Staff Papers

Keeping Online Information Accessible for E-governance and E-democracy

 A paper by Margaret E Phillips, Director Digital Archiving, National Library of Australia, and Adrian Cunningham, Director Recordkeeping Standards and Policy, National Archives of Australia prepared for the Australian Electronic Governance Conference. Centre for Public Policy, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Victoria, 2004. .

Abstract:

Democracy, governance, consultation and participation all depend on the availability of authentic and reliable information. Government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, as well as educational and research institutions, are producing increasingly large volumes of information in electronic formats only. While Australia has done more than most countries to date to address the need to identify, collect, store and preserve publications and organisational records in electronic formats, large amounts of information are still at risk of loss.

Keywords

Electronic publication, online publication, online record, online information, born digital, organisational records, Internet, intranet, collecting, preserving, legal deposit, government information, government publications, recordkeeping, documentary heritage, digital archiving, web archiving, e-governance, e-democracy, e-permanence

There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory. Effective democratisation can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution and its interpretation. (Derrida 1996. p. 4, n. 1.).

Introduction

Since the 1980s, information has increasingly been created, stored, distributed or published in a variety of electronic media and formats including floppy disks, network drives, CDs, DVDs, online on the Internet and intranets and in electronic mail. All of these formats contain information that may be important for e-government and e-democracy. However, it is the phenomenon of the Internet, and more particularly the World Wide Web developed in 1993, that has revolutionised the publication and distribution of information in electronic form and has the greatest potential to impact, for a variety of reasons, some positive, some negative, on the ability of citizens to participate in democratic government in an electronic world.

This paper focuses on information made available online via the Internet (publications) and intranets (organisational records) and the role of libraries and archives in collecting, managing and preserving it for long-term access. 'Electronic', 'digital', 'online' and 'born digital' are all terms used in the literature to refer to information made available electronically. In this paper the term 'online' is used to refer to information made available via the Internet (including the Web) and intranets. 'Electronic' is used to refer more generally to the broader range of formats.

Definition of an online publication

A publication is information, regardless of its format or method of delivery, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee. In theory this includes everything publicly available via the Internet. In practice, however, the National Library and its partners which contribute to PANDORA: Australia's Web Archive (National Library of Australia 1996 - ) selectively collect only certain types of online publications, usually only those without print equivalents. These include journals and other serials, research papers, conference proceedings, and web sites or parts of web sites, which provide substantial or unique information about a topic, organization or person.1

Definition of an online record

A record is defined as 'information created, received and maintained as evidence and information by an organisation or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business' (Standards Australia 2002). In the online world, this includes email sent within an agency and between an agency and other organisations and individuals. It also includes web sites on intranets and the Internet. Publications are also records. Those Australian government publications that are not archived by the National Library should be transferred to the National Archives by the author agency.

These definitions reveal the overlapping boundaries between publications and records in the online world, and indicate the overlapping responsibilities and need for close cooperation between the National Library, National Archives and the author agency if government information is to be kept accessible now and in the future.2

While computer scientists in Australia had access to email and ftp from the 1970s (Clarke 2001, paragraph 8), and academics within Australian universities began to have access to the Internet via AARNET from 1989, most Australians had to wait until the mid-1990s by which time the World Wide Web had made its explosive impact. When in the mid-1990s the National Library and the National Archives began to consider their responsibilities in relation to collecting and preserving online information, the enormity of the task and many of the risks involved were already apparent.

E-Government and the role of libraries and archives

In April 2000 the Commonwealth government issued GovernmentOnline: The Commonwealth Government's Strategy, which stipulated that

'All new non-commercial publications released by a Minister or agency must be made available online concurrently with other forms of dissemination from 1 June 2000.' (Australia. DCITA 2000).

While many Commonwealth government publications continued to be published in print, as well as online, the volume of online government publishing expanded rapidly from this time onwards. An increasing number of titles are produced only online and this situation is being replicated in all States and Territories.

It is the role of the National, State and Territory libraries (the deposit libraries) to document the published heritage of Australia. By collecting, cataloguing to the National Bibliographic Database (NBD)3 and preserving publications, these libraries, as well as other research libraries, such as the university libraries, enable researchers to find out what information has been published and to gain access to it. Unless these libraries are informed about what has been published online and have sufficient resources to deal with it, a substantial body of Australia's published heritage, including vital government publications, will be difficult to identify and locate now, and will be lost altogether to future generations.

In addition to being an important source of national and cultural memory and places of scholarly research, archives in democracies are meant to help protect the rights and entitlements of the governed. Archives provide a means of democratic accountability - a means of empowering citizens against potential maladministration, corruption and autocracy. In the words of John Fleckner (1991, 13), archives are bastions of a just society where 'individual rights are not time bound and past injustices are reversible', where 'the archival record serves all citizens as a check against a tyrannical government'. For these noble objectives to be achievable, evidence of government decisions and activities, including government online activities, needs to be captured and preserved in an accessible form for as long as it is needed, in some cases indefinitely.

In the interests of accountable government and for the benefit of the community the National Archives of Australia promotes reliable recordkeeping and maintains a visible, accessible and known collection. To this end the Archives enables and promotes best practice in the management of government records in all formats from the point of creation for as long as they are required to support the needs of government and the people. The importance of National Archives standards and guidelines as enablers of successful e-government has been recognised by the Australian government, which has made compliance with relevant Archives' policies and standards mandatory under the Government Online Strategy and its successor, the e-Government Strategy.

Thomas Jefferson is widely quoted as having said 'Information is the currency of democracy'.4 To be able to evaluate the success or otherwise of government programs, to be able to assert their rights, to debate the issues of the day, citizens must have access to current and historic sources of information generated by government and by other sectors such as academia and private enterprise. In an online world, this means that access to information created and distributed electronically is essential. And yet online information is known to be ephemeral. It has been estimated that web pages have an average life of 44 days (Library of Congress 2003) although, in the experience of the National Library, high quality publications of research value usually remain available on the publishers web site for much longer.

What makes online information so vulnerable?

There are technical, organisational, legal, financial, and political reasons for the vulnerability of online information.

Technical factors

For libraries and archives with the obligation to keep information indefinitely, the preservation of electronic information poses a significant challenge and to date there are no reliable long-term methods. The hardware and software that the creators of electronic publications and organisational records use to produce and store their digital works changes over time, in most cases quite rapidly.

Dack, a consultant engaged by the National Library to undertake a risk assessment of its digital collections explained the problem this way:

'Digital information is not inherently human readable; it is dependent on machines for its creation and use. Made up of patterns of binary signals recorded on various media, it requires software, and sometimes specialised hardware, to interpret the logical structure of these physical patterns that record the data in order to deliver the conceptual object in a form that is understandable to the user.' (Dack 2004, 1).

Dack points out that while it is relatively easy to preserve the physical representation of the data, the 'bit stream', this does not guarantee the long-term preservation of the conceptual information or the content of the digital objects. This requires retaining the ability to interpret the physical and logical structure of the object by means of software and an appropriate hardware environment.

'It is the complexity, ongoing nature and cost of the task of preserving the ability to interpret and render the information indefinitely into the future that is the biggest risk to the digital collections.' (Dack 2004, 1).

Information that is available to us today will not be available to us in perhaps even ten years time, unless we have strategies in place to actively collect, describe and preserve it. These strategies are labour-intensive, time-consuming and costly and need to be applied from the moment of acquisition of the materials, and then continued indefinitely. Ideally the need for long-term access to important material, such as government publications and records, should be actively taken into account at the time of their creation to minimise the complexity and cost of preservation.

Organisational factors

Producing and collecting online information requires entirely new infrastructure, policies, procedures and staff skills. In the period of transition from print to online, in which we will remain for the foreseeable future, organisations have been burdened with the need to support both print and online.

Retention of online information for future access depends on complex human and technical systems to manage the creation and storage of organisational records, the contents of organisational Web sites, and other online publications. It requires organisational commitment from the top down, and staff with the knowledge and skills to apply them and the will to comply with them.

Some publishers, including government agencies, actively resist the retention of historical information, arguing that it can be misleading. While it is certainly necessary to manage out of date information so as not to mislead, there are effective ways of doing this and there is no valid argument for denying access to this information for future research purposes.

Organisations that own information are impermanent. They restructure their web sites, have name changes and, in some cases, are abolished. An organisation may cease a particular function or transfer it elsewhere. In universities and research centres, funding for a research program comes to an end, researchers relocate or retire and the results of the research is left in electronic limbo. In each of these situations, there is the risk of loss of access to organisational records and published information, unless transfer to a responsible archives or library is negotiated and implemented.

The trend towards devolution of responsibility for publishing within government departments, as well as the outsourcing of both the creation and publication of government information, has made it much more difficult for the agencies themselves, for libraries and members of the public to find out what is being published. Although this trend began before online publishing became such a potent force, online publishing has exacerbated the difficulty of identifying, describing, collecting and preserving the published output of individual agencies and government as a whole.

Legal factors

When information is published in print, the legal deposit provisions of the Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968 oblige the publisher to deposit a copy of each title with the National Library. Equivalent State legislation also requires deposit in the State or Territory library of the State or Territory of origin.

The situation is much less regulated in the case of electronic publications. The Commonwealth, States and Territories have varying legal requirements for electronic publications in different formats. The legal deposit provisions of the Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968 do not apply to electronic publications at all and, of the States, only Tasmania and South Australia have legislation that the State libraries are confident encompasses online publications. Under the New South Wales Premier's Department Memorandum 2000-15 (NSW Premiers Department 2000, 3.) 'the location of new networked electronic publications, such as those publicly accessible on Web sites, must be notified to the State Library.'

It is interesting to note that the New South Wales Memorandum emphasises the value of government information and the key role of libraries, especially National, State, local public and government agency libraries, in providing public access to government publications. Often, however, it is extremely difficult for libraries to find out what online government publications are available and it is not unusual for librarians in government departments, both State and Commonwealth, to lament that they do not know the totality of what their own departments are publishing.

From a recordkeeping point of view the following pieces of legislation are all relevant to government online activity:

  • Archives Act;
  • Privacy Act;5
  • Electronic Transactions Act;6
  • Evidence Act;
  • Freedom of Information Act;
  • Public Service Act;
  • Financial Management and Accountability Act;

Together, this legislation promotes accountability, protects privacy and confidentiality and allows the Australian community access to our documentary heritage.

The Archives Act 1983 provides for public access to Commonwealth records over 30 years old regardless of their format while protecting sensitive personal information, and indeed other categories of sensitive information. The Act balances the public interest in the workings of government with the need to protect sensitive information.

The Freedom of Information Act 1982 permits access to Commonwealth records less than 30 years old in certain circumstances while protecting sensitive information. It also gives the public the right to request the correction of personal information about themselves in government records if it is incorrect, incomplete, out of date or misleading.

With the exception of disposal authorisation powers given to the National Archives under Section 24 of the Archives Act, the National Archives has no power to require Commonwealth agencies to comply with the best practice recordkeeping standards, policies and guidelines that have been issued as a part of the e-permanence campaign. While the mandating of some of our standards and guidelines under the Government Online Strategy has helped, compliance with these requirements has been uneven, with monitoring based largely on agency self-assessment and reporting. More recently, however, the need for agencies to adopt best practices recommended by the Archives has been reinforced by the Australian National Audit Office, which has conducted a variety of audits of agency recordkeeping and online activity.

The legal situation in the Australian Government contrasts with that of a number of other jurisdictions in Australia, which have recently passed archives and records legislation that requires agencies to comply with recordkeeping standards and guidelines issued by the archival authority. Examples here include South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. In part, these legislative developments in other jurisdictions reflect the need for legislative change to ensure that governments manage efficiently, accountably and reliably the new realities and imperatives of digital information creation, transmission and storage.

Financial factors

Implementing new systems for the creation and management of online records and publications is costly. The National, State and Territory libraries have been granted no additional funding to undertake collection and preservation of online publications and the resources available are insufficient. As a result important publications, including government publications are not being preserved for the future.

Similarly, while responsibility for making and keeping full and accurate records of government online activity is shared between the Archives and the creating agencies, neither has been provided with additional funds to meet these new responsibilities.

Both the National Archives and the National Library have in recent years created entirely new branches and initiatives devoted to developing policy and practice for the collection, retention and preservation of online publications and records. The resources to support all of these new activities have had to be taken from other more traditional areas of the Archives and Library operations.

Political factors

Governments change, policies change. Information previously available can embarrass a government, a party or an individual. Online information can easily be changed, accidentally, intentionally, even maliciously. The National Library has learned to gather the Web sites of governments and political parties very quickly after an election. Especially where there has been a defeat, change in content will be swift.

The current situation in Australia: initiatives at the National Library and National Archives

Although there are still many areas of concern, Australia has done more than most countries to date to address the need to identify, collect, store and preserve online publications and organisational records. Both the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia have earned international reputations for their initiatives in this area.

National Library of Australia

The primary role of the National Library of Australia is to acquire and maintain comprehensive collections of documentary material relating to Australia, to preserve them, and to make them available for research now and in the future. In the mid 1990s it became apparent that this role must include the collecting of online publications too. As a result the Library established PANDORA7 : Australia's Web Archive (National Library of Australia 1996 - ) with the aim of collecting and preserving nationally significant online publications, and the process of developing policy, procedures and a technical infrastructure began.

Eight years on PANDORA is now a selective archive of over 5,000 titles, many of which are regathered on a regular basis to update content. All of the mainland State libraries, the Northern Territory Library, the ScreenSound Australia, the Australian War Memorial, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies all identify, select, describe and archive online publications and Web sites that fall into their own area of collecting responsibility and add them to the Archive. In the case of the National and State libraries, a primary area of collecting responsibility is their jurisdictions' government publications.

The National Library selects titles for archiving on the basis of selection guidelines (National Library of Australia 2003) which give priority to six categories of publications:

  • Commonwealth and ACT government publications;
  • Publications of tertiary institutions;
  • Conference proceedings;
  • E-journals;
  • Titles referred by indexing and abstracting agencies;
  • Topical sites
    1. Sites in nominated subject areas that will be collected on a rolling three year basis; and
    2. Sites documenting key issues of current social or political interest, such as election sites, Sydney Olympics, Bali bombing.

In building the Archive the National Library and its partners are aiming to collect and preserve all Australian online publications that have individual research value, as well as a broad sample of publications and web sites that collectively provide information about Australia and Australians and how they use the internet.

Incomplete coverage in the Archive of government publications from all levels of government remains a grave concern. Government agencies in Australia are publishing information online at a far greater rate than the National and State libraries can archive them, using the labour-intensive selective methods currently at our disposal for description and collection. To improve coverage more automated methods are essential.

As a result in 2003 the National Library commenced the first stage of the Commonwealth Metadata Pilot Project. There are two aspects to this project

  • Finding out what has been published and getting records (metadata) for it into the National Bibliographic Database;
  • Extracting information about online government publications from the NBD and batch loading it into the PANDORA Digital Archiving System, to automate or semi-automate the harvesting of government publications.

Initially, this has involved working with seven Australian government agencies of various sizes to look at the metadata that is being created to describe their publications and to ascertain how to collect this metadata and convert it into a form compatible with the National Bibliographic database.

There is no standard approach by government agencies for creating, describing and organising their publications and each situation is different. The Library cannot work with hundreds of individual approaches, but it can with work with a dozen or so. The aim of this project is to define a small number of models that the Library can support to receive metadata about government publications and then to promulgate these models to government agencies. Not only will this assist libraries and the public but it will also assist agencies to meet their responsibilities for keeping government information accessible to the community.

There is great value to the Australian community in having as wide a coverage of Australian publications as possible in the National Bibliographic Database. Catalogue records can be re-used by other libraries, such as university libraries, and they can be used for other resource discovery purposes, such as the federated discovery services now being developed.

The second aspect of this Commonwealth Metadata Pilot Project, automating the tasks associated with gathering of online government publications, remains a significant challenge and depends upon the development of the PANDORA Digital Archiving System to enable it to batch load and process data. This work is scheduled to commence in 2004.

The availability of government information is crucial to the democratic process, but so is information from other sources, for instance, research conducted into areas of health, the environment, and education, within our universities. As with government agencies, within universities there has been little coordination of online publishing and usually no awareness by the university as a whole or its library of what is being published. While government and university libraries alike have traditionally kept archives of print publications, this practice has not yet evolved in most cases for online publications.

This is starting to change. The Australian National University (ANU 2003), the University of Queensland (University of Qld 2004), and the University of Melbourne (University of Melbourne n.d.) have set up e-print archives into which academics can deposit copies of their research papers.

In 2003 the Department of Education, Science and Training issued a call for funding bids to improve research information infrastructure in Australia. Four projects are to be supported and will be guided by the Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee (ARIIC). The National Library is a formal partner in three of these projects. Project ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) is being led by Monash University, with objectives to identify and test a software solution for digital repositories of research information, and to develop a national resource discovery service.

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories project is being led by the ANU and will develop demonstrator repositories and support continuity and sustainability of digital collections, including research datasets.

The Meta Access Management System, led by Macquarie University will develop common services for authentication, authorisation and digital rights management, supporting access to the national network of institutional repositories.

National Archives of Australia

The National Archives is committed to promoting full and accurate digital recordkeeping by Commonwealth agencies. The Archives provides appropriate advice to agencies and the Archives Act ensures that Commonwealth records in the Archives' care are managed securely and effectively.

The Archives has endorsed the Australian Standard for Records Management, AS ISO 15489-2002, and before that its predecessor AS 4390-1996, and promotes the adoption of this Standard in the Commonwealth through the e-permanence suite of best practice recordkeeping standards, manuals and guidelines (National Archives of Australia n.d.). The e-permanence website was released in March 2000.

The Australian community needs to be confident that these records, while in the custody of the agency that collected or created them or with the Archives if they are assessed as being of enduring value, will be secure, retain their integrity and are accessible for as long as they are required. Much of the effort of the National Archives in promoting its e-permanence standards and strategies to agencies is directed towards helping agencies to design and implement recordkeeping systems that ensure the making and keeping of records with these characteristics. While this regime of best practice standards and guidelines is meant to apply to all records, regardless of whether those records are made and kept in paper or in electronic form, the growth of electronic recordkeeping has been a particular concern of the Archives and is the subject of a number of specific standards and guidelines issued by the Archives in recent years.

The foundation of the e-permanence suite of products is the DIRKS Manual, DIRKS: A Strategic approach to Managing Business Information (available at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/dirks/summary). This manual outlines a detailed eight-step process model for the design and implementation of recordkeeping systems consistent with Clause 8.4 of AS ISO 15489.

The DIRKS Manual also incorporates procedures for identifying the need for and appropriate retention periods for Commonwealth records. Section 24 of the Archives Act provides that, in most cases, Commonwealth records cannot be disposed of or destroyed without authorisation by the National Archives. Such authorisation is given by way of records disposal authorities issued by the National Archives under the terms of its legislation.

Another critical standard available on the e-permanence website is the Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies (available at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/rkms/summary.htm). This standard outlines the metadata that recordkeeping systems should capture and retain in order to ensure the authenticity, reliability, integrity and useability of records. It includes, for example, metadata elements for controlling, documenting and managing access to and use of records.

In April 2000 the Government Online Strategy led by the National Office for the Information Economy mandated some e-permanence standards, policies and guidelines as essential enablers of the Strategy. These included:

  • The AGLS Metadata Standard for online resource description and discovery - AS 5044-2002 (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/summary.html);
  • Archiving Web Resources: Policy and Guidelines for Keeping Records of Web-Based Activity in the Commonwealth (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/summary.html)

In November 2002, the e-permanence group of standards were endorsed in the Government's E-Government Strategy 'Better Services, Better Government', which updates and replaces the Government Online Strategy.

In relation to the long-term preservation and secure storage of digital Commonwealth records, the Archives has announced its AtoR (Archives to Researcher) digital preservation project. The Archives has looked at other Australian and international approaches to this issue. Our research shows that the best strategy for preserving digital records is to standardise them into a stable format

The National Archives approach to preserving digital records uses standardised XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Records such as emails, web pages, and word-processed documents created in commercial software programs are converted and stored in a stable long-term XML form. This enables records to be read with computers now and into the distant future. Where government records need to be kept for a long time they can be transferred to the National Archives for storage in its secure digital repository.

The National Archives has developed its own open source software, called Xena (XML Electronic Normalising of Archives), to convert digital records in a format that will be stable in the long term. Xena software is available free of charge.

Factors inhibiting the long-term availability of online information for E-governance and E-democracy

Publications

  • There is still a low level of recognition among creators of information, publishers, government agencies and politicians of the importance of keeping online information accessible for future generations.
  • Absence of legal deposit legislation covering online publications at the Commonwealth and State levels means that collecting and preserving them remains piecemeal and inefficient.
  • Lack of standardised approaches to publishing government information and reporting its availability complicates the task of the National and State libraries whose responsibility it is to collect it.
  • Lack of quality metadata, even in the Australian government sector where use of AGLS (Australian Government Locator Service) metadata is mandated, inhibits discovering what publications and web sites are available and gaining access to them.
  • Lack of a coordinated national strategy for retaining important national heritage in online formats means that information is being lost.
  • Lack of adequate funding for collecting online publications and web sites means that there are already serious gaps in what has been archived so far.
  • Lack of adequate funding for preservation means that what has been collected is at risk of loss as technology changes.
  • We still lack knowledge and the technical wherewithal to archive some types of publications and web sites. Because technology will keep evolving, this is likely to be an ongoing problem.

Archives

  • Absence of a strategic whole-of-government framework for managing the digital information resources of the Australian government.
  • Shortage of staff in Archives and government agencies with broad digital recordkeeping strategic awareness and skills.
  • In the high-pressured fast-moving, high information-volume world of modern government, good recordkeeping gets squeezed out - especially if staff do not have the training and systems that are needed to enable good recordkeeping to be an organic part of the workflow.
  • The focus on the short-term and the here-and-now means that insufficient attention is given to future needs for evidence, accountability and documentary heritage.
  • Software packages and today's workplace culture tend to reinforce the view that government information is the personal property of individuals rather than the view that public records are public property created and held in trust for the people of Australia.
  • A perception that recordkeeping is a corporate overhead that should be minimised or eliminated rather than an investment in the corporate memory and knowledge assets of the organisation that can support better more informed decision making and that will ultimately save the organisation money and make it more efficient.
  • A perception that good recordkeeping can be guaranteed if one buys the right software, without realising that even the best software will fail if it is not implemented properly and if recordkeeping change management is not taken seriously.

Conclusion

Keeping information in electronic formats available for e-governance and e-democracy is a public good, just as health services, education and bridges are. In fact, increasingly in future, the provision of other public goods will depend on the long-term availability of information in electronic formats and this must be recognised and the cost of it must be borne by Australian society as a whole.

At this time in Australia, despite the pioneering work of the National Library and National Archives, information that is critical to e-governance and e-democracy is in danger of being lost. To avoid serious gaps in the record of government business, to avoid loss of information often paid for by the taxpayer, there is an urgent need for politicians, heads of government departments and other key policy makers, educators, publishers, academics and the general public to realise the magnitude and the gravity of the situation before us. We must find the collective will and adequate resources to implement policies and practices that will safeguard our online heritage and keep it safe for the Australian people, now and in the future.

This is not to say that the situation in Australia is any worse than it is in any other country in the world. On the contrary, Australia is better positioned than most to move quickly, if the political will is there. But we cannot justify losing our online heritage in this incunabulum period for online information because everyone else is doing it too. We have guidelines, procedures, technical infrastructure and expertise, which other countries are seeking access to, for the collection and preservation of both publications and organisational records.

Australia is still seriously disadvantaged in lacking legal deposit provisions that cover electronic publications. Countries such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand have recently addressed this deficiency by introducing amended legislation to grant the national library the right to collect and preserve web publications without the need to seek the permission of individual publishers. Such legislation must, of course, contain balances to safeguard the rights of publishers, as the current legislation for print publications does. It is essential that the principle of preserving one copy of every Australian publication for access by current and future generations be extended to electronic publications.

A national strategy for the collection and preservation of online publications is required, encompassing government, education, commercial and private sectors. This strategy must assign responsibilities, where they have not already been assumed, for collecting and preserving the records and publications of the various sectors. It must be supported by appropriate legislation and funding.

Endnotes

  1. For a full list of types of online publications collected see National Library of Australia. 2003. Online Australian Publications: Selection Guidelines for Archiving and Preservation by the National Library of Australia, Section 3.4. URL: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelines.html. Consulted 20 February 2004.
  2. These responsibilities are defined in National Library of Australia, National Archives of Australia, National Office of the Information Economy. 2002. Keeping Government Publications Online: A Guide for Commonwealth Agencies. URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/govpubs.html. Consulted 20 February 2004.
  3. The National Bibliographic Database (NBD) records the holdings of approximately 1,100 Australian libraries and is hosted by the National Library of Australia, with access through Kinetica: Australia's Library Network. URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/. Consulted 20 February 2004.
  4. While Thomas Jefferson is widely quoted as having said 'Information is the currency of democracy', when it comes to locating an actual citation for it, one cannot be found. It appears that he may never have said these exact words, although he did write things that mean much the same. See Coates, E. n.d. Requests for Information Related to Thomas Jefferson Quotations. URL: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/archives/quote018.htm. Consulted 20 February 2004.
  5. In relation to Commonwealth records, the Privacy Act covers those records that are less than 30 years of age. Privacy matters relating to Commonwealth records that are older than 30 years are administered under Section 33 of the Archives Act.
  6. The Electronic Transactions Act 1999 has altered the way in which retention requirements relating to the form of certain records can be met. This does not, however, remove the obligation on agencies to obtain the permission of the National Archives for the disposal of records under the Archives Act. Sub-section 12 (2) of the Electronic Transactions Act provides that an electronic version of a document can satisfy a requirement under a Commonwealth law to retain, for a particular period, a document that is in the form of paper, an article or other material. This is subject to a number of integrity, accessibility and useability requirements being met. According to the Australian Government Solicitor, the Electronic Transactions Act does not operate as an authorisation for an agency to destroy a document in the form of paper, an article or other material if it holds an electronic form of that document. The general prohibition on the disposal of all Commonwealth records under sub-section 24(1) of the Archives Act still applies, and destruction or other disposal may only take place in accordance with sub-section 24(2) - Advice provided to the Archives by the Australian Government Solicitor on the subject Relationship between Archives Act 1983 and the Electronic Transactions Act 1999, 5 August 2002.
  7. PANDORA - Preserving and Accessing Networked DOcumentary Resources of Australia

References

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Clarke, Roger. 2001. A Brief History of the Internet in Australia version 3.1. URL: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzIHist.html. Consulted 20 February 2004.

Coates, E. n.d. Requests for Information Related to Thomas Jefferson Quotations. URL: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/archives/quote018.htm. Consulted 20 February 2004.

Derrida, J. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dack, D. 2004. Risks to Digital Preservation. (Internal National Library of Australia paper.)

Fleckner, J. 1991. '"Dear Mary Jane": Some Reflections on Being an Archivist'. American Archivist 54, winter.

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Library of Congress. 2003. Collection Policy Statement: Web Site Capture and Archiving. URL: http://www.loc.gov/acq/devpol/webarchive.html. Consulted 20 February, 2004.

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