Victorian Electronic Records Strategy


VERS STORY	STANDARD	ASSESSMENT	PROJECTS	DIGITAL ARCHIVE	TRAINING	TOOLKIT	PUBLICATIONS

Welcome

Background

The Strategy

Leading Edge

Supporting eGovernment

Business Benefits

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Background

From the inception of VERS in 1995 the ideas formulated and contained in the report 'Keeping Electronic Records Forever' were the starting point to an ongoing collaborative effort between the Victorian State Government, industry and academia to find a practical way to deal with digital records.

Initial research project in 1996 delivered the report 'Keeping Electronic Records Forever'. It also addressed the issue of how to ensure the retention of, and ongoing access to, digital records created today and in the future.

In 1998, the VERS Demonstrator System was an implementation of the VERS standard into a range of software products to support a pilot business workflow (Ministerial correspondence). It demonstrated that it was possible and practical to capture, manage and discover digital records using a VERS Encapsulated Object (VEO) format.

VERS Final Report in 1999 highlighted the findings of the initial VERS demonstrator project were published including a definition of the VERS XML digital record.

The VERS Standard, PROS 99/007 was developed and published in 2000 and Version 2 was released in July 2002.

The VERS@DOI Pilot Implementation Project between 1999 and 2002 was the first implementation of the VERS within the Department of Infrastructure. The implementation project included record capture at creation, management of the VERS Encapsulated Objects (VEOs) in a VERS compliant recordkeeping system and provided the ability to export these digital records to the Public Records Office Victoria when required.

The announcement of the VERS Centre of Excellence came in May 2002. Located at Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), the Centre of Excellence is responsible for overseeing the rollout of VERS across the Victorian government. The Centre provides resources, advice, and guidance to Victorian government agencies as well as conducting further research into the long term preservation of electronic records and overseeing the construction of an electronic records repository at PROV (Digital Archive).

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