IALOUISA-L Archives

From: "Keith/Connie Street" <>
Subject: Fw: Good news
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:35:47 -0500

>
> DOD will preserve veterans' personnel files
>
> By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
> Pacific edition, Wednesday, July 14, 2004
>
> ARLINGTON, Va. - U.S. government officials have decided to preserve the
> personnel files of every military member since 1885, and to allow public
> access to such records 62 years after official discharge or separation.
> An agreement designating these files as "permanent records" was signed
> Thursday by Archivist of the United States John Carlin and David Chu,
> undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
>
> The National Archives and Records Administration will maintain the
records
> "forever," according to Greg Pomicter, assistant for operations in the
> NARA's Office of Regional Records Services.
>
> Protecting personnel files is crucial because they contain the legal
> documents veterans and their families need in order to claim
entitlements
> that may have accrued from military service, Pomicter said in a Monday
> telephone interview from NARA's Suitland, Md., headquarters.
>
> Before the agreement was signed, the U.S. government would release only
> basic information, such as the dates of service. Only the member
himself,
> if
> alive, or next-of-kin, if the member was dead, had access to the entire
> file, Pomicter said.
>
> Under the new policy, the public will have access to records 62 years
> after a servicemember's official discharge or separation - "a wealth of
> information" that will appeal to a variety of individuals, Pomicter
said.
>
> After a six-month survey of records requests, archivists found that the
> nature of requests moved from administrative to historical between 56
> years
> and 62 years after the servicemember's separation, and went with the
> higher
> number to be safe.
>
> People searching for genealogical data will find that the records "give
> you a tremendous amount of family history," Pomicter said.
>
> Personnel files contain medical information, performance reports and
> disciplinary actions, as well as birth, marriage and death records, and
> adoption records and visas for family history purposes.
>
> Academics and other researchers, meanwhile, will be able to use the
> records to reconstruct all sorts of information, such as the demographic
> composition of a specific military unit and how it has changed over
time,
> Pomicter said.
>
> But if a servicemember is still alive after 62 years, the Privacy Act of
> 1974 allows NAR officials to "redact," or black out, certain
information,
> such as Social Security numbers, Pomicter said.
>
> "If we have any indication that person is alive, we'll be very careful
> what's released ... to ensure that there's no unwarranted invasion of a
> person's privacy," Pomicter said.
>
> It will take at least a decade for government archivists to transfer all
> 56 million eligible records to the public domain, however.
>
> That's because before 1960, DOD did not necessarily file its personnel
> records by date of discharge, requiring archivists to sort through the
> jackets one-by-one to discern whether they meet the 62-year age
> requirement,
> Pomicter said.
>
> The first major block of files - nearly 1 million personnel records for
> sailors and Marines that date back to World War I - will be released
this
> fall, Pomicter said.
>
> To learn how to search records maintained by the National Archives and
> Records Administration including records that have been archived
> electronically, go to: www.archives.gov.
>
> ______________________________
>
>
>
>

This thread:

• Fw: Good news by "Keith/Connie Street" <>