2. Department of Internal Affairs
Significant work to date
• Appraisal Framework Review
• Changes to the General Disposal Authorities, introduction of GDA
6 & 7
• Local Government Schedule/List of Protected Records for Local
Authorities
All these pieces do fit together!
3. Department of Internal Affairs
Appraisal Framework Review - Background
• What is the Appraisal Framework
• Policy, processes & procedures, practice, products
• Why review it?
• Timely
• Global context
• Digital environment
• Quality of records received
• Make appraisal easier
• To build new and strengthen existing relationships
• Reposition appraisal
4. Department of Internal Affairs
Appraisal Framework Review
•How
• ‘Refresh’ the policy
• Simplify the process and clarify the procedures
• Change our practice
And, how’s it going …………
5. Department of Internal Affairs
Changes to the GDAs
•Why change the GDAs?
• No changes since 2005
• Consolidate duplication
• Enable more implementation
•Approach taken
• Making use of what we had and what we knew
• Advisory Committee
• Intention to Dispose
6. Department of Internal Affairs
Changes to the GDA’s
•What did change?
• Structural rather than content
• Less ambiguous
• GDA 3 → GDA 7; clearer purpose and scope
• Language and tone
•Lessons learnt
• Our purpose; better communication
• Not one size fits all, if it doesn’t ‘fit’ then don’t wear it
• We are still welcoming feedback
7. Department of Internal Affairs
Local Government Schedule/List of Protected
Records for Local Authorities
•Why refresh?
• Timely
• Legislative changes
• Structural, operational and technological changes
•What approach was taken?
• Partnership approach – SWIM ltd & ALGIM IM toolkit
• Feedback, advice
• Consultation
8. Department of Internal Affairs
Local Government Schedule/List of Protected
Records for Local Authorities
•What did change?
Both the List & Explanatory notes changed
Language & Structure
Classes/class content expanded for clarity
Define the term ‘local authority’
Alignment with new legislation
Inclusion of additional examples
Removal of duplication
Schedule for gazetting and release 29th
August!!
Updates on list serves and archives.govt.nz
9. Department of Internal Affairs
Contact details for further information
Appraisal Framework Review Claire.Ashcroft@dia.govt.nz
GDA 6 Ariel.Liu@dia.govt.nz
GDA7 Brendan.Freary@dia.govt.nz
List of Protected Records Anna.Monson@dia.govt.nz
Everything and anything else rkadvice@dia.govt.nz
Good afternoon Who I am What I ’ ll talk about – Basically a summary of D&A last 18 month, previously appraisal and transfer – predominantly going to talk about appraisal related work today, been our main focus, not to say transfer isnt important, we ’ re just kicking off that work too What I hope you will get from this – A bit of an insight into the direction we are taking, continous improvement, beter services for our clients Q ’ s – please but be prepared fro a perplexed look – I was involved with one of these pieces of work and am happy to attempt to answer questions on the other two but if I ’ m not able to I will follow up for you
AFR, GDA ’ s and LPR – significant in terms of listening to what All pieces of work overlap and are interlinked with a common purpose – making things easier for clients – easier in terms of being clear about descriptions of records and clear as to what ’ s meant to happen with then, therefore hopefully easier implementation – an easier that will be identifiable in practical ways and outcomes easier in terms of dealing with us! I was heavily involved with the AFR, the other two I will give a brief high level overview of
What is the Appraisal Framework Conceptually a lot of things that tie together and support each other. Initially it began with a refresh of the policy – once analysis began realisation that this piece of work was going to be bigger than originally scoped. However, gave us a really good opportunity to look at what we have and what we need to improve or change, or don ’ t have and need Why review it? Timely Appraisal Standard revoked, Policy referred to revoked docs so initial work to identify discrepencies like this Bigger context of not just New Zealand UK, PROV & QLSL all looking at their practices, a lot of conversations about theories and methodologies and practices Digital environment Identification of ‘ high value ’ – harder or easier? Implementation – how? Also digital preservation issues, digital obsolescence, software support; digtial sentencing is something we noticed that had some questions looming over it – big bucket id, automated triggers .. Dubious, questionable quality of records received - some records still ‘ current ’ , some records questionable value To make appraisal easier! - demystify the process, it needs to be practical ’ A lot of touchpoints with public sector orgs and as such diverse relationship, kickstarting this work cofmmitment to out clients Integrate appraisal as part of a holistic approach to RK/IM – appraisal at creation, more about managing information and records appropriate for as long as need. However recognise that capability to do this is uneven so approach needs to be flexiblePush appraisal into the Im space, may already be there for some, but not the case for all – this is where it needs to be to enable holistic information/records management. However, flexibility to allow for appraisal at end of life/non current
Refresh the Policy Remove ref to revoked/non-current products/publications, minor editing Dig a little deeper ……. Re-examine the ‘ policy ’ – audience, purpose What are the principles? Still relevant? What are the Criteria? Still Relevant? What is missing? Draft, consult, incorporate where required, re-draft – repeat … Simplify the process Not a ‘ process ’ , a number of processes – submission/re-submission; ITD; internal process too Sought feedback from public offices about where in the process we interact – identified sore spots Process Designer – new set of skills required, additional team member Front load process Clarify the procedures Consolidate steps where necessary and possible Is there an easier way to do things, better flow on, more logical Streamline, consistency Change our practice Biggest challenge? Behaviours are the hardest thing to change, or adapt but may also have the biggest impact Emphasis again on ‘ partnership ’ approach – better understanding of clients ‘ business ’ , no surprises How ‘ s it going …. It ’ s beginning, we are fully committed to making changes work but also learning along the way, continuous improvement Baby steps of embedding this, increasing number of client visits, trailing new products, the partnership appraoch is beginning with a few agencies, testing our products. Working alongside some big and not so big clients to develop their appraisal reports Realistic to expect some hiccups but its nothing we cant learn from …. Its not going to happen overnight but we envisage a bit of a learning curve, some living documents and hopefully a better service for clients
What change to the GDA ’ s and why? Once were 5, now are 2. The Disposal Authority GDA5 Digitised Original Source Records (DA278) was revoked by the Chief Archivist. Under the Electronic Transactions Act 2002, a legal requirement to retain information that is in paper or other non-electronic form can be met by retaining the information in electronic form only, with some exceptions. The Chief Archivist has issued an " Authority to retain digitised public records in electronic form only ". This authority is issued by the Chief Archivist under s(25) of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002. 1,2 and 4 became GDA 6 Common Corporate Services Public Records and GDA 3 became GDA 7 Facilitative, Transitory and Short-Term Records GDA ’ s not reviewed or refreshed since their publication, and as such do not reflect changes in technology, changes to the IM/RK language Since publication an ‘ Issues Register ’ has been kept and monitored – comments and queries, commonailities in such A recurring issues was that of duplication of classes across some of the GDA ’ s Interpreation pretty common too, so Improve clarity or articulation of description should enable implementation Approach taken Identification of issues, commonalities, contradictions, with GDA3/7 comparison to overseas eg: National Archives of Australia [normal administrative practice] & Archives of Ontario [common record series, transitory records] Advisory Group of public sector, internal archives staff and consultants; advice and feedback loop – incorporation Went through the ITD process – up for public omment for 30 days Continuous learning, overlap between implementing GDA 1,2&4 and moving over the GDA6
What did change? In one respect more a fundamental change to the structure rather than the content Now only 2 classes have a ‘ Retain to Appraise ’ action – records created prior to 1946 & agency history Purpose & scope of GDA3 – housekeeping, not a term one initially associates with records or record keeping, ‘ facilitatory ’ and ‘ transitory ’ Duplicate, draft, working papers – huh? What ’ s the distinction? Removal of duplication across the classes Lessons learnt Purpose of work needed to be crisper - Change format, not an indepth overhaul – purpose crisper Not absolutely mandatory – of not fit for purpose, don ’ t use them Undertaking work in times of administrative change requires more planning than anticipated, changed hands a few times More a living thing, recognition of practices and technology Still a way to go to incorporate paths that different public sector organisations are taking to digital transformation
The Public Records Act 2005 (PRA) replaces the document and archives provisions in the Local Government Act 1974. It outlines those protected records that require authorisation from the Chief Archivist in order to be destroyed. The Local Government Schedule does not cover all records created by a local authority, Protected records are those categories of records that the Chief Archivist has declared, under section 40 (1) of the Public Records Act, to be ‘ worthy of protection ’ though robust records management systems. Why refresh? Local Government schedule was released in 1998 – that ’ s quite a wee while ago In that time period there have been legislative change – not just PRA 2005, 2002 changes to the Local Government Act; Building Act … - need to align the schedule Local authorities have undergone structural and functional changes which need to be incorporated and reflected Electronic and digital management of records has changed phenomenally since 1998 What approach was taken? Opportunity to work alongside and coincide with work being undertaken by SWIM to update the ALGIM toolkit An update to the list would influence the toolkit schedule, work in partnership, feedback loop with Dr Susan Skudder any update to the ‘ List ’ and the ALGIM IM Toolkit would require input and feed back from those actually working with records in local authorities. working group estaclished which consisted of 16 archivists, records managers/team leaders and information managers, and established a shared workspace tool was used to circulate drafts and capture feedback and comments. updated the ‘ Schedule ’ to a new ‘ List ’ and it was circulated around the working group in May for a three week period. The ‘ List ’ was subsequently updated based on the initial feedback received from the working group and the list was posted on the Archives New Zealand website for one month (between May and June) for wider community consultation. After the community consultation period had ended the feedback received was collated and considered and the list was once again updated. At this point the Explanatory Notes were also re-worked to align with the newly developed list. The new ‘ List ’ and ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ were once again circulated to the working group one final time for a two week period to capture comments on the ‘ Explanatory Notes ” and any further additional feedback comments on the list.
If an update to the ‘ List ’ was to occur, then the ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ would also require a refresh. The reasons for the refresh for these ‘ Explanatory Notes ” were: A need to make the ‘ Notes ’ more focussed and structured – The current ‘ Notes ’ are a mixture of both examples and dispersed recordkeeping advice that is unstructured across class. Ifthe ‘ Notes ’ were edited to beome easy to read and understand easier implemented for day to day recordkeeping should follow A need to make the ‘ Notes ’ easy to read and understand so they can be easily implemented for day to day recordkeeping Making the ‘ List ’ as format neutral as much as possible – With the increase of the creation of digital records since 1998 the ‘ List ’ no longer needs to consider just paper based records Expansion and change of current content for clarity : One of the points of feedback received during the wider community consultation period was that there were classes in the current ‘ Schedule ” that could be expanded for clarity. Class 11: Employee history. Previously this class read as “ information from personnel management information systems documenting employee ’ s name, position, salary, dates of employment, gender and date of birth ” . what is required for retention within this class is “ Summary ” information of these details, rather than all details, so the word “ summary ” has been included in the ‘ List ” to prefix this sentence. Class 6 from “ Resource Management Act ” to “ District Regional and Unitary Plans ” . Currently resource consent records also fall under the Resource Management Act. Resource consent records were viewed as being better aligned with Class 8: Regulatory records to coincide with building permit and consent records. Given this, it was decided to limit the title and content of Class 6 specifically to “ District, Regional and Unitary ” plans only. Definition of a local authority as in the PRA: i) a council-controlled organisation: (ii) a council-controlled trading organisation: (iii) a local government organisation Alignment with new legislation, i.e. the Local Government Act 2002 and the Public Records Act 2005 Reference to out of date names for authorities – Currently the ‘ Schedule ’ refers to Local Authority Trading Enterprises (LATE ’ s) which Council Controlled Organisations (or CCOs) replace. Inclusion of additional examples: Class 10: Performance of the local authority ’ s statutory or other primary functions. Based on the wider community consultation feedback it was recognised that ‘ Management of civil defence emergency events ’ was absent in the current ‘ Schedule. Records relating to the management of and communication about events such as a large scale earthquake or epidemic were determined important for retention as they not only show how a local authority performs its functions during these times, they are also considered topics of interest for social and historic research in years to come. Inclusion of additional examples for clarity: Class 5 of the new ‘ List ” which relates to “ Financial Accountability ” . Previously the ‘ Schedule ’ ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ for this class mentioned that it was not a requirement “ that the large volume of day to day transactions be retained ” . In the new ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ these day to day financial transaction records have been specifically listed. They are: Receipts Financial/cashier system reconciliation data Trial balances And monthly journals Removal of duplication across the classes : In the current ‘ Schedule ’ the mention of “ bylaws ” is made twice, in Class 4 which relates specifically to bylaws, and Class 15 relating to Publications. It was felt that information relating to bylaws should fit with just one class, so mention of them has been limited to Class 4 of the ‘ List ’ .
Overall it is hoped that there is a lot more clarity within the classes of the ‘ List ’ and that the ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ are easy to understand and interpret for any reader. If it is easier to interpret, then it is hope the list will be a lot easier to implement for local authorities in day to day recordkeeping. It is also hoped that the updated ‘ List ’ and ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ can be applied to any local authority records regardless of format. So far we have received positive feedback in relation to the alignment of current legislation and the structure of the ‘ Explanatory Notes ’ . It is hoped that this update will also feed into an update of advice produced by Archives New Zealand for local authority ’ s, particularly on the website.
