Digital amnesia: challenges of government online
Making, keeping and using the evidence of e-government
Adrian Cunningham National Archives of Australia
This talk will cover:
- NAA strategic approach to digital recordkeeping in government
- Role of resource discovery metadata - AGLS
- Policy and guidelines for archiving web resources
- Archival preservation and access
E-permanence and all that
- In the late 1990s the NAA repositioned itself as a proactive enabler of good recordkeeping in agencies, providing standards and guidelines to improve the behaviour of records creators and the quality of information systems in government
- Response to deteriorating recordkeeping practices and the challenge of the digital workplace
- Conceptual framework based on ISO 15489
Australian government locator service (AGLS)
The objectives of AGLS
- To improve the visibility and accessibility of government information and services through the standardisation of web based descriptions
- To enable web based search engines to do their job with greater precision and efficiency
- To help ensure that those searching the web are presented with relevant and meaningful 'hits' in response to search requests
AGLS and Dublin Core
- AGLS is based on, but extends, the international 'Dublin Core' metadata standard (ISO 15836)
- Importance of interoperability between AGLS and Dublin Core
- AGLS can itself be extended for specific purposes
Five additional AGLS elements
- Function
- Describes the function/s of government to which the resource relates
- Availability
- Provides information on how offline resources may be obtained
- Mandate (Legislative mandate for the resource)
- Audience (Target audiences for the resource)
- Accessibility (Compliance with W3C guidelines)
AGLS is simple, flexible and dynamic
- Only six of the 20 elements are mandatory (Creator; Date; Title; Subject or Function; Identifier; Publisher)
- AGLS metadata can be created at point of document creation, but can be added to and improved as documents evolve
- AGLS metadata can be linked to single items or to aggregates of resources
Implementations since 1998
- Endorsed by the Online Council
- Mandated in Tasmania, South Aust, Qld
- C'wealth 'GovOnline' Mandate, April 2000
- Victorian Online Gateway Project, 2002/03
- Local governments getting started
- New Zealand's adoption of NZGLS
Other developments since 1998
- Portals strategy reliance on metadata - Business Entry Point, HealthInsite, etc
- AGLS very visible within DCMI internationally
- XML schema definitions
- ANZLIC-ISO19115/AGLS mapping
- Tim Berners-Lee and the 'Semantic web'
- Publication as AS 5044 in 2002
Current issues for AGLS
- The need for both metadata and full-text (ie Google) search capabilities, its not an either/or choice
- Life beyond harvest control lists
- Supporting the implementation of quality metadata across the Australian Government
- Search engine support
- Multiples uses of metadata and demonstrating returns on investment
AGLS now involves co-operation between:
- The National Archives
- Australian Government Information Management Office
- Online council officials
- AGLS working group
- Standards Australia
Recordkeeping issues for web resources
- Is a web site a publication or record?
- Can an agency be held accountable for something it had on its web site a year ago?
- How do we capture and maintain records of web-based activity?
- No single 'rule' exists to cover all types of scenarios
Diversity of web resources
- Static websites/resources
- Static websites/resources with form-based interactivity
- Web sites/resources based on dynamic data access
- Dynamically-generated websites/resources
NAA web archiving guidelines
- Responsibilities
- Diversity of web-based resources
- Fundamentals of good web-based recordkeeping
- Risk assessment
- Strategic and technological options
- Storage and preservation issues
- Determining the best option
Assessing risk
Factors to consider:
- Public visibility of the agency
- Purpose of the web site
- Complexity of the web site
- Frequency and regularity of content change
- Risk of litigation
Object or event driven approaches
Managing the 'objects' that constitute or are made available via a web site
and/or
Capturing 'events' or transactions that occur between the website and the user
Appraisal of web resources
- Web objects can be sentenced under the AFDA 'publication' function
- Records of events/transactions should be sentenced under the appropriate function/activity, usually in an agency records disposal authority
- Archival value records can be transferred to NAA, unless they have been taken into PANDORA
Archival preservation and access
- The vital importance of having a strategy for ensuring the integrity, durability, security, useability, evidential meaning and authenticity of digital records
- This is not just an afterthought - it requires a major commitment and serious resources
- A preservation strategy is a pre-requisite for long-term access to digital object
- OAIS Reference Model - ISO 14721 (2003)
NAA digital preservation strategy
- Uses open source XML technology to wrap and store 'normalised' digital records created in proprietary data formats
- Standard archival data formats for use with digital records that are required for long-term retention and access (producing authentic, reliable, inviolable and durable digital preservation masters + access copies)
- Xena version 2.0 tools for normalising digital records, due May 2005
- NAA digital repository/laboratory in place
Resources
|
