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Description:

Data on classification activity of the United States government.

Fitzpatrick (2013) notes that the dramatic jump in derivative classification activity (DerivClassActivity) that occurred in 2009 coincided with "New guidance issued to include electronic environment". Apart from the jump in 2009, the DerivClassActivity tended to increase by roughly 12 percent per year (with a standard deviation of the increase in the natural logarithm of DerivClassActivity of 0.18).

Variables:

A dataframe containing :

year

the calendar year

OCAuthority

Number of people in the government designated as Original Classification Authorities for the indicated year.

OCActivity

Original classification activity for the indicated year: These are the number of documents created with an original classification, i.e., so designated by an official Original Classification Authority.

TenYearDeclass

Percent of OCActivity covered by the 10 year declassification rules.

DerivClassActivity

Derivative classification activity for the indicated year: These are the number of documents created that claim another document as the authority for classification.

Details

The lag 1 autocorrrelation of the first difference of the logarithms of DerivClassActivity through 2008 is -0.52. However, because there are only 13 numbers (12 differences), this negative correlation is not statistically significant.

Link To Google Sheets:

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References/Notes/Attributions:

Source

Fitzpatrick, John P. (2013) Annual Report to the President for 2012, United States Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives and Record Administration, June 20, 2013. Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) of the National Archives.

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