Digital Continuity Strategy
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Contents |
Digital Continuity Strategy Consultation Draft
The Digital Continuity Strategy Consultation Draft may be viewed and edited here.
What is the Digital Continuity Strategy?
Digital continuity is the ability to ensure digital information is usable for as long as it is needed. The shift to digital creation and business processes has created a challenge to the management and longer-term sustainability of the resulting information. This requires sustained resources and positive, frequent actions to ensure any degree of integrity and accessibility.
Archives New Zealand has been mandated to lead the development of the whole-of-government Digital Continuity Strategy; the Digital Continuity Strategy is a part of the overall Digital Strategy 2.0 (see p. 48 of the Digital Strategy 2.0 “Protect and Preserve Digital Content for Long-term Access”).
The Digital Continuity Strategy will inform the creation of policies and actions across government by articulating the issues and detailing a vision for dealing with them; the strategy is now at the government consultation phase and a draft strategy was approved by Cabinet in August 2008 for release for consultation
The Development Process
In 2007 Cabinet tasked Archives New Zealand with leading the development of a whole-of-government Digital Continuity Strategy and signed-off the consultation draft for open comment on August 28th 2008.
Development of this document has been multi-lateral, involving external organisations by means of an external advisory group as well as discussion with individual stakeholders in government departments. How the strategy process will eventuate will be contingent on the consultation process.
We will convene focus groups and consultation workshops to proactively stimulate feedback, details of these events will be published on the website shortly. If you would like to be involved please do not hesitate to contact the project manager directly at the details below.
Subsequent to the Digital Continuity Strategy consultation phase the strategy will be updated on a regular basis to reflect progress that has been made and advances in research and development. The lead for this will come from the results of the ongoing evaluation of its effectiveness and stakeholder feedback.
External advisory group members
Hamish James, Statistics New Zealand
John Truesdale, National Library of New Zealand
Keitha Booth, State Services Commission
Mark Horgan, Ministry of Education
Philippa Poynton, Ministry of Health
Bradley Ward, Ministry of Economic Development
George Slim, MORST
Key Strategy Aims and Objectives
The overarching aim of the strategy is to provide the framework for an environment where individual organisations and organisations do not have to supply the resources and expertise necessary for the implementation of strategies and methodologies for digital preservation. It will not be necessary for organisations to craft unique solutions, nor will it be required for them to build capability internally to address this issue. The vision can be succinctly stated as follows:
Information is trusted and accessible when it is needed, now and in the future.
Key messages arising from this vision statement are:
- There when you need it. Public sector digital information will be maintained so that it can be accessed when it is needed. Some information is required only for a few months or years. A small proportion needs to be preserved for many decades for future users.
- Authentic and reliable. Public sector digital information is tamper-proof and free of technological digital rights restrictions. It can be trusted to be authentic and reliable.
- Trusted access. New Zealanders can be confident that they will be able to find, retrieve and use all government digital information that can be made publicly available, and that their sensitive information will be protected from unauthorised access.
- Do nothing, lose everything. If no action is taken, public sector digital information will be lost. Government should take a proactive approach to maintain information for the future.
Why is the Digital Continuity Strategy important?
We need to ensure that digital content that is important to New Zealand is managed and kept safe for use by current users and appropriately maintained by government organisations to be accessible as public archives for as long as they are required for future generations. The challenges of ensuring long-term access across the public sector cannot be underestimated, and cannot be achieved by any individual organisation in isolation.
The shift to digital creation of information and ICT-based business processes, while enabling transformation in the way business and service delivery is carried out, has created a challenge to managing and sustaining the resulting information. In the rapidly changing technological world most new organisational knowledge and information content is digitally created and managed in digital formats only. This has meant great changes to the way in which we save, access, manage risk and (re)use this information.
Digital content cannot be managed in the same way as content created in more traditional ways. We need long-term systems to ensure the ongoing integrity of these resources and their accessibility. The Digital Continuity Strategy is crucial to government’s continued goal for a sustainable digital New Zealand.
Webpage and Feedback Forms
- Digital Continuity Strategy webpage on Continuum
- Digital Continuity Strategy PDF Version
- Digital Continuity Strategy RTF feedback form
Contact Us
Project Manager:
Stephen Clarke
Senior Advisor
Digital Sustainability Programme
Archives New Zealand - Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga
10 Mulgrave St, PO Box 12050, Wellington, New Zealand
Phone: 64-4-894 6030
Email: stephen.clarke@archives.govt.nz
Fax: 64-4-495 6210
I: http://www.archives.govt.nz/continuum
