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2.4 The VERS implementation at the Department of Infrastructure

The work undertaken as part of the production of the Victorian Electronic Records Strategy report had demonstrated that a data-driven approach to the preservation of electronic records was technically feasible. The work had not demonstrated, however, that the proposed approach could be economically implemented within an agency.

Accordingly, the next stage was the implementation of a pilot system within an agency. This was intended to develop knowledge about the practical issues involved in creating and capturing electronic records within an agency. Such issues included:

• The integration with existing IT systems within agencies. This would include general office applications (such as email and office automation) and special purpose custom applications.
• The cultural issues involved in deploying an electronic recordkeeping system to all staff. This would particularly include the usability of the registration system and the records access system.

A key goal of this work was to determine how to assist the agency in capturing quality electronic records. A second key goal was that the practical issues of implementing a fully electronic records management system within a government agency would test and validate the VERS Standard.

To test the organisational feasibility of VERS, the Victorian Government committed a further $4.8 million in 2000-2002 to implement an electronic records management system based around VERS within a medium-sized Victorian agency. The agency chosen was the Department of Infrastructure (DoI). The successful tenderer for the work was Solution 6 (now Alphawest), and staff from the Department of Infrastructure, PROV, and CSIRO were involved.

The focus of the VERS@DoI project was the adhoc capture of records whilst the employees of the agency conducted their normal day-to-day business. In implementing such a system, a number of important lessons were learnt about the capture of quality electronic records. These lessons included:

• the importance of tying the recordkeeping system to wider corporate knowledge management goals
• the limited amount of time users are willing to spend learning how to use a new system that is not directly related to the tasks they perform
• the range of ways in which users organise information into records and files.

In addition to these corporate lessons, valuable lessons were learnt about the VERS Standard itself. These lessons included:

• that additional explanatory material was necessary to assist in implementations of the Standard
• areas where the Standard could be extended
• several (minor) areas in which the Standard contained inconsistencies.

The VERS@DoI system went into production use in 2002, and demonstrated that it was possible to implement a fully electronic records management system within an agency.

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