These pages offer advice to agencies on strategies to ensure access to their electronic records in the long term, and provide information about how the National Archives is ensuring long-term access to archival records of the Commonwealth that are in digital form.
Records of government are increasingly created and managed electronically. Managing these electronic records is a challenge facing all government agencies. A major component of this challenge is dealing with technological obsolescence, and ensuring the accessibility of these assets well into the future.
Each agency should develop its own preservation strategy to ensure that it can manage and access its electronic records in the long term – see Electronic preservation planning. Other relevant publications and information include:
The National Archives has a legislative responsibility to manage, preserve and make accessible the archival resources of the Commonwealth for current and future generations. These archival resources include a large quantity of electronic material, and more is being transferred into our custody all the time.
As a consequence, the National Archives has undertaken extensive research and testing in the area of digital preservation. The Archives uses the term 'digital preservation' to describe the software, infrastructure and processes it has developed. The term acknowledges that our research is focused on digital records, which are a subset of electronic records.
To find out more about the National Archives digital preservation program, see How we preserve digital records.