Page 5736 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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Our current approach is to say basically that the medium does not matter, that we can define a record and that it is a record regardless of whether it is a paper record, an electronic record or even a record of hieroglyphics. As we become more and more innovative with our electronic communication, this becomes more and more problematical. For instance, you can do things with Google Maps that simply cannot be done with paper-based records. As the territory is moving into using social media such as Facebook, and possibly in the future Twitter, it will become increasingly difficult to deal with these things in a paper-based way.
We may end up in the future using the new technology as a more integral part of records management. For instance, we might save a large body of data, or hopefully information, and then use search techniques to extract what we need from it. This could enable our formal record management to be more like our record use.
Many organisations and governments are working on the best way to manage electronic records. I understand the Victorian government has published the Victorian electronic records strategy, which includes a standard for the preservation, long-term storage and access to permanent electronic records. I do urge the ACT’s record managers to look at these issues because they are not going to go away.
While on this issue, I would also like to mention the concept of proactive disclosure. This is the concept of governments using new technologies to keep documents and data online, where members of the public are able to search for material for themselves. Proactive disclosure could be regarded as one part of a bigger initiative, sometimes called e-government, e-participation or Gov 2.0.
Gov 2.0 could be described as using new technology for tools—that is why there is a 2.0—to do government better. It involves better communication within the government as well as without. Gov 2.0 involves direct engagement with citizens, business and community groups in potentially two-way or more conversations about government services and public policy through open access to public sector information and new ICT technologies.
As I said in the August debate on green ICT, I would like to have a debate in this Assembly about Gov 2.0 and its adoption by the ACT government. In the meantime I will make a few observations. I will start with my usual whinge—ACTPLA and DAs. I continually get told by people that DAs are not up on ACTPLA’s website at the time of initial notification and that, if you do get to the DA, sometimes they are megs and megs in size, they do not have executive summaries, and they are all but incomprehensible in many cases by members of the public. This is something that I believe ACTPLA needs to work on.
It also needs to work on actually keeping the DA information available to the public. I appreciate that there is a need for ACTPLA to move some of its information from more expensive to less expensive data storage areas, but it could still keep a database of DAs that is publicly accessible and allow people to make an email request for access to them. At present, as far as I can tell, the only way of doing it is to get your MLA to write to the minister, who then may give access to the records.
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