Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

In the same week, the Productivity Commission released a draft report on Data Availability and Use and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet released Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan for feedback. The release of these drafts is a timely reminder to reflect on our data management practices and how we are preparing for the incoming data-driven landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

Following recent media coverage on text messages and messaging services, we would like to remind NSW public offices that text messages created or received in the course of official business are State records. Read the rest of this entry »

I attended the GovDC Marketplace event held 15 September and I learnt a lot of things from listening to presentations, workshops and panel discussions about using cloud-based technologies from both the public sector and providers.

Recommendations on cloud implementations

It was great to hear the advice of cloud service providers to agencies regarding cloud implementation as it mirrors our advice on this topic. Read the rest of this entry »

The Council of the City of Sydney’s new records management eLearning module shows us that learning about records management can be a rewarding experience. The module uses gamification techniques to guide learners through their records management responsibilities while building a new park in the fictional city of Urbanville.

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We have been busy redesigning our Podcast page and we hope that with the new page, it will be easier to search and access the latest podcasts and accompanying presentation slides.

Why change it?

We have noticed that our Podcasts page has been getting long and growing, and it is starting to get unwieldy to update.

In addition, as this page is a very useful resource for the public, we thought it would be good to improve user experience by not letting users navigate or scroll to the bottom of the page to access the latest podcast.

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Today is Right to Know day and State Records NSW is proud to be a Right to Know 2016 Champion!

One of the themes this year is Open Government in Action. Open government increases accountability and promotes citizen input to government service delivery and policy development. Read the rest of this entry »

In our previous blog posts “Thinking more about moving email to the cloud” and “Cloud email – what’s happening with the information?”, we explored the drivers and potential information management issues on moving to cloud email. Also, we alluded to developing a guideline on cloud email.

We are pleased to announce the release of our new guideline – Cloud email implementation: key considerations.

The cloud email guideline identifies key considerations specific and unique to cloud email, which need to be addressed prior to its implementation. Key areas to consider were divided into the following:

• Records and information management policies, procedures and processes
• Migration of email data from on-premise to cloud
• Contracts

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We revisited digital disposal at our recent Digital Implementers Group meeting. We were interested in how things had progressed since the topic was last discussed. Were the main drivers for digital disposal still compelling? Were the main blockers still impassable? After an energetic discussion, we knew we faced familiar challenges, but also included are some thoughts on potential ways forward. Read the rest of this entry »

Data visualisation has the digital universe all mesmerised and here at State Records, we are always interested in learning what other agencies are doing on this space.

The DX Lab at the State Library of NSW has already started experimenting on visualising its data. They have produced some amazing data visualisation projects which showcase the Library’s collections, data sets and services: 1001 Postcards, Loom, and Weemala.

Ann and I met the team and Elisa Lee who along with Adam Hinshaw are the inaugural fellows for the DX Lab.  Elisa and Adam’s work is at prototype stage at the moment and they are using web logs to visualise in real-time the content people are accessing from the collection via the State Library of NSW’s website and external sites such as Trove and Flickr. “It is essentially a view of the collection curated by the people who are accessing it at any given time, a window display into the treasures the library contains.” Read the rest of this entry »

Much has been made of privacy concerns around the 2016 Australian census. Unfairly or not, much of the early discourse[1] was centred on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ intention to retain name and address information for four years. Many commentators have shared their views on whether they trust the government on how they will use this information or protect it from malicious use. Far less is being said about how it will maintain this information.

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