Australia's federal government departments and agencies have been set a 2015 deadline to make a transition to electronic record-keeping. But is the timetable realistic and what hope has it got of being achieved?

The National Archives of Australia (NAA) Digital Transition Policy requires a majority of records in agencies and departments to be handled electronically by 2015, with a minimum of new paper records created.

The NAA has been clear that it expects senior management across the federal government to drive these changes.  On its part, from 2015 the NAA will only accept records into its archive in digital form (with some exceptions for legacy material).  While the volume of digital records sent to the archives will be limited initially, this change puts pressure on agencies that are non-compliant to upgrade their systems or budget for expensive backscanning of their paper records.

To track progress, federal agencies and departments have been required to submit annual “Check-up” surveys since 2011.  The survey aims to benchmark their progress against the minimum record-keeping requirements that must be achieved by 2015 to comply with the Digital Transition Policy.

In three months’ time, the final mandatory Check-up submission will be sent by departments and agencies to the NAA for collation and reporting to the Minister.

The surveys are worthy, but flawed. The chief problem of Check-up is that it is a self-reporting tool. This encourages, shall we say, “optimistic” reporting of progress which hides the true complexity of the record-keeping problem emerging. The process, undertaken with the best of intentions, goes something like this:

• a low-level officer or manager completes the initial survey based, more or less, on the actual state of affairs

• their manager reviews the survey results and revises some response to put a slightly more positive spin on the more glaring areas of non-compliance

• this review and revision process is repeated up the hierarchy until it gets to the CEO, by which stage anything even slightly critical of the agency's processes has been whitewashed to invisibility

• the CEO signs off the report, blissfully unaware of the messiness that underlies the confident assertions in the survey

To be crystal clear, I am not suggesting that respondents are being consciously inaccurate.  But there's a huge grey area in any survey that effectively allows the answer “mostly compliant”. Does this mean 51% compliant or 90% compliant? 

While the results of the Check-Up surveys from previous years are not publicly available, it is indisputable that the majority of agencies and departments still rely upon paper-based processes.  

A significant minority still print out emails and documents to store in their physical files and archives. More seriously, electronic record-keeping systems often remain siloed from the business systems that support the core processes of agencies and departments.  

The problem is that to achieve the efficiency promised by on-line services and other electronic information systems, record-keeping cannot remain as a parallel or separate process.  Some products try to address this by integrating record-keeping with collaboration and process management. But this is still just a partial solution at best. 

As the volume of digital information increases, the separation of record-keeping systems from business systems is substantially increasing the risk of records remaining uncaptured or uncontrolled.  My concern is that even if the Check-up surveys from agencies and departments report compliance, a swathe of electronic record-keeping problems will remain undocumented and unaddressed.

To bring record-keeping metaphorically out of the basement, we need to understand what it is – a core risk control technique and business efficiency tool.  But without a senior management 

culture in government that prioritises correct and efficient record-keeping as a KPI worthy of tracking at the same priority as other business processes, the choice for staff will be clear: achieve your KPIs or make the extra effort on compliance for no apparent gain. It doesn't take Nostradamus to forecast the likely outcome of that scenario.

knowquestion will be running a series of workshops in Sydney (July 19), and Canberra (July 24 & August 7), focusing on giving staff the skills and practical solutions they need to tackle the transition to electronic record-keeping. For more information visit www.knowquestion.com.au/skills.  Early bird registrations close on June 30. As a special offer for IDM readers, registrations may quote code “kqw” to receive 5% off the price.