[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 1232 Introduced in House (IH)]

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115th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 1232

 To amend title 44, United States Code, to require each Federal agency 
   to maintain and preserve data assets of the agency, and for other 
                               purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           February 27, 2017

 Ms. McCollum introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
              Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To amend title 44, United States Code, to require each Federal agency 
   to maintain and preserve data assets of the agency, and for other 
                               purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Save America's Science Act''.

SEC. 2. MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION OF DATA ASSETS BY FEDERAL AGENCIES.

    Chapter 31 of title 44, United States Code, is amended by adding at 
the end the following new section:
``Sec. 3108. Management and preservation of data assets by Federal 
              agencies
    ``(a) In General.--The head of each Federal agency shall maintain 
each data asset of the agency, including any data asset collected for 
the agency under a contract, in accordance with the program established 
under section 3102.
    ``(b) Safeguards.--The head of each Federal agency shall establish 
safeguards against the removal or loss of data assets and make any 
requirements and penalties related to such removal or loss known to 
officials and employees of the agency.
    ``(c) Unlawful Removal or Destruction of Data Assets.--
            ``(1) Federal agency notification.--The head of each 
        Federal agency shall notify the Archivist and Congress of any 
        actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, 
        alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction 
        of data assets in the custody of the agency, and, with the 
        assistance of the Archivist, shall initiate action through the 
        Attorney General for the recovery of data assets the head of 
        the Federal agency knows or has reason to believe have been 
        unlawfully removed from that agency, or from another Federal 
        agency whose data assets have been transferred to the legal 
        custody of that Federal agency.
            ``(2) Archivist notification.--In any case in which the 
        head of a Federal agency does not initiate an action for such 
        recovery or other redress within a reasonable period of time 
        after being notified of any such unlawful action described in 
        paragraph (1), or is participating in, or believed to be 
        participating in any such unlawful action, the Archivist shall 
        request the Attorney General to initiate such an action, and 
        shall notify Congress when such a request has been made.
    ``(d) Public Availability of Data Assets.--
            ``(1) In general.--Each data asset that has been made 
        available to the public by the head of a Federal agency shall 
        remain available to the public.
            ``(2) Machine-readable data assets.--Each data asset that 
        has been made available to the public in a machine-readable 
        format by the head of a Federal agency shall remain available 
        to the public in a machine-readable format.
    ``(e) Rule of Construction.--Nothing in this section may be 
construed to exclude any type of record from the requirements of this 
chapter.
    ``(f) Definitions.--In this section:
            ``(1) Data.--The term `data' means recorded information, 
        regardless of form or the media on which the data is recorded.
            ``(2) Data asset.--The term `data asset' means a collection 
        of data elements or data sets that may be grouped together.
            ``(3) Machine-readable format.--The term `machine-readable 
        format' means a format in which information or data can be 
        easily processed by a computer without human intervention while 
        ensuring no semantic meaning is lost.''.
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