The Whole of Government Digital Archiving Solution
State Records aims to create a whole of government digital archive to accept, preserve and store digital Government records as archives.
For a light hearted explanation of the serious challenge of loss of digital information, check out one of Digital Preservation Europe’s videos Digital Preservation and Nuclear Disaster: An Animation , Team Digital Preservation and the Aeroplane Disaster or Team Digital Preservation and the Deadly Cryptic Conundrum.
State Records is planning to implement a digital archive capable of receiving digital records in all formats from NSW Government public offices, and convert the records into stable, long term preservation formats. Records preserved will be available for retrieval by public offices and ultimately they will be made findable and accessible online to the public as appropriate under the State Records Act’s access regime.
The archiving system will comply with the international standard for open archival information systems (OAIS) and is based on the National Archives of Australia ‘Xena’ model.
By adapting the ‘Xena model’ the digital archive will be based on the following principles:
- the digital preservation program must be able to preserve any digital record that is brought into its custody regardless of the application or system it is from or the format it is in
- the digital preservation program must preserve the ‘essence’ of digital records and recreate their essential performance over time
- the digital preservation program will be based on non-proprietary technologies
- the digital preservation program will not limit the accessibility choices of future researchers
The actual digital preservation process can be broken down to three stages and each stage will take place on an isolated computer network. The three networks are Quarantine, Preservation and Repository.
Quarantine
Digital records given to State Records for preservation are first connected to the Quarantine facility. The contents of the media being transferred are checked to confirm the files received are those that the originator intended to send and that they are free from computer borne malware or viruses. Once a virus check is passed the records are copied to a carrying device, disconnected from the Quarantine network and stored for 28 days. After 28 days the carrying device is again connected to the Quarantine network and the data is scanned for presence of viruses.
Preservation
After the transfer media is found free of viruses the carrying device is then connected to the Preservation network and the individual data files are converted to XML via the open source application Xena. The XML files are recorded on a second carrying device for transfer to the Digital Repository. All digital records accepted by the archive are also stored as bitstream, to enable future preservation techniques to be used on the same records if necessary.
Repository
The carrying device is connected to the Digital Repository network and the XML representations of the original data are copied to long-term storage arrays.
By implementing a whole of government digital archive State Records will continue to preserve the records of New South Wales Government and ensure continuity, accountability, better decision making and access to the history of New South Wales.
