Victoria's Archives Go Online

December 13, 2005: Fujitsu and EMC team up with the Public Records Office Victoria (PROV) to provide Australians with the 'Digital Archive' - a secure, web-based portal to thousands of documents.

Working with storage provider, Fujitsu in conjunction with EMC Documentumworked in tandem with the expert team at PROV over a two-year period to roll out the digital document library. The Digital Archive now enables relevant government bodies to upload records while abiding by the excellent Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS).

Well Vers'd
VERS, which was first set out ten years ago in 1995, sets out to:

• be generic but extensible, so that it will work in conjunction with existing recordkeeping and business practices.
• ensure that all records are stored in a documented format, to enable viewing of records in the future, regardless of the system that created them.
• specify methods to automate the capture of records from the desktop and business systems.
• specify ways and forms in which to capture information about records and encapsulate this with the records to ensure that records in the future will be understood in context.
• detail a method for securing records so that any changes are detectable.

The project, which cost $6.5-million allows for 2.5-million documents to be stored in its current configuration - Fujitsu characterises this as 40Km of paper - mainly in PDF and XML formatting. It was initially fed with the Departments of Justice and Infrastructure. But as you would expect from a flagship event, all the digital records of the 2006 Commonwealth Games are due to be transferred in 2006.

Is your State doing enough for ERC?

Related Article:
State and Industry Drive ICT Legislation