Keeping Government Publications Online

Capturing the Evidence: Strategies for Keeping Records of Web Activity

A presentation by Adrian Cunningham from the National Archives of Australia for the Keeping Government Publications Online : Guidelines for Commonwealth Publishers Seminar, July 2002.

If you have Powerpoint available you may access the actual presentation - Capturing the Evidence: Strategies for Keeping Records of Web Activity

An outline of the presentation is below.

Key Points

  • Online Service Delivery can place corporate memory and evidence at risk if recordkeeping precautions are not put in place
  • Archives produces guidelines that can help agencies to address the problem
  • Guidelines are mandated by the Government Online Strategy

Recordkeeping issues for Web resources

  • Is a web site a publication or record?
  • How do we capture and maintain records of web-based activity?
  • Can an agency be held accountable for something it had on its web site a year ago?
  • 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

Archiving Web Resources

A policy for keeping records of web-based activity in the Commonwealth Government

First released in March 2000 - http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/publications/archiving-web-policy.aspx

Objective

To provide clear policy direction to Commonwealth Agencies on their responsibilities to create, capture, manage and retain web-based records for as long as required.

Agency responsibilities for recordkeeping

  • creating and managing full & accurate records of transactions and activities
  • setting up appropriate systems
  • written policies and user training
  • ensuring records are kept secure, authentic and useable
  • enabling public access when required

Best Practice Statements

  • Full and accurate records of web-based activities and transactions should be made and kept
  • Agencies should conduct risk assessments of their web-based activities
  • Adequate metadata is essential to manage, understand and find the records
  • Agencies must keep reliable records of the information that is made available via their web sites

Archiving Web Resources

Guidelines for keeping records of web-based activity in the Commonwealth Government - Released March 2001

Content of the 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

Fundamentals of good web-based recordkeeping

  • Take a systematic approach
  • Assign and document responsibilities
  • Determine requirements for records
  • Apply metadata
  • Capture records into recordkeeping systems

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

Strategic and Technological Options

Object and/or Event Driven Approaches

Object Driven Approaches

Managing the 'objects' that constitute or are made available via a web site

Site maps are important to preserve as a record of relationships between content

Managing Objects Separately

metadata store:
absolute URI
data object
MIME type
Start and end date of data object-URI association
Publication records
AGLS metadata

"Snapshots of Web sites"

  • Example of an object-driven approach
  • Taking periodic snapshots of the site in combination with tracking changes to the site
  • Can be useful for simple, stable sites

Factors to Consider

  • Complexity of the site
  • Purpose of the site
  • Results of risk assessment
  • Results of analysis of recordkeeping requirements

Event Driven Approaches

Capturing 'events' or transactions that occur between the website and the user

Capturing Events

  • date / time of event
  • domain address of user
  • user profile
  • query or other actions performed
  • the resources served to the user with relevant metadata attached

What About Metadata?

  • Use AGLS metadata to help people find your online publications
  • Create and manage recordkeeping metadata for administrative and evidential purposes
  • The NAA maintains the standards for both AGLS and recordkeeping metadata
  • There is overlap between AGLS and R/K metadata - the same metadata can often be reused for both purposes

Preservation Issues

Maintaining web-based records over time:

  • Ensure records are properly managed and protected
  • Coping with Obsolescence - copying, migrating, reformatting
  • Use Open Architecture standards
  • Use persistent identifiers for online resources

Retention/Disposal Options

  • Web objects can be 'sentenced' under the AFDA/Keyword AAA Publication Function
  • Records of events/transactions should be sentenced under the appropriate Function/Activity, usually in an agency Records Disposal Authority
  • Archival records can be transferred to NAA custody, unless they have been taken into PANDORA

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