Live and Archived Webcasting of all Open Advisory Meetings 

The National Archives should promote transparency at all levels by starting out in the advisory stages. Utilize webcasting technologies to provide a live broadcast over the internet and an archived recording that's searchable by topics of discussion. The public is truly interested in the topics of discussions that shape our country, and when we can hear about it in the early stages, it gives us more reason to stand behind the decisions once they are made. I understand that some conversations are sensitive and should be treated as such, but if the meeting is deemed as an open meeting, make it as accessible to those that can't attend because of any number of reasons as it is to those that can attend live. By making it searchable, THAT is the key to this new dataset being truly useful.

Develop an OpenNARA Social Strategy 

Disruptive Technologies: A Holistic, Pragmatic Approach

New technologies are emerging at a faster pace than Agencies can swallow. The rate of obsolescence outpaces the pace of change.

Despite the new technology flood, Agencies lack a strategy to on-board these disruptions. As a result, they often react, flounder, or simply ignore them.

We can solve these problems in four major areas of practice:

Leadership and Management: How must leaders change with new technologies? How will this transform Agencies from the inside out?

Customer Strategy: How is the public behaving differently online? How can I reach them where they are?

Enterprise Strategy: Internal systems are connecting with external - How will I keep up with the dizzying pace? Employees are adopting collaboration and social tools without my control - How should I manage?

Innovation and Design: Experimenting on the general public is a bad idea, so how can I learn in a safe place? What vendors and providers should I lean on?

Here is a great slideshare webinar to get you started:
http://www.slideshare.net/charleneli/developing-a-social-strategy-webinar

Release UFO Files to the public like 15 other countries 

France, Brazil, Britian, Russia, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, and several other major world entities, have began to release their official reports on Unidentified Flying Objects. They are continuing to release ongoing declassified documents.

Why has America been more secret than Russia?

In a free and open society, what about a weather balloon in 1947 could be so secret that it must remain classified even today? Ask yourself if there is nothing to UFOs then why is there hundreds of thousands of files marked so secret that another country can open their books, but America can't. The facts show in other countries massive archive of UFO files that governments do show heavy interest in what radar, astronauts, and credible witnesses are seeing.

Go to this link http://www.keyholepublishing.com/Leading-UFO-Documents.html and read just a sample of a few official FOIA documents for yourself before you make a hard decision on wether the government has a deep interest. What is being hidden from the people? This is not a conspiracy folks its a reality.

Metadata compliance across gov institutions 

A wealth of historic resources that range from art collections (the Smithsonian/NGA), primary source manuscript materials (NARA/Libraries), and archival documents and objects across all government agencies and institutions should comply to the same metadata conventions to ease discovery, collaboration, and resource sharing across the federal government. This will provide the public with a greater understanding of the historical record, while providing an electronic database that breaks down institutional barriers while promoting a larger contextual record of material held in government agencies.

Make the Archives Accountable to the Government and People 

We need to see a real commitment, not just rhetoric, about open access to records. We have had one scandal after another -- PROFS, the 1992 mismanagement report, the Sandy Berger sock incident, the reclassification debacle, and the Anthony Clark mess -- with little acknowledgment of internal problems or any evidence of staff involved being disciplined. We have a new Archivist of the US, and I hope he displays more outspoken leadership about these and other issues concerning access to federal records and accountability as a genuine issue of federal records management.

User-group meetings 

The NARAtions blog announces: "Continuing the tradition of our Archives I Users Group, we will be holding monthly meetings with researchers to keep you informed of what is happening at Archives I and II. " Please post full minutes of those meetings on the NARAtions blog so all researchers will be aware of what is going on.
Thank you.

Allow users to browse and rank priorities in "backlog"  

I propose that NARA provide a way for the public to browse descriptions of all the unprocessed materials not yet described in ARC (aka “the backlog”) and allow the public to vote or rank on which materials they would like to see processed the most quickly. I would not expect that this kind of user feedback would be the only means for NARA to prioritize processing, but it would allow people to express interest.

Allow users to subscribe to new accessions  

I propose that NARA create a system which makes public the new accessions it receives (including the descriptive information provided on the SF-258), allowing users to subscribe to new updates via RSS and other means.

Provide online access to proposed records schedules  

The process for publishing proposed records schedules and receiving public feedback is need of an overhaul. Federal law requires NARA to “publish notice in the Federal Register of schedules proposing (a) the disposal of unscheduled series or (b) a reduction in the retention period of a series already approved for disposal. These notices provide the public with the opportunity to request copies of pending schedules from NARA and provide comments.” Note that the records schedule itself is not published in the Federal Register, only a notice of the schedule. Interested citizens must contact NARA and request a copy of the schedule. While this is certainly not an insurmountable barrier, given the ease with which information can now be made available to the public, wouldn’t it seem more logical to post proposed schedules on NARA’s web site and point to them from the Federal Register notice? This would also allow NARA to create an RSS feed so that interested citizens could notified when new schedules were posted. This appears to me to be a relatively simple way of increasing transparency, not only for NARA but for all government agencies. It’s possible NARA could also engage in a public dialogue with citizens about the comments received on proposed schedules. That idea may be more problematic, but it’s worth considering in the context of increasing opportunities to “improve collaboration.”

Crowdsourcing and the Online Catalog 

Encourage the public to tag and annotate descriptions and digital copies in the online catalog (ARC) as a way to improve keyword searching and the accessibility of descriptions in the catalog. NARA could also import tags and notes added on NARA photos on Flickr to enhance the ARC descriptions.

better search function 

I would suggest using the Google search engine to replace the current search function which seems, in my experience, to operate only on the basis of key words and not the relations between them.

pitcrew79 No one can vote for flagship initiative 

The empire state building was built and opened in one year, renting a building to display the information about the Presidents preceding George Washington can be done much sooner.

Why are you allowing only one idea the ability to be voted on when there are two ideas listed?

Please look into this.

High Value Data Set for Data.gov - Agency Public Web Sites/Apps 

NASA has hundreds and perhaps thousands of public-facing websites, both on and off of our .gov networks that we maintain to a greater and lesser degree, many of which are registered in a system called "STRAW": System for Tracking and Registering Applications and Web sites. I suspect that other Agencies have a similar database.

I propose that we make the data set from each of the Federal Agencies available via data.gov. It would be extemely interesting to see what the greater web dev community would/could do with all of these mismatched sites...new apps, new gadgets and widgets, new views into the data, reports on the redundancy of information, new models for categorizing the data, etc.

Note: the release of this data set should be coordinated with each Agency's Public Affairs.

In order to make this a well-publicized release with clearly measurable metrics and useful end results, each Agency should concurrently sponsor an Apps for Air, Apps for Space, Apps for Earth, Apps for Humanity, Apps for Life contest per the guidelines below:

http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/guide-to-creating-your-own-apps-for-democracy/

Improving Archives.gov 

Archives.gov needs to be simplified. The present format overwhelms visitors with a superabundance of links, navigations, and icons, which make it difficult for the public and NARA employees alike to navigate the site. Rather than burying the user in options and trying to provide a link for every imaginable constituency, the main archives webpage and those of NARA divisions ought to be basic and straightforward. Exhaustive details and online search tools are better suited to supplementary pages. Main pages ought to take the format of the “Archives.gov For…” navigation, in which users identify their reason for visiting the site and are guided to the pertinent information and nothing superfluous (an office records manager does not need to be provided with a link to the Declaration of Independence, for instance). An overhaul of the website would go a long way in improving the public and the Government’s accessibility to NARA services.

Open all documents to public view after five years. 

Open all documents to public view after five years. We the People have the absolute right to read what our government has been doing in our name.

Jeopardy for the Masses 

Make a variety of Jeopardy style questions and categories for all ages based on archives and how to use them.

Reward with guided tours of DC for winners or scholorships or internships.

Presidents Before Washington 

Make a Presidential Library for those who preceeded George Washington as President of the Federation before the Constitution was radified. How about Norwich Connecticut where Samuel Huntington was from. He was the first.

increase digitzation to encourage use of Archives 

I think that more records/documents should be made available to view online (digitized) in general, especially documents/service records that could be used for the purposes of genealogy and other family history research which is very popular right now - currently you have to pay places like Ancestry.com to view records and do research about personal family histories and if the Archives could offer these sources, as well as more digitized sources of all kinds, it would encourage public use and involvement

Bittorrent 

Please use the open standard protocol Bittorrent to distribute federal government datasets.

Open Standard formats and protocols for distribution 

Please use *open standard* formats and protocols to encode and distribute released data. Allow independent software writers to access and use the data you release without paying licenses or fees for the technology or tools they need.

Examples: Audio and Video in ogg theora containers, Documents and spreadsheets in open document format(ODF) (OpenDocument), microformats for people and events, and distribution using Bittorrent peer-to-peer protocol.

What Do They Know 

The National Archives and Records Administration should download, install, and then run an instance of What Do They Know (WhatDoTheyKnow.Com), software that is used to collect FOIA requests and send them to the appropriate agency and then collect FOIA responses and not only send them to the requester but make them available for everybody to use.

The software is totally open source and was developed by My Society, the well-respected UK charity known for innovative open government platforms. There are volunteers available who could help NARA configure and run the software and hardware and hosting could also be donated by the community to the NARA foundation. In other words, WhatDoTheyKnow could be installed with no undue impact on NARA Information Technology staff or budgets.

Identifying collections for digitization 

All information collections being considered for digitization should be listed in NARA's open government plan for discussion and prioritization. This would also provide potential not for profit digitizers to identify themselves to NARA.

FOIA and backlog suggestion 

I think you need to build up a volunteer corps of retired people like me (I live too far away) who are former journalists, educators, etc., who can volunteer to help with FOIA requests (the forms for FOIA requests are NOT confidential) and backlog. Volunteers like myself could spend one day a week or a morning or afternoon or whatever is convenient to the volunteer and have their own "pile" of FOIA requests and could then sort them and prioritize them and get them to the right staff people.

Please Provide Film Access to NARA's Regional Centers 

I live on the West Coast and it's difficult to get to Washington D.C., especially when all I need to see is one or two NARA films. I wish the films held in NARA's Washington D.C. facility could be loaned out to the regional facilities, so researchers could access them closer to home. This would significantly improve access for those of us who are located at a long distance from Washington.

If you are interested, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City provides a similar service, where in exchange for a small fee, I can order a film to be sent to the local Family History Center, where I have a few weeks to view it before it will be returned to Salt Lake.

Please Make Federal Land Records Available Online 

I would like to see the complete federal land records (Record Group 49) published online. The Bureau of Land Management has some patents available online, but the wealth of information contained in the patent files other than the patents is missing, as are the relinquishment files.