What is Future Proof?
The Future Proof strategy
State Archives and Records Authority NSW seeks to ensure that the people and Government in NSW have ready access to records which illuminate history, enrich the life of the community and support good and accountable government.
Digital records of government are particularly vulnerable to degradation, alteration and loss through time. In 2007 State Archives and Records NSW established its Future Proof strategy, to help ensure the protection and management of digital Government records.
The Future Proof strategy seeks to ensure that:
- the New South Wales government documents its business via the creation of robust, useable and trustworthy digital records
- digital records are created and maintained in environments that have been adequately assessed and treated for risks
- people and government have ready access to digital records documenting the business and memory of the State of NSW, and
- the State’s digital archives are protected, preserved and accessible.
Some of the current projects in place to support the Future Proof strategy include projects to:
- promote the requirements of the Standard on records management
- develop systems, processes and infrastructure to allow State Archives & Records NSW to accept, preserve and make available born digital and digitised official records that are required as State archives
- provide timely advice on recordkeeping issues, including new and emerging technologies, utilising a variety of delivery modes
- facilitate workshops for information sharing on digital recordkeeping issues.
An ongoing project within the Future Proof strategy is the Future Proof blog.
The Future Proof blog
The Future Proof blog is one of State Archives and Records NSW’s primary communication tools about digital recordkeeping issues. The digital business environment changes rapidly, and the Future Proof blog enables State Archives and Records NSW to quickly provide advice and disseminate information about digital recordkeeping issues.
The blog also allows us to obtain information from the NSW public sector. We use the blog to seek feedback on the advice we provide, to ask questions and to issue surveys on recordkeeping issues significant to the NSW public sector. The information we receive through these consultation mechanisms is fed back into our business processes and informs all the work that we do.
Over time, the blog has become a centralised information source on a range of recordkeeping issues relevant to the NSW public sector, and to digital recordkeeping more broadly.
It is also the main portal for the dissemination of information about the design and development of State Archives’ innovative Digital Archive facility. The project team building the Digital Archive are world leaders in their field and they use the blog to regularly post updates about their work.
Category links on the Future Proof blog provide useful gateways into different resources housed on the site. We always encourage discussion and debate on the blog and would welcome your feedback on any of our posts.
Digital recordkeeping remains a very challenging area for every government organisation, but we hope Future Proof and the broader work of State Archives and Records NSW will help ensure that the people and Government in NSW have ready access to digital records which illuminate history, enrich the life of the community and support good and accountable government, now and for a very long time into the future.
The Future Proof logo
We have a special logo for Future Proof that is used to identify products and projects from State Archives and Records NSW that are specifically about digital records. To us, the ‘flying folders’ represent managing, accessing and collecting free-flowing and evolving records and archives in the digital environment.
Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmeidinger/3483485
