Archives New Zealand has released a report on the results of its second annual survey, which monitors information management progress in the public sector. The report “highlights several areas for improvement across government information management (IM)”, notes Chief Archivist Stephen Clarke.

“These range from informing outsourced providers about their IM responsibilities, to actively maintaining the usability of digital information with long-term value, and removing roadblocks to regular, routine and transparent disposal.

Archives New Zealand (Archives NZ) is the regulator under the Public Records Act 2005, making sure that public sector information is well-managed.

The findings report complements the key indicators for the survey reported in the recently published Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping . Both reports indicate that there is room for improvement in information management.

A key area for improvement is building IM requirements into new business information systems.

“This has been a mandatory requirement for over a decade. It is very disappointing that only half of the respondents could confirm they had done this,” said Clarke

The survey was sent to 270 public sector agencies between 20 July and 7 August last year, including 192 public offices that were required to respond. Overall, there was an 80 percent response rate. 22 public offices did not respond to the survey and they have been named in the appendices to the report.

The report found 68 percent of respondents have implemented a new business information system (or systems) in the last 12 months. Of those, half (50%) have built in a process for managing information through its lifecycle, while the other half either have not built in requirements or ‘don’t know’ whether they have.

The most common challenges affecting respondents’ ability to build in IM requirements are lack of awareness of the requirements amongst internal staff, the number of systems in use and lack of consultation with IM staff.

Other challenges include:

• The age of business systems.

• Lack of resourcing and capability.

• The rapidness of implementations.

• Procurement and ICT projects bypassing IM assurance or consulting too late.

• Competing business priorities.

• IM requirements being considered ‘nice to have’ or de-scoped.

• Archives does not provide relevant guidance.

71 percent of respondents said that ‘some’ of their business systems meet Archives NZ minimum requirements for metadata. Far fewer said all systems meet the requirements (16%), while a combined 13% responded ‘no systems do’ or ‘don’t know’.  

Download the full report HERE