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VERS STORY | STANDARD | ASSESSMENT | PROJECTS | DIGITAL ARCHIVE | TRAINING | TOOLKIT | PUBLICATIONS | |
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VERS Demonstrator System In 1998 PROV began the VERS project to implement the recommendations made in Keeping Electronic Records Forever. This project was run by the PROV in conjunction with the CSIRO and Ernst & Young. The project developed a prototype system to demonstrate that it was possible to capture records from existing business systems in such a way that they would be accessible in the long term. The project team undertook as series of investigations so that they could understand the government processes which led to records creation and how records were used and managed in the same context. The archival processes of PROV were also investigated. Using this information, they pinpointed the information required to be captured when creating an electronic record. Keeping Electronic Records Forever advocated that instead of taking a system oriented approach to electronic records, a data driven approach was more appropriate, as the records would outlast any system developed to manage them. This led to a recommendation for the adoption of a standard long term electronic record format. The second key point made in Keeping Electronic Records Forever was that electronic records should be captured at the time of creation. There are several strong reasons for this requirement. Firstly, the record is more reliable as evidence if captured at time of creation. Secondly, there is more chance that the record will in fact be captured if it is done immediately. Thirdly, information capture at the time the transaction is undertaken is both cheaper and more reliable than post hoc data entry. The project team also advocated that the capture of contextual information (metadata) should be as automatic as possible. The VERS project was successfully completed in December 1998. PROV released the Final Report of the project in April 1999. As part of this project, a demonstrator system was built to illustrate the principles outlined in the VERS Final Report. This demonstrator consisted of three major components:
Record Capture From an archival perspective, it is important that both the content and structure of records are accurately captured. The project determined that the captured record should be identical in appearance to the original document as it was viewed by the creator of the record. This requirement restricts the technologies that can be used to capture documents. With HTML, for instance, the appearance of the document depends on the settings of the user's browser and the resulting record may bear no resemblance to the appearance of the original document. The VERS project determined that record capture systems could automatically generate much of the metadata required to document the context of the record thereby relinquishing the need for manual entry on the part of the record creator or the records manager. Metadata which depends on the record capture system can be automatically generated by that system. For example, all records produced by a particular process will have the same technical description. Metadata can be derived from the document itself, although this can be application dependent. For example, email headers contain information about the sender, the recipient, the time and date of sending, and the subject of the email. Metadata can also be derived from the computing environment. In particular, the record's creator and its time of creation (essential for the evidentiary status of the record) can be obtained from a smart card or the user login. Finally, a record generated from a programmed workflow automatically has a context (that is, a relationship with other records in the workflow). Metadata entered at one stage in the workflow can be carried along with the workflow and added to later records. Repository Archiving is the process of managing records over a long period and includes storing, preserving, and providing access to records. There are a number of issues which arise when these functions occur in an electronic environment. The most pressing issue is technology obsolescence. Computer technology rapidly becomes obsolete. Therefore it will be necessary to move records from one medium to another as storage technology changes. This process is often termed 'refreshing.' Refreshing may also be carried out to protect against record loss due to deteriorating media (for example a tape wearing out), or to make a physical copy of the record (for off site storage for instance). The process of refreshing can be made entirely automatic. Discovery Being able to follow contextual relationships (like the link between incoming correspondence and outgoing replies) provides a powerful mechanism for finding information. Most of the contextual information used in the VERS demonstrator system was captured when the record was created and was stored as metadata within the record. The basic contextual relationship used in the Victorian government is collecting related records into files. To aid in management of records, particularly at the PROV, files are assigned to series (collections of related files) and series to agencies. Officers who access files on a day to day basis will understand the purpose of individual files within the agency context. To assist other users and researchers' understanding of the context of the records, archival finding aids are created to describe the history and function of the agency, as well as the purpose and organization of the files and series within the agency. Finding aids were able to be stored within the demonstrator VERS discovery system. There are many other contextual relationships which can also be documented. Ad hoc relationships are essentially random links between related files or records and may be created for any purpose at any time. A typical ad hoc relationship is a linkage between versions of a record. Ad hoc relationships can be documented in a record's metadata but the user creating an ad hoc relationship must consciously document that relationship. The VERS demonstrator made use of Web based technologies and delivered records via a Web browser. As the archived records were kept in a database, and had extensive metadata associated with them, it was possible to construct a much more powerful searching environment than with paper based records. The Discovery System allowed:
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