Transferring digital records to archives and records authorities

ADRI Glossary of disposal triggers
Lead Agencies: State Records Authority New South Wales and Public Record Office Victoria

The State Records Authority of New South Wales in collaboration with Public Record Office Victoria have completed and published a Glossy of Disposal Triggers. This glossary of disposal triggers was developed as a reference resource to define the terms and meanings of commonly used triggers in ADRI disposal authorities. It will assist in:

• promoting greater consistency in the terms used in Australian and New Zealand disposal authorities
• the automation of triggers in electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS)
• ensuring consistency in records retention across the sectors.

PDF version (99kb) | Word version (65kb)

ADRI Digital record exchange specification
Project Editor: Members of ADRI
Released: June 2008

The ADRI Digital Record Exchange Specification project was set up to simplify the transfer of custody of digital records from one system to another. This is achieved by specifying a standard representation for a record during the actual relocation of the records from one system to the other, and a simple process for performing this relocation. It only deals with the actual digital records from one records system to another. Aspects of transfer of custody not dealt with in this specification include, for example, the negotiation of the transfer, decisions about what to transfer and monitoring the quality of the transfer.

The scope of this specification is to define a transfer process and a Submission Information Package that may be used by all records systems in all organizations when transferring records between records systems. The systems may be located in the same organization or in different organizations. The specification is primarily intended for use when transferring records from a producer to an archive, but may be used for other types of transfer (e.g. from an agency to its successor, to and from secondary storage, and from one archive to another).

The production of this specification was undertaken by a group of experts of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) ISSS/eBES/EG13 group.

in coordination with the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) TBG 19; both groups dealing with eGovernment business processes. It was supported by the International Congress on Archives (ICA) and liaised with ISO. ADRI undertook the role of project editor. The specification was heavily based on earlier work undertaken by ADRI. It is currently undergoing standardisation within CEN.

View the specification (PDF, 174kb) »

Digital record export standard
Lead Agency:  Public Record Office Victoria
Released:  31 July 2007

This standard describes requirements for a transfer package of digital records to an archive. It specifies:

• the structure of a digital transfer package,
• the metadata that must be transferred with each record
• optional metadata that may be transferred with each record

The standard does not cover the:

• high level transfer process that negotiates and manages the transfer behavior of the records system
• metadata requirements of a records system beyond that required for export
• format of the record content
• low level protocols that ensure complete and accurate transfer
• physical transfer mechanisms

We expect the standard will be of use to those:

• responsible for records within an organization
• carrying out transfers of digital records
• designing or implementing records systems that must conform with this standard
• testing records systems for conformance to this standard.

View the standard (PDF, 118kb) » 

Online retention and disposal application (ORDA)
Lead Agency: State Records Office, Western Australia
Released: September 2012

The State Records Office WA (SROWA) was the lead agency in this project developing the Online Retention and Disposal Application (ORDA) in consultation with ADRI members. ORDA is a dedicated system that facilitates the development and management of records disposal authorities.

The SROWA completed development in February 2012 and ORDA became fully operational in July 2012 and went live for WA government agency use in September 2012
SROWA have allowed ADRI members to use ORDA and the Public Record Office Victoria and the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office are now deploying ORDA within their jurisdictions. The SROWA remains committed to sharing the source code with ADRI members who wish to adopt ORDA within their jurisdiction at no charge. The intellectual property for the system will reside with the SROWA but ADRI members may customise the software for their own purposes.

In summary, ORDA:

• Provides government agencies with the ability to draft their disposal authority via the system’s template, or to import it if developed using desktop or 3rd party software;
• Provides the ability to review the disposal authority via the system and tag comments against specific parts of it;
• Manages workflow processes from initial registration to finalisation/approval of disposal authorities, and captures each version of the disposal authority as it progresses through the workflow;
• Exports disposal authorities in different formats to serve approval processes (e.g. Word version) as well as recordkeeping system integration (e.g. XML version);
• Provides reporting capabilities for administrative purposes as well as allowing the harvesting of disposal authority data for different business activities within the SROWA.

As ORDA provides a central database of government records retention and disposal decisions, the application provides the capability to search for existing precedents (once the system becomes populated with disposal authorities), which supports the consistency of decision-making when individual disposal authorities are being drafted.

For any further enquiries about ORDA, please contact sro@sro.wa.gov.au