Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

Can you believe that another year is almost over? Where has that gone? It has certainly been a busy one for Digital Recordkeeping at State Records.

The Digital Recordkeeping Team

2011 has been a turbulent roller-coaster ride. Early in the year we had a welcome surprise – confirmation that we received funding for the 3 year digital State archives project. We had been seeking this for many years and it allows us to finally move forward to create a digital archiving solution for the NSW Government.

With this news came a split in our team with Cassie going to Kingswood to lead the new project and Richard becoming a project officer in her team. The archives project has subsequently grown with the addition of Paul, Nott and Damien. This innovative group are already making in-roads in an area which is very new and very challenging.

Kate and I are continuing to soldier on, implementing our part of the Digital Records Strategy. We are working smarter to ensure that we can continue to answer your enquiries promptly, assist where we can and release key information on digital recordkeeping which can be of broad value. We have been increasingly using this blog as a means of communicating with you and we are pleased to see the audience is steadily growing.

We have seen many changes in NSW Government organisations this year, with significant administrative change bringing its fair share of challenges to records managers. Many are also coming to terms with shared service environments and sorting out what this means for recordkeeping. Budget cuts have often seen either a reduction in recordkeeping staff or more pressures to justify any expenditure and look closely for efficiencies and savings. It’s been a tough year for many.

Kate and I have many plans for 2012. Once our big guidelines – on digitisation and metadata – are released we want to focus on short, targeted guidance and practical implementation tools. Assisting agencies in managing administrative change, digital disposal and building recordkeeping requirements into business systems are three major areas which we will focus on. We will also strive to have a lot more communication with a range of stakeholders including the vendor community, ICT community and oversight bodies to try to improve digital recordkeeping practice. We will keep you ‘posted’ about the progress of these initiatives.

On behalf of State Records we would like to thank you for your support and your interest in the work of our team. We wish you and your families a very happy, safe and peaceful festive season and we look forward to communicating with you in 2012.

Janet and Kate