Victorian Electronic Records Strategy


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Introduction

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Standard
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  Advice 9
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Home > Standard > Standard (Version 2) > Advice 9 > The ‘Keeping Electronic Records Forever’ report

2.1 The ‘Keeping Electronic Records Forever’ report

The development of VERS began in 1994 when Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) realised that it was facing a significant challenge in the preservation of records being produced by Victorian Government agencies. The work of the Victorian Government, like most large organisations, was beginning to be carried out electronically. Documents were largely produced electronically using office applications and exchanged using email. Documents were often only printed for proofreading, reading away from the desktop (e.g. in meetings), or for filing as records in conventional paper-based recordkeeping systems. It was realised that many records were not being printed and filed. Instead, records were being kept electronically on shared file systems and in applications, particularly email.

It is interesting to note that at the time the focus of electronic recordkeeping was on the internal processes of government; the external interface with the public was still being handled largely by paper. A major change in the environment since 1996 is the growth in the provision of services to the public by electronic mechanisms, particularly via email and the Web. This has brought an entirely new area of electronic records to the fore.

In 1996 PROV was provided with $240,000 funding from the Microeconomic Reform Fund and retained Ernst and Young Consulting, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Professor Michael Vitale of The University of Melbourne, to solve the problem of ensuring the retention of, and ongoing access to, electronic records created today and in the future. The terms of reference for the project were:

to develop, in consultation with experts from other Australian archival institutions, a strategy for the management of the Victorian Government's electronic records, including:

the transfer, storage, preservation, access and disposal of these records; and
the provision for records to be maintained as evidence.

to examine possible information technology solutions to support the electronic records management and archive strategy.
to examine the viability and costs of both a distributed custody/network model and a centralised storage model for the management, storage, and access to electronic records.
to examine the consequences of any recommended strategy for electronic records for the ongoing management of paper records.

Sections of the archival community, in particular, had been aware of the challenges of preserving electronic records since the early 1990s. Much of the published work was concerned with highlighting the challenges of preserving electronic records or exploring underlying issues of archival theory. Valuable as this work was, little of it was concerned with proposed solutions. Ernst and Young could not identify any tested solutions to the challenges. However, the report drew on existing work, particularly the Pittsburgh project [PITT], and identified encapsulation as a possible solution to the challenge of preserving electronic records.

The result of this project was the report 'Keeping Electronic Records Forever' [PROV1], published in 1996. The report advocated that, instead of taking a system-orientated approach to electronic records, a data-driven approach was more appropriate, as the records would need to outlast any system developed to manage them.

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