Conference   2007

James Doig is the Project Manager of Digital Preservation at the National Archives of Australia. 

He was educated at the University of Western Australia and the University of Wales, Swansea, where he completed a Ph.D in history. 

In 1995 he joined the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts where he worked on Internet charging and access principles and accounting rate reform. He then worked for three years at the National Office for the Information Economy, before transferring to the National Archives of Australia in 2001. He has worked on various projects at the National Archives, including the Managing Digital Records for Access project, which aimed to establish business processes for the management of Commonwealth digital records when they are transferred into Archives’ custody. 

He has been Project Manager of Digital Preservation since October 2006. 

About Presentation (Abstract)

Managing digital assets in the long-term is a challenge facing all government agencies. A crucial component of this challenge is ensuring the accessibility of these assets well into the future. 

Under Records Disposal Authorities some long-term temporary records like personnel files must be kept for 72 years. The small percentage of records that are appraised as being of archival value must be retained permanently, and are transferred into the custody of the National Archives after 25 years or as soon as their business life is finished. When records are destroyed under a disposal authority, the metadata about those records must be retained permanently. 

When records are transferred to the Archives they remain closed to public access until thirty years after their creation date. Given that file formats have a relatively short life-span, less than 5 years in many cases, we can begin to see the extent of the problem of long-term accessibility. Ultimately it threatens the ability of government agencies to meet their legislative responsibilities.

This presentation describes the challenges of long-term preservation in a government environment, the response of the National Archives of Australia to meet these challenges, and some case-studies that highlight particular records management issues.