ML20212B588
| ML20212B588 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 09/07/1999 |
| From: | Reiter S NRC OFFICE OF THE CONTROLLER |
| To: | Diaz N, Dicus G, Mcgaffigan E, Merrifield J, The Chairman NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| References | |
| SECY-99-070-C, NUDOCS 9909200150 | |
| Download: ML20212B588 (4) | |
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g UNITED STATES
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j NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION o
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20555 0001 k %.
September 7, 1999 COMSECY-99-031
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RELEASEDTOTHE PDR i
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MEMORANDUM TO:
Chairman Dicus o
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Commissioner Diaz
,,,,,,,,,,... u,,, u n g g e Commissioner McGaffigan Commissioner Merrifiel
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FROM:
Stuart Reiter.
i Acting ChiefI o tio Officer
SUBJECT:
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING STAFF REQUIREMENTS - SECY-99-070 - IMPLEMENTATION PLAN FOR THE PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS INITIATIVE (DSI-14) l l
The Staff Requirements Memorandum (SRM), SECY-99-070, directs the staff to continue to j
" provide paper copies (of publicly available documents] to the Public Document Room (PDR) until six months after we have demonstrated the e'fectiveness of ADAMS at the point of public interface for access to agency documents."
We have now had the opportunity to determine the cost of implementing the subject SRM and to further analyze risk. We are proposing an altemative approach to the Cnmmission, which we believe will satisfy the Commission's concerns with regard to the public's transition to ADAMS in a more cost effective and risk adverse way.
Transitionina the Public to ADAMS Current plans have been to discontinue our current processing systems (NUDOCS, BRS) on October 1 and transition to ADAMS. To provide a trial period for public use of ADAMS, we plan to continue operations of our current systems through the end of October. With this approach, we will enter a sample of new documents in electronic form (both the full text and the image) on the ADAMS public Web site and provide the public with access to the index of these and many of the legacy documents. At the same time, we will continue with the current document processing approach using NUDOCS, the PDR's Bibliographic Retrieval System (BRS), paper to the PDR, and microfiche to the PDR and LPDRs.
Why Not Extend the Use of the Current Environment Beyond October?
After October 29, ADAMS will replace our current systems as the index, search, and retrieval f
system for NRC's public documents.
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- CONTACT:
Lynn Scattolini, OClO 415-8729 9909200150 990907 Cd
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l The Commission '
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' October 29 is the latest date we can continue current operations and not impact agency plans to f
move the document processing contractor on-site (resulting in monthly savings of $25K).
j Further, as our current system is not Y2K compliant, operations beyond October would be problematic.
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. Servicina the Public in the ADAMS Environment - Providina P=aar DMements
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After ADAMS is fully implemented for public use, PDR users who are proficient with computer technology will have greatly enhanced access to NRC documents and ara expected to quickly adapt to the use of ADAMS.-
PDR users who are less proficient or who are only occasional users will rely on the PDR librarians, just as they do today. Off-site users will continue to obtain assistance from PDR ^
. reference librarians by e-mailing, faxing, or mailing a request, or by phoning the PDR's 800 or 202 number. PDR reference librarians will then conduct a search of a computer system (now ADAMS instead of BRS) to idcr.t,fy requested documents and place an order for a copy of those documents (either paper or electronic) with the PDR's reproduction contractor.
1 The only difference in the ADAMS environment is that the small percentage of users who actually visit the PDR will perform their initial scan of the documents of interest on the computer screen without having to locate the documents in the stacks and, if they are only available on microfiche (as they are in the LPDRs), view them on a microfiche reader.
3 In any case, in the ADAMS environment any member of the public, either on-site or off-site, regular or occasional, will be able to easily order and obtain a paper copy of any NRC document from the FOR's reproduction contractor.
Costs of Continuina to Send P=aar to the P.DB Producing, handling, and assigning file codes to paper copy documents is a resource-intensive process. This process involves several additional steps and approximately $53.5K in unbudgeted processing costs, assuming the process is continued for six months after October 29,1999.
Documents designated as publicly available would have to be reproduced after being loaded into ADAMS ($13.5K). During the period from October 29 to December 31,1999, all publicly j
available documents that are currently processed through NUDOCS will be scanned by the
. Headquarters Document Processing Contractor and loaded into ADAMS. If we continue to send
- paper to the PDR, these documents would then be sent to the NRC reproduction staff to produce the necessary paper copy. Beginning in January 2000 when internally-generated documents are loaded into ADAMS electronically by the staff, the staff would be required to continue to produce paper copies of the public documents, mark the accession number on the documents, and send them to the Document Control Desk for further processing (see next '
i paragraph) and transport to the PDR.
Special PDR file codes (not needed in ADAMS, but needed to locate physical documents in the PDR) would have to be put into the ADAMS profile for each publicly available document and
' physically marked on the paper copy of the document that would be sent to the PDR. ($40K).
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- The Commission 3
i Drawbacks of Conthulng to Send Paper to the PDR Continuing to send paper to the PDR would have several drawbacks. The PDR staff would have to flie incoming paper copy documents. This process would place unanticipated burden on the PDR staff at a time when they will be heavily involved in the transition from NUDOCS to ADAMS and in planning for the move of the PDR to the White Flint complex, scheduled for September 2000. And, this will detract from their ability to assist the public in making the i
transition to the use of ADAMS.
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Although paper copies would be available in the PDR, the timing of the arrival of these documents would lag their availability in ADAMS. This being the case, we believe that most users will probably opt to print or download the document from ADAMS rather than wait for the paper copy to arrive in the PDR. This timing problem will be exacerbated beginning in January, when intemally-generated documents will be entered directly by the staff instead of sending the paper documents to the Document Control Desk to be scanned and loaded. We believe that the L
inconsistency in the timing for receipt of the paper documents as compared to the electronic i
documents could actually result in a public perception of lower quality service in the PDR
' because t!vir availability will be announced in the public access version of ADAMS before the paper copies are filed in the PDR.
Fallback if the Public Access Version of ADAMS is not Ready The NRC has received all scanning equipment and OCR software needed by the document processing contractor to convert paper documents to electronic form and is famihr with l
performing these functions because the contractor converts a small volume of documents to electronic form in NUDOCS today. Additionally, the ADAMS software that the contractor will be entering documents into is the software that the NRC staff is using today (Release 1.1), is tiready operational and has been in use since June 1999. Therefore, we do not believe there is l
cny sionificant risk in the contractor being unable to scan or enter documents into ADAMS.
ADAMS Release 2.1 provides software to copy the profile, full-text, and image of documents designated as publicly available to the external Web, and for the public to search for and retrieve these documents on NRC's external Web. If Release 2.1 were not operational, OClO would l
provide the PDR with paper copies of documents, add the paper file location to the ADAMS profile, and request PDR librarians to conduct searches for documents using NRC's internal version of ADAMS. In any case, the PDR would continue to be able to provide the public access to documents.-
Recommendation In light of the above, OClO recommends that we discontinue sending paper to the PDR after l
October 29,1999.'
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- The Commission 4
in order to ensure that OClO can perform necessary preparatory work to implement the Commission's direction, 0C10 requests a response from the Commission by September 14,
- 1999, cc:
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