National Archives Seeks Feedback on Draft Strategic Plan
Press Release · Friday, July 30, 2021

Washington, DC

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has posted its new draft Strategic Plan (​https://www.archives.gov/about/plans-reports/strategic-plan/draft-strategic-plan) and invites feedback from staff, public and government customers, stakeholders, and colleagues in the archival, historical, and records management communities.

The draft plan reaffirms our current Mission, Vision, Values, Transformational Outcomes, and Strategic Goals (see Strategic Plan (FY 2018–FY 2022). The draft plan updates the agency’s strategic objectives to focus agency resources on improving equity, providing a world-class customer experience for all customers, and using our experiences during the pandemic to accelerate agency modernization. 

NARA’s draft Strategic Plan commits to new outreach to traditionally underserved communities and to work with these communities to identify the NARA records that are most important to them. Once identified, NARA will prioritize those records for archival processing, description, digitization, and online access. NARA is at the beginning of a process to build new relationships with underserved communities, and this draft plan reflects the agency’s intent to maintain and foster those relationships over time. 

The draft Strategic Plan revitalizes NARA’s customer service activities by addressing the entire customer experience. NARA has proposed agency-wide objectives to better understand customer needs and expectations and modernize services and communications channels. These objectives will drive cross-agency activities to provide a unified, responsive experience for customers across all NARA services lines. 

The draft Strategic Plan challenges NARA programs and agency records management functions to continue modernization activities that were started during the COVID-19 pandemic. NARA recognizes that making more of its work processes electronic and online will allow the agency to fulfill more of its mission remotely, making the agency more resilient over time. NARA also commits to modernize its records management policies to keep pace with changes in how federal agencies create and manage a new generation of electronic records. 

All federal agencies must issue a new Strategic Plan every four years. This draft plan was shared with National Archives employees on July 28. The National Archives is now sharing the plan with stakeholders and the public for comment.

Options for viewing the draft Strategic Plan and submitting feedback include:

• Archives.gov at http://archives.gov/about/plans-reports/strategic-plan/draft-strategic-plan; submit comments by email to strategy@nara.gov.
• GitHub at ​https://usnationalarchives.github.io/strategic-plan.

Feedback will be collected and considered, and the draft plan will be revised and then shared with the Office of Management and Budget by September 13. The final Strategic Plan will be published in February 2022 and will become the agency’s official plan for fiscal years 2022 through 2026.