1. Joel Westphal

2.  The USF-I Records Collection comprised of
many firsts which required thinking outside
the box
 First time in military history that the majority of
records created were digital (95%+)
 Largest single transfer of electronic data from a war
zone during an ongoing military operation
 Largest single collection of electronic war records in
history (so far, Afghanistan will dwarf OIF in total
size)

3.  Only a small percentage of Gulf War Records
ever made it to the National Archives
 The change in the Operational Command
Structure of the U.S. military had the effect of
rendering records management to an
unimportant endeavor
 The post-war investigation into the issue
reported that many units actively burned their
entire collection of operational records rather
than be bothered to haul them back to their
home stations

4.  As early as 2006 USCENTCOM was working
on preservation projects designed to capture
out going USCENTCOM Commanders records
 These two projects resulted in what is called
the Abizaid/Franks record collection
 These 2 collections contains nearly 200,000 high
level operational records from the early days of
Operation ENDURING FREEDOM and
Operation IRAQI FREEDOM
 This entire dual collection was pre-accessioned
to NARA in 2011 as additional preservation
precaution

5.  NARA formed War Records Group, April 2009
 Joint Staff visits USCENTCOM, June 2009
 Informs USCENTCOM of War Records Group creation
 Begins asking how much data has been transferred to
USCENTCOM
 Records Policy stated that records be transferred back
to USCENTCOM as a recommended, not a required
procedure
 USCENTCOM at the time had limited authority to
demand that records actually be transferred before
mission end
 All efforts in the later part of 2009 was to get USF-I to
implement a fully functional RM program consisting of
training staff, highlighting the importance of records
preservation and working with USCENTCOM on a
future transfer

6.  Coordination with CENTCOM began in late Fall 2009
 5 day assessment conducted in April 2010 revealed the
following
 Most data was unstructured, had little or no metadata and lay
un-managed
 No RM draw-down plan in place
 Volume, location and size of USF-I collection unknown
 Not everything about the assessment findings was
accurate since the draft report released to the press was
never staffed out for comment
 The success in the assessment was the elevation of the
problem with those in theater and it was this that
paved the way to enhanced cooperation and
coordination between USCENTCOM and USF-I J6
information and records management staffs at a very
crucial time

7.  The Records Inventory was in the planning
stages while the assessment was underway
 Mission was fact-finding
 How much data is there
 What data is there
 Were their gaps of records
 Was the data organized
 Results of the Inventory
 More than 50 TB located representing records as far
back as early 2004
 Little organization below main folders

8.  June 2010
 RM requested a technical transfer team be assembled
by the technology team
 MAJ Hart assigned
 July 2010
 Begin procurement of 80 TB SAN
 Begin working on requirements for contractors who
will work on the collection
 August 2010
 Drafted Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
 Begin to arrange processing team

9.  On August 31, President Obama declared the
combat mission in Iraq was at an end and that
Contingency Operation NEW DAWN would
replace it the following day
 The result of this declaration resulted in an
cutoff of unprecedented scale
 All records created by USF-I under this Contingency
Operation immediately became the property of
USCENTCOM
 Transfer team left for Iraq on 1 SEP to retrieve all
data held at numerous HQs in the Baghdad region

10.  Sept 2010
 MAJ Hart departs for Iraq
 Oct 2010
 Work is completed
 SAN is moved to Kuwait
 Nov 2010
 SAN departs Kuwait for CONUS (Continental
United States)
 SAN arrives in CONUS
 Work begins on hooking up SAN to CENTCOM IT
infrastructure

12.  SAN hooked up to network in DEC 2010
 Backup solution sought
 2 Backups created
 1 for USCENTCOM
 1 for NARA
 Focus on training processing staff
 Working with NARA on pre-accessioning
agreement and MOU

13.  Tampa is a Hurricane zone
 Even a Cat 1 Hurricane would place a large portion
of MacDill AFB under water
 Decision was made to transfer an exact copy of
original un-weeded and un-organized record
content for preservation in the event of a
mission/natural disaster
 Records would be sent to NARA as part of a
pre-accession agreement once the identified
records sets were completed (several of these
sets have already been sent to NARA as
additional protection)

14.  Limited Staff
 40-50 million records
 Millions of emails
 Massive amount of transitory and non-record
material
 Poor organization within the primary folders
 Little Records Management Foundation
inherent in the collection (Share Drives were a
mess)
 Large amount of redundancy
 Large amount of PII

15. From CONOPS:
OIF Taxonomy: The initial OIF Taxonomy design will be
created prior to the records being made available on the
network. The design will establish base criteria for
ensuring that the original order of the records is preserved
to the greatest extent possible. The information
taxonomy shall be created using new Record Types whose
use shall be restricted to the OIF Document Collection.
The creation of specific meta types for this collection is
required to ensure the separation of the three differing
records collections within TRIM (Abizaid/Franks,
USCENTCOM RM, OIF). This new taxonomy will ensure
that once records are transferred to NARA as part of the
pre-accession, a more accurate metadata picture will be
provided for all the records.

16.  After a meeting with NARA following the
April 2011 Joint Staff Records Conference in
Tampa, a decision was arrived at how to
handle the massive amount of emails within
the collection by both NARA and
USCENTCOM.
 GO/FOs were declared Permanent
 O6s and below for 10 years
 This hierarchical system is now being adapted
for use for the entire Federal Government via
the NARA Capstone project

17.  Total Records and Information Management
 Selected by USCENTCOM in 2006 as the commands
Electronic Records Management Solution
 Provides capability to instantly retrieve record
material
 Material can be organized in a variety of ways
 Records collections can be segregated
 Ensures records are marked as FINAL so they
cannot be altered
 Has exporting tool so records along with
metadata can be transferred to another location
(NARA)

18.  It’s all a question of ROT (Redundant, Obsolete, Transitory)
 Assists in organizing unstructured content
 Things we can clean up quickly without a more detailed analysis
 0 byte files
 Unknown file extensions
 Obvious policy violations
 Executable(s) in data-only directories
 Personal files: vacation photos, music, mp3s
 Unused files
 Temporary or redundant folders
 Have not been accessed/modified in X number of years
 Policy based on records management standards
 PII Finding capabilities
 In less than a week Active Navigation cleaned 177,282 files on the
F, I and M Drives on the OIF SAN totaling over 1.18 TB worth of
useless data.

20.  Non-existent
 While others in the DoD Community are
currently under congressional inquiries for lost
records, not one DoD civilian or other
contributor to this mission has ever received a
word of acknowledgement from anyone higher
than an O6
 Records Management does not function
without leadership and this includes
supporting and awarding those “Admin” staff
who keep them out of congressional hearings