Grech report slams Treasury records management

August 7, 2009:The Prime Minister and Treasurer have been cleared of any wrongdoing over the 'Utegate' affair, but Treasury has come in for severe critiscim of its records management practices from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

Treasury has over 1000 staff that use Trim for electronic and hard copy record-keeping and Symantec Enterprise Vault for Exchange email archiving.

However in its quest to find documents and communications relating to the Godwin Grech affair, ANAO investigators found themselves digging through filing cabinets and searching files and folders on individual Treasury officer's local computers.

The report notes that according to its own Recordkeeping Policy, which was reviewed as recently as May 2009, "all of the Treasury’s records should be created and maintained within the primary recordkeeping system (TRIM) unless captured into an approved business system that meets the requirements of a recordkeeping system.

"As such, records should not be maintained in shared folders or email archive folders as these electronic storage facilities do not contain the recordkeeping functionality needed to ensure that records will be captured and maintained and preserved for as long as required."However ... this framework was not adhered to."

"There were also various Cabinet-in-Confidence documents that were not being held in accordance with the required procedures. In addition, various important documents relating to Treasury activities going back some years were also held in the C Class container [filing cabinet] and had not been captured into the official record-keeping system."

The report goes on to note that "much of the correspondence in relation to the policy development and implementation processes for the SPV occurred via email. Treasury has issued an email policy, as a companion document to its recordkeeping policy. The email policy reinforces the importance of corporate information being stored in TRIM.

"[However] ... important electronic records remained within shared folders or, most often, inindividuals’ email folders rather than being captured in TRIM. Accordingly, a significant amount of audit effort was directed at examining and/or searching shared folders, relevant individuals’ individual folders and email accounts for Treasury officials and Ministerial advisers."

The full report is available HERE.