People or Place? Exploring the Influence of Communities of practice and Institutional Knowledge on National Archives and Records Administration Mission Performance
Presentation (Faculty180)
As public demand for increased administrative transparency and accountability grows, so too does the need for new mechanisms and initiatives designed to meet those demands. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plays a pivotal role in ensuring preservation of administrative actions and communications towards public access and open government. An independent federal agency established in 1934, NARA has been tasked with identifying, protecting, preserving, and processing public requests for historically valuable records from all three branches composing the United States federal government .
Moving to facilitate and streamline open government initiatives, NARA established an ambitious plan to digitalize all physical holdings and records into a seamless, publicly accessible platform by 2022. Since 2014, NARA has not only met, but has exceeded established benchmarks for improving the rate of holdings processed, agency leadership development, and public satisfaction metrics . Impressively, the agency has been able to effectively establish and exceed established goals within this plan despite a steadily decreasing number of agency employees. The progress of NARA towards a comprehensive shift in organizational effectiveness and efficiency coinciding with declining human capital provides an opportunity to examine how varying levels of agency personnel relate to the effectiveness of established strategic goals.
This research seeks to explore trends concerning personnel dynamics within the National Archives and Records Administration as they relate to fulfilling strategic performance goals. Harnessing existing data from the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) FedScope Federal Workforce Data system and Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FedView), the research examines personnel trends suggesting correlations and underlying relationships with achieving organizational goals. Uncovering potential relationships between personnel factors and agency strategic goal attainment provides a platform for additional scholarship examining the influence of institutional knowledge and communities of practice networks supplementing demographic trends shaping organizational performance and composition.
