Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

Well it’s been a busy year for us here at State Records as I’m sure it has been for everyone in the NSW government working in records and information management.

Some of the highlights for us have been:

• the issue of the Premier’s Memorandum 2009-11 in May, highlighting the importance of digital recordkeeping to support government business and access to information
• the launch of a podcasting series on the Future Proof website, bringing presentations from our Sydney events to a wider audience
• the release of Managing Digital Records, a rich resource of guidance on creating, managing and maintaining high quality accessible digital records
• working with and talking to public offices that are achieving great things in digital recordkeeping implementation; NSW Fire Brigades, Corrective Services, the University of Sydney and City of Sydney Council just to name a few
• developing and piloting new training in digital records; Managing digital records, due to be delivered on our normal calendar of courses from 2010
• getting into web 2.0 – this has not only meant that we have expanded our recordkeeping guidance to address issues such as keeping records of blogs and wikis but it has also offered a fantastic platform for selling our message. Penny Sharpe’s ‘Public Sphere’ event at Parliament House was a wonderful forum where we learned a lot about creative and productive uses of web 2.0 for government business, and were able to promote the link to long term accessibility of digital information. We even started a Future Proof Twitter account! (http://twitter.com/FutureProofNSW)

In 2011 our focus will be on assisting public offices with working towards compliance with the Standard on digital recordkeeping and on providing guidance on recordkeeping in business systems.

So from the digital records team and the rest of Government Recordkeeping, we hope you have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!