Climbing the well-worn timber staircase to the Surry Hills, Sydney design studio of Longina Phillips Designs and the door opens to a hive of a hive of design activity and modern technology. In the case of this busy design studio there is nothing artificial about the distressed finish to the timber stairs and flooring, it is genuine wear and tear from the traffic of hundreds of talented designers and artists that have worked in the Victorian-era terrace building since the studio opened in 1988.

Every Tweet, Google Plus update or FaceBook friend request from a Victorian public servant is now destined for the archives, under a new pronouncement from the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) that “social media posts created or received by public officers in the course of their duties are public records and must be captured, managed and disposed of in accordance with PROV Standards.”