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Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan
Commitment Tracker

Commitment:

Expand Online Access to the National Archives

Full Commitment Text OGP Commitment Page

Progress for this commitment is tracked based on the following sub-commitment(s). You can also view the full text of this commitment.

US0118.1	The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) commits to improving the Catalog over the next two years by launching a new site with improved search experience and a new optical character recognition tool and by enhancing the Catalog with expanded user contribution types.
Agency & Subagency	National Archives and Records Administration
Sub-Commitment Status	In Progress
February 2024 Progress	Progress Update: The new Catalog and the new optical character recognition tool launched in Beta in September 2022 and in production in November 2022.The Catalog launched new improved logging and web analytics measurement features for improved insights into Catalog user behavior. A new Catalog customer experience survey launched in December 2023 to inform user experience enhancements under development. The Catalog survey is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NARAnewcatfb The new Archivist of The United States, Colleen Shogan, has expressed her strong interest in digital public engagement and specifically the user experience with NARA’s online Catalog. She established an interoffice executive working group and charged them with 6 month improvement windows to ensure that NARA makes strides to substantially impact the user experience for the better. Our first 6 month sprint concludes in June 2024. Initial plans include user experience research, pilot projects that explore the use of artificial intelligence for improving digital access, and digital collaboration projects. Evidence: New Catalog - https://catalog.archives.gov Catalog survey is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NARAnewcatfb
August 2023 Progress	The new Catalog and the new optical character recognition tool launched in Beta in September 2022 and in production in November 2022. Additional user experience enhancements are under development.

US0118.2	In addition, NARA commits to using shared Federal web design standards and a human-centered design approach to update its flagship website, archives.gov, over the next two years.
Agency & Subagency	National Archives and Records Administration
Sub-Commitment Status	Not Started
February 2024 Progress	Progress Update: Funding has been requested to support a full redesign of the Archives.gov website. At this time, funding for the project is still pending approval. The planned modernization of Archives.gov will include upgrading the website’s content management system to the latest version (i.e. Drupal 10), and redesigning the layout of the website (including the homepage and all interior pages) to meet modern web design, user experience, and information architecture best practices. The project will leverage agile and user centered design methodologies, whereby the design direction and functionality of the website will be significantly influenced by the continuous feedback of key internal and external stakeholders. Methods such as benchmarking, user research, user interviews, focus groups, and product demos will be used to gather feedback throughout the project lifecycle, in order to ensure that the end result meets the needs of website users and other key project stakeholders. Evidence: None
August 2023 Progress	Funding has been requested for FY24 to support a full redesign of the website.

US0118.3	Last, NARA commits to engaging with underserved communities and working with community points of contact to identify and prioritize records in NARA’s holdings that are important and impactful to those communities.This effort, organized over the next two to four years, will result in meeting with community points of contact, identifying pertinent records, and prioritizing records for processing, description, digitization, bulk download, transcription, or potentially other collaborative projects.
Agency & Subagency	National Archives and Records Administration
Sub-Commitment Status	In Progress
February 2024 Progress	Progress Update: Since July, 2021, NARA has chartered a Reparative Description and Digitization Working Group (RDDWG), composed of representative individuals from across the agency. In addition to its emphasis on supporting and enhancing NARA’s long standing archival descriptive program and best practices, the RDDWG was tasked with additional primary functions. Most significantly, those functions included working to establish ongoing relationships with external community representatives, in cooperation with the NARA Equity Team. They also included identifying records that are of highest interest to underserved communities for reparative and enhanced description, digitization, and community engagement. The RDDWG has developed an engagement model to identify and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. During FY 22 and FY 23, the group engaged in stakeholder meetings with representatives of the African American and Puerto Rican communities, and have since built project plans and descriptive goals utilizing input gathered. To date, the RDDWG has collaborated with offices at NARA to accomplish the following: Archival Description: Created Guiding Principles for Reparative Description Created Appendix to NARA’s Lifecycle Data Requirements Guide for Preferred and non-preferred terms Created processes and training materials for NARA staff based on approved terms for reparative description, to be incorporated into NARA’s archival description program Published preferred term updates based on feedback from African American and Puerto Rican community stakeholders In its first year of pilot operations, NARA reviewed approximately 9,000 catalog descriptions, which contributed to achieving NARA Strategic Goal 1.3 Stakeholder Engagement: Digitization Identified high priority records for digitization based on internal and external stakeholder engagement Created three digitization proposals for holdings from NARA’s Office of Research Services relating to the African American (14,000 digital objects in RG 228 Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1940–1946 and RG 105 Records of Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1861-1880 digitization work in progress) and Puerto Rican communities (work continues into FY 24) Stakeholder Engagement: Community Driven Missions Monitored work on existing missions utilizing NARA’s pre-existing ‘Citizen Archivist’ program: Record Group 94: Carded Records Showing Military Service of Soldiers Who Fought in Volunteer Organizations During the American Civil War, 1890 - 1912, a subset of records labeled as “United States Colored Troops (USCT),” documenting the military service of Black Union soldiers Tagging and Transcription of Chinese Heritage Records Established new project/mission through University of Puerto Rico stakeholder collaborative efforts: Record Group 29 1935 Agricultural Census of Puerto Rico records enhanced description project. Bulk downloads of these records are available on Archives.gov Evidence: Archival Description: Guiding Principles for Reparative Description Appendix to NARA’s Lifecycle Data Requirements Guide for Preferred and non-preferred terms Preferred term NARA Strategic Goal 1.3 Stakeholder Engagement: Digitization 14,000 digital objects in RG 228 Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1940–1946 RG 105 Records of Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1861-1880 Stakeholder Engagement: Community Driven Missions Record Group 94: Carded Records Showing Military Service of Soldiers Who Fought in Volunteer Organizations During the American Civil War, 1890 - 1912 Subset of records labeled as “United States Colored Troops (USCT),” Record Group 29 1935 Agricultural Census of Puerto Rico records enhanced description project
August 2023 Progress	NARA reached out and engaged with internal and external stakeholders in the African American and Puerto Rican communities and established effective channels of communication to get their feedback on NARA services related to the description of holdings, digitization, and collaborative projects. NARA used that feedback to develop digitization and collaboration projects to enhance content and services.