Wednesday 3 July, 8.45am 12.30pm
National Library of
Australia, Parkes Place, Canberra
Chair
Pam Gatenby, Assistant Director-General,
Collections Management, National Library of Australia
Jan Fullerton, Director-General, National Library of Australia
Our changing information environment
Brian
Stewart, General Manager, Information Framework Branch, National Office for the
Information Economy
Ensuring future access to electronic publications: the
legalities
Justin Hyland, Senior Lawyer, Australian Government
Solicitor
An agency records manager asked if there are any specific types of paper records that are excluded from the Electronics Transactions Act, and which cannot be converted into an electronic format. Justin Hyland replied that financial institutions were currently required to keep certain classes of records, but he was still examining the question from the Government Solicitor's perspective. The NAA would probably issue a ruling soon.
Another question asked if a person subpoenaing a large quantity of records in a discovery process could insist that they be supplied in hard copy. Justin Hyland replied that the Evidence Act allows for the tendering of records in electronic form, and this is an issue that could come before the court for a ruling.
On the question of how electronic documents accepted as evidence are to be authenticated, Justin Hyland said there were no easy answers, and the surrounding evidence and context needs to be considered. Technology may also play a role.
Justin Hyland also clarified that electronic documents could be sufficient to meet legislative requirements to publish certain categories of information.
Collecting and preserving Commonwealth government
publications
Margaret Phillips, Manager, Digital Archiving,
National Library of Australia
A representative of an agency who had recently received a request from Pandora for permission to archive a document from their site commented that this had aroused considerable discussion, but in the end they had decided that while the document was still available on their own web site, they preferred not to have another copy elsewhere, thus limiting use to their site and not the archive. In reply, Margaret Phillips said that she could understood the reasons for this in terms of business and traffic issues, but there was a risk that the document may not be transferred to the archive when it was no longer available on the publisher's site, especially if there were any recordkeeping and staff continuity problems. In part addressing this problem, it was important to note that the archived version of a document gave preference to the original, both in the precedence given to citation of the agency url in the catalogue record, and the prominence it is given in the archive. A follow-up question was whether it was possible to schedule release of information from Pandora. Pam Gatenby stated that while this was possible, it was reserved solely for commercial (or fee-for access) publications. The Library's main emphasis was on access, and it was reluctant to enter into special agreements for gratis publications.
Regarding the preference the Library gives to archiving hard copy and not the equivalent electronic version, Margaret Phillips stated that this was purely a resource issue. A trial had recently been undertaken to archive both print and online versions, but while there were many benefits, this had effectively doubled the Library's workload, and with no additional funding forthcoming, it had not proved practical.
Capturing the evidence: strategies for keeping records of
web-based activity
Adrian Cunningham, Director, Government
Recordkeeping, National Archives of Australia
A question was asked about the privacy implications of personal information captured from web sites. Adrian Cunningham said that the general thirty-year rule for Commonwealth government records applied, and access could also be restricted beyond then as appropriate. The NAA (in cooperation with agencies) had extensive experience in dealing with paper-based records, and although there could be some special privacy considerations limiting access after the elapse of this period in most cases the relevant records are likely to be of only temporary value, and not worth keeping. Justin Hyland added that a major legal consideration is the purpose for which information is collected, and whether users are made aware of the fact that information is being collected and for what purpose. Information should not be kept simply for its own sake. To a follow-up question seeking clarification when user identification information should be recorded, Adrian Cunningham said the main issue was its importance for evidential purposes. Justin Hyland restated this by saying that a person's interrogation of a web site should be recorded if this is likely to become an issue sometime later.
A further question asked if there was a distinction between Intranet and Internet sites. Adrian Cunningham replied that NAA policies and guidelines applied to both, but that recordkeeping guidelines, risk analyses, and disposal schedules were likely to be different. However the legal ramifications were the samematerial from an Intranet site can still be subpoenaed.
Panel session
Clarification was sought on the procedures for archiving a document produced by more than one agency. A suggestion was made that multiple signatures could be added to the document and that each signatory should have their own copy. Margaret Phillips noted that the question basically related to version control and authentication. At present, Pandora separately archived multiple versions with a date stamp on each title entry page. There was currently no sophisticated technical procedure allowing authentication other than file-by-file comparisons, which may not be altogether satisfactory in the long term. Justin Hyland noted that there were provisions for electronic signatures in the Electronic Transactions Act, which had full evidentiary force.
A member of the audience asked if the maintenance of government publications online meant bad advice would be preserved forever. Justin Hyland stated that electronic documents were really no different from any other written documents. He cautioned against the conversational attitude many people had towards e-mail, which should be treated with more care since it continued to exist as long as backup tapes survive. However a legal defence in this case might be whether there might be a reasonable expectation for a person to seek more up-to-date information.
A representative of the Department of Transport and Regional Services outlined what was being done across the whole of her agency with a specific software product. It was possible to roll back to view their web site at a specific time, and legal disclaimers and links were provided to the relevant authors for verification purposes.
Margaret Phillips was asked for more information on Pandora and the file formats used for long term archiving. Margaret explained Pandora was an acronym that stood for Preserving and Accessing Networked DOcumentary Resources of Australia. The file formats used were those originally adopted by the publishers. This created some difficulties, especially in the case of advanced, more experimental software. Where multiple formats are offered, all are preserved as an insurance policy. At present, documents are generally not converted from one format to another, although there had been a small trial to change from an earlier to a later version of html. In the long term migration would probably be necessary, although emulation was another possible approach.
One member of the audience commented that relatively little progress had been achieved since the 1994 Electronic Recordkeeping Seminar, with each agency now doing its own individual migration virtually every ten years. She asked if NOIE could do more to assist agencies. Brian Stewart replied that while NOIE in principle supported collaboration, it saw its role as separate and less directly hands-on than that of the NAA and NLA. However NOIE would be willing to consider a proposal made by a group of agencies.
Adrian Cunningham briefly outlined the approach proposed by the Electronic Recordkeeping Section of the National Archives. It was to take in and preserve a file in its native format, which if necessary could be accessed later via emulation for authentication purposes, while simultaneously creating a preservation master in a basic file format from which later renderings could be taken. No extensive software migration was envisaged. However it was up to individual agencies to produce guidelines for records still in their custody.
Margaret Phillips gave a brief explanation of the distinction between unique identifiers such as ISBN and ISSN (applied to different versions of a book or different serial titles) and Persistent Identifiers, which were assigned to each separate version of an electronic document in the Pandora archive. Pam Gatenby noted that this was an area in which there was relatively little activity in Australia, and identifiers could usefully form the subject of a future NOIE seminar.
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