Occasional papers

The Management of the Public Record in An Electronic Environment

A Paper for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting Edinburgh, 1997

Documentary evidence provides the basis for accountable, transparent government and sustainable development in all Commonwealth countries and it has been taken for granted that this evidence will be available. Yet, many Commonwealth governments are finding it increasingly difficult to establish control over official records, with severe consequences for efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. Officials face continual frustrations in attempting to locate the records required to carry out their work because systems are not in place to ensure that those records are well organised and accessible from the point of creation; such systems cannot be introduced because the legislative, policy, organisational and personnel infrastructures to support them are inadequate or do not even exist. This erosion of the official evidence base has affected systems and service delivery in virtually every sector in the public service. It reduces the capacity of governments to formulate and evaluate policy and thereby represents an impediment to international investment and hence to competitiveness in global trade.

The situation has become immensely more complex with the introduction of computerised information systems. There have been rapid advances in the capacity to share information across organisations, speed up key processes and re-use information. Yet, the consequences for ensuring the reliability, integrity and authenticity of records in supporting the requirements of good government, accountability and the rule of law are only beginning to be articulated and understood. Although the methodologies exist to manage voluminous paper records, those for managing electronic or computer-generated records over time are still emerging.

There is a widespread belief that electronic document management systems will solve the problems and software vendors claim that their products provide electronic records management functions. However, as yet the functional requirements for ensuring that electronic records of continuing utility are safeguarded and remain readily accessible have not been translated into technical specifications that programmers can use to instruct computers automatically to create appropriate records. Until this is done and organisations can take steps to ensure that these requirements are met, the electronic corporate memory will be at risk.

Already there are numerous examples of the breakdown of electronic record-keeping facilities and there are chronic problems in terms of capacity to read, retrieve, decode or access electronic records. The records may be too fragile or too poorly documented to read, the software required to decode them may be obsolete and therefore no longer available or it may not be possible to reconstruct the context of the documents. This is a global issue, but the results are most apparent in North America, where computer-generated records have been created over a longer period and in greater quantities than elsewhere. For instance, the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, the repository for United States Government records, reports that 15-years old magnetic tapes containing data received from various government departments are already unreadable.

Senior managers in government agencies tend to believe that someone is looking after electronic records. All too often, this is not the case. It is not enough simply to hold on to tapes and disks and hope that they will be retrievable in the future. Just as it is essential to assign accountability for finance and human resources, so too must there be accountability for the management and presentation of records as documentary evidence.

Commonwealth governments need to take urgent action to establish the infrastructures necessary to support viable public sector information systems. The solution is not just technological; computers alone will not solve their information problems and a holistic approach to provision for their information needs must be adopted. This includes the development of appropriate management systems, the enhancement of the knowledge and skills of archivists and records managers and the recognition that records personnel at all levels throughout the public sector should be of good calibre, well trained and highly motivated.

Since paper-based records are still the major source of government information and provide the ultimate guarantee of the reliability, integrity and authenticity of information held in computerised systems, as much attention should be given to records management issues as to technological issues. An essential precondition of an effective information system is the re-structuring of public sector record-keeping systems and the provision of adequate financial, material and personnel resources to ensure the life-cycle management of paper-based records.

Furthermore, electronic records generated in computerised information systems need to be integrated within such life-cycle records management systems and research in this area has to be transmitted into practical guidelines of best practice. Hence, national archivists and records managers in the public sector, who have responsibility for ensuring the preservation of the institutional memory, need to be computer literate and equipped with the knowledge and skills required to build precision into the handling of information in support of business functions, to define the linkages between paper-based and electronic systems and to integrate record-keeping functions into electronic document management systems, thereby ensuring that authentic records of continuing utility can be preserved over time irrespective of their medium and format. Archivists and records managers must be key actors in the governance process if that process is to be more transparent and accountable. These issues need to be recognised by Commonwealth governments, featured in national strategic planning and articulated in dealings with bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and with vendors of computer hardware and software.

Further information on initiatives which Commonwealth professionals are taking to tackle the problems of the management of the public record in an electronic environment is available at GHOGM from the accredited representative of the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers (ACARM), who can be contacted in the NGO Lounge, where a display illustrating the activities of ACARM and its partner organisations is also to be seen.

Charles Gibson, former Chairman
Michael Roper, former Hon Secretary
4 August 1997