about NARA's training program but the other functional areas that fall within the Office of the Chief Records Officer, where information is being developed. There are great resources, also, on that web page for bridge meetings and materials that are presented at bridge meetings and recordings of the bridge meetings. I think the bridge meetings is another great resource if you're unable to attend to at least listen to after the fact because that is where we try and engage with Federal agencies and let them know about what is coming, what has been recently published, and some of the plans that we are trying to put in place to move things forward. So I think you focus there on what's available on our website and keep checking back with us, I think that's a great strategy. In addition, we have a lot of other courses outside of the knowledge areas that we offer and a lot of them can be taken virtually. >> Paulette: Okay, so it looks like we have some other questions. So Richard said I want my entire staff to get the NARA Federal records certificate, can the exception training be applied to them, as many of them are 15 years of -- have 15 years of Federal record experience? >> Laurence Brewer: Unfortunately, no. The scope and applicability of what we have put forward in NARA bulletin 2014-03 applies only to the designated agency records officer. I understand where you're coming from, and we would love to be able to say yes, but we have limited resources and bandwidth to accommodate everybody who wants to obtain the certificate via the exception process. So we need to make sure with just this calendar year left to work with that we can focus on the designated agency records officers and make sure that we cover them first. >> Paulette: And Patsy says what about discounting the cost of the KA? >> Laurence Brewer: Patsy, I'm not sure about the context of your question. I mean right now I mean I could tell you we feel like the courses that we offer are competitively priced. We don't have any plans to discount them. However, as I mentioned, for agency records officers who want to receive their certificate via the exception process we are not charging any fees for that. So that hopefully will encourage records officers to get their certificate this year, and then we will go back to business as usual, where we will offer the KAs for a fee beginning in calendar year 2015. >> Paulette: Okay. >> Laurence Brewer: Okay, it doesn't look like there are any more questions, so I just wanted to refer everyone to my last slide, you know, I have my contact information, I've got my e-mail address and my phone number there. I would just say if you have any further questions feel free to call me or e-mail me. We also have on that slide our records management training e-mail box, so if you have any general questions or you would like to request access to the LMS because you're a records officer and you want to go through the exception process that is the e-mail address that you should use. And I would generally encourage everyone to use our records management training mailbox because we have multiple people monitoring that mailbox so you're more likely to get a quick response. >> Paulette: It looks like we have one question from Nancy Riley, what is the certification requirement for designated records officers for Government contractors? >> Laurence Brewer: The requirement, Nancy, applies only to agency records officers on the Federal side, so hopefully I'm getting your question correct. So if you are a government contractor, for example, you work for Lockheed Martin and you're managing a records management program for an agency the requirement does not apply to you, it would only apply to the records officer for the Federal agency. >> Paulette: Would the training still be available to me, Nancy asks? >> Laurence Brewer: Okay, Nancy, I'm assuming that you're the contractor, correct? Yes, okay. The dedicated page of the website, where we have our course materials would not be available to you. Of course, you could still take the courses if it's offered in your region. We do offer the knowledge areas in a variety of locations across the country, in addition to College Park. So if you wanted to obtain your certificate I would simply review where the course is being offered, and then see if you could make it to a class. But, no, unfortunately, the section of the LMS is limited to just the Federal agency records officers and part of that is a resource issue and the other part of it is a reporting issue for us. >> Paulette: Okay, thank you so much, Laurence, for a wonderful presentation. And thank you to everyone who signed on today. We hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we look forward to seeing you on future online briefings, as well as maybe even face-to-face in one of our KA courses. Have a great day, everyone, and we'll see you next time. >> Thank you for joining us. We hope you found this seminar useful. For more information about the U.S. National Records Management Training Program please visit www.archives.gov. Also, our current workshop schedule for both face-to-face and web based training is available online at nara.learn.com.