The Information Professional

By Bryan Bender

David Ferriero - "The man entrusted with America’s documentary heritage - including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution"

"Ferriero now directs the National Archives in Washington, the first librarian to hold the post of official “collector in chief.’’ He not only oversees 12 billion pages and 40 million photographs that tell America’s story, he referees release of America’s oldest secrets, from the formula for invisible ink to battle plans for the Spanish-American War.

He favors openness, he says, but agencies cling to a maze of often-contradictory secrecy rules and a deep-seated culture to lock away even innocuous information. “While progress has been made,’’ Ferriero said, “we still have a huge problem.’’

Ferriero’s primary job is ensuring the 275 executive branch agencies retain the most important government records for posterity.

But he also oversees the National Declassification Center, created by President Obama by executive order in 2009. That makes him point man for an aggressive effort to try to release, by the end of next year, a backlog of an estimated 400 million records that are more than 25 years old."