Preserved properly, your emails and Zoom calls will help public servants in future pandemics, says David Fricker

Good record-keeping will allow the story of the coronavirus pandemic to be told. The challenge is making sure data is still readable for future generations.

Records made during the COVID-19 pandemic will last hundreds of years, and help public servants respond to crises of the future, says David Fricker, director-general of the National Archives of Australia.

“The National Archives, and similar institutions around the world, are custodians of records of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which is now being studied by scientists to better understand the current pandemic,” he recently wrote in a letter to the heads of federal government agencies.