Obama administration officials said Saturday that the government was starting to take steps to shut down the bulk phone records program by the deadline. However, it was not clear what preliminary steps are necessary, since the program simply involves phone companies’ handing over billing records each day. Pressed to explain what the government meant by taking such steps, multiple officials declined to answer.

The administration is holding to its decision not to invoke the grandfather clause to keep collecting bulk phone records past next Monday, the official said. But the government has not ruled out invoking such a clause for using the business records provision — as well as the other two powers that are expiring — to gather specific records for more routine investigations.

“We will not use the grandfather clause in the Patriot Act to continue the bulk metadata collection program; it would not be tenable for us to do so,” the senior official said.

“Thus, because of the pending sunset of the current authority, we have not filed an application with the FISA court to continue collection,” the official said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, also known as FISC.

The official added, “We will consider, in light of our national security needs and the status of our authorities, whether to make an appropriate filing with the FISC about accessing previously collected metadata.”

While the fate of the bulk phone logs program has received the greatest attention, the Justice Department separately used the expiring Patriot Act business records provision more than 160 times last year to obtain other types of business records for investigations, including Internet activity logs.

It rarely uses the expiring “lone wolf” wiretapping authority, but has apparently made greater use of the expiring power to get wiretaps for suspects who shift from phone to phone.