David Fricker

Senior South Australian mandarin Simon Froude has been chosen to lead the agency responsible for maintaining official commonwealth records.

The government has fully agreed to 14 of the 20 recommendations made by the Tune Review of the National Archives of Australia.

The National Archives of Australia boss ​​has acknowledged that a fear of government documents being made public could be leading to complacency.

The National Archives has revealed that more than half of the 20,178 applications were submitted between five and ten years ago.

The funding will be used to preserve the NAA’s at-risk collection over an ‘accelerated four-year digitisation program’.

The National Archives of Australia has sought legal advice on the “pressing issue” of public servants using encrypted messaging platforms to conduct official business.

A major review of the National Archives of Australia has highlighted a range of “substantial” problems, including the deterioration of documents, a growing backlog of access requests, and a lack of resourcing.

The policy, which comes into effect on January 1, sets out requirements for assisting commonwealth agencies with producing records that can be ‘trusted and relied upon by current and future generations’, according to National Archives director-general David Fricker.

The organisation noted that its audiovisual collection from federal government agencies and public broadcasters spans nearly 100 years.

Independent reviewer Dr Vivienne Thom identified cultural issues within some governments and agencies, with, for example, many not viewing archives and records authorities as integrity agencies.

The National Archives of Australia has signed a three-year contract to better secure federal government records digitally. Under the deal with software company Preservica, the Commonwealth’s digital records would be “safely stored” using a specialist digital preservation system. The software would also provide secure access, as well as automatically update files to “future-friendly formats”, the […]

The entire federal public sector is supposed to be on the cusp of a new era in information management defined by interoperability, following the earlier shift to mostly digital record-keeping, but the auditor-general reports the process has fallen behind schedule.