Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping 2022/23

Trends in government recordkeeping

Here at Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand, we oversee the government recordkeeping framework and support and monitor the public sector to ensure each organisation complies with its obligations under the Public Records Act 2005 (the Act).

Our previous reports provided a snapshot of government recordkeeping performance and practice for a single year of publication. To identify trends — and to better understand the state of government recordkeeping — we’ve used data sourced from multiple years of our:

• audit programme

• survey of public sector information management

• compliance work.

This data indicates public sector organisations:

• often struggle to meet their obligations under the Act

• improve information management maturity by having information management staff

• have consistently struggled to implement records disposal, including archival transfer

• are motivated into action by audit recommendations

• find the audit programme beneficial and valuable.

Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry

The Royal Commission has highlighted the significance of access to care records for individuals and that recordkeeping failures contribute to abuse in care. We provided digitised public archives to support the inquiry. We are cataloguing and indexing care records to improve accessibility and reviewing the disposal authorities that apply to care records. We are also supporting work on:

• new records access principles

• a central website on care records

• a records support service.

Planning is underway for the archival transfer of the Royal Commission’s records as soon as possible after its closure to ensure these are preserved, protected and made available, as appropriate, for future use.

Compliance

We followed up on 12 new incidents in 2022/23. Non-compliance cases offer opportunities for improvement. The report contains details about a direction to report we issued seeking details about information management at Immigration New Zealand. The main themes from this year’s non-compliance assessments were:

• issues with records creation and capture

• access to information

• disposal of records.

Collections search

After the launch of Collections search in February 2022, there were performance issues and potential privacy concerns that continued into 2022/23. We’re actively working with the vendor on a programme of prioritised improvements.

Regulatory uplift

We’re seeking to improve our regulatory capability and the public records system. The project is focused on a developing a regulatory operating model and better performance measures while clarifying our regulatory strategies.

Machine learning tools and hyperscale cloud capabilities

We led work on a proof of concept which showed that machine learning tools have the potential to auto-classify digital public records to improve information management and to surface information of interest to Māori. This work tested the use of machine learning and hyperscale cloud capabilities to sort information and address other information challenges of the digital era.

Read the full Poumanaaki Chief Archivist’s Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping 2022/23

Read the full report about the state of recordkeeping across government (PDF, 4.1MB)