Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/6060432934/in/set-72157627289617985 Sunday June 9 is International Archives Day. Happy Archives Day everyone!

I was pleased at the last Records Managers Forum to be able to talk about a recent initiative from State Records, OpenGov NSW. OpenGov NSW is a searchable online repository for information published by NSW Government agencies, including Annual Reports, other publications and open access information released under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 […]

Scientific data, research data, data retention, big data – just recently it seems like everyone is talking about data of one sort or another. Last week CBC News reported a fascinating tale of lost and inaccessible data: ‘The case of the missing data’. In it, a US scientist looking into heart disease tracked down some […]

As 2013 heats up, Emma and I have been looking over the 2012 Future Proof blog statistics to identify what topics were of particular interest to our Future Proof community. The Top 10 of Future Proof in 2012 is an interesting list and it is providing us with really useful input into our workplanning for the […]

During the final week of DAM2012, Richard Lehane talked about State Records’ Open Data Project and the development of a web API to State Records’ catalogue, Archives Investigator. The API won a Mander Jones Award for the best finding aid to an archival collection held by an Australian institution or about Australia. The fourth and […]

After two wonderful weeks of digital awareness raising, we began the third week of DAM2012 with an update on State Records’ Digital Archive. Cassie Findlay, the Project Manager for the digital archives project, talked about the progress that the team has made so far as well as some of the pilot migration projects currently underway. […]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathoov/5281019294/ Each year State Records issues a newsletter, Future Proof, to all Chief Executives across the NSW public sector. This year the newsletter is focussed on communicating the idea that recordkeeping is not red tape, it is actually a business enabler. The newsletter says that digital information is a business asset that needs to be built to […]

Week 2 of DAM2012 started with a challenging and inspiring presentation by Kate Cumming on the issues that are threatening our ability to maintain an archival record of contemporary society. In this presentation, first delivered at the ICA Congress in Brisbane, Kate described some of the threats to archives in current recordkeeping environments. After making […]

When State Records started building a whole of government digital archive for New South Wales, we committed to publishing new software developed for the project as free and open source software. We rely heavily on software and web services shared freely by members of the digital preservation community, such as the PRONOM technical registry from the National Archives (UK) and Xena from the National […]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/salihan/3590753580/ When talking to people across government about the importance of records management, recordkeeping controls and records disposal, we are very regularly challenged by the argument, ‘But storage is cheap. I can just keep it all. I can run Google across the top of all my data. I don’t need to do all these costly […]