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Technical requirements set out in this specification aim to ensure that digitisation efforts result in the creation of authentic, reliable, and usable digitised copies of paper records in accordance with General retention and disposal authority: Original or source records that have been copied (GA45).

Case studies include

• Digitisation on a grand scale: The National Film and Sound Archive
• Preserving oral history: Department of Services Technology and Administration

The Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) is the lead agency for a number of NSW Government programs and services. This case study outlines DPC’s Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) Program strategy and the successes the EDRM team has had to date in transitioning their organisation to a fully digital operating environment.

The NSW Self Insurance Corporation (SICorp) manages the NSW Government’s self insured assets and liabilities. This case study describes a series of improvements implemented by SICorp to consolidate and streamline its information management processes to add value and improve organisational performance.

Many NSW public offices have accumulated large amounts of data in legacy systems. The purpose of this guidance is to draw together advice and procedures to allow public offices to identify legacy systems, and identify and overcome the barriers to dealing with the data in those systems through migration and decommissioning as a routine component of its information management and technology program.

This advice identifies some of the considerations associated with outsourcing the digitisation of audio or video.

This purpose of this guidance is to outline common considerations for digitisation programs.

This page provides advice on choosing a format/codec for digitising different types of audio and video recordings.

From time to time State Records NSW may also issue disposal alerts or advice about disposal freezes.

Digitisation refers to the conversion of non-digital material to digital form. There are many reasons why your organisation may consider converting existing analogue recordings to digital. If your organisation decides to digitise analogue audio and video recordings, there are a number of factors to consider.

This case study describes a business process digitisation program introduced by the NSW Police Force. It involves the digitisation of invoices and the integration of SAP with their EDRMS to bring about business process improvement, cost savings and the effective management and disposal of accounts payable records.

The Council introduced a business process digitisation program in 2008 for private certification files and conducted a back-capture digitisation project to digitise existing files. This case study describes these initiatives, which have increased process efficiency and reduced costs.

This case study looks briefly at a number of both business process digitisation programs and back-capture digitisation projects being undertaken at the Western Sydney University. The key message of this case study is that planning for digitisation needs to involve determining the business drivers for each project/program and the particular needs of the records. These must inform chosen digitisation approaches, specifications and other requirements – there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.

The relam of digital information management is ever evolving, where formats and systems can become swiftly outdated. It can equate to varying information issues relating to accessibility, authenticity, accuracy, and efficiency. 

The following advice highlights some of the common issues in which your organisation may encounter with suggested solutions/strategies to mitigate these challenges. 

Advances in technology have ensured that it is now easy to create, replicate and share digital images. However, these images generally take up a lot of storage space are more susceptible to abuse or human error. Therefore it is important to carefully address issues regarding the capture, management and disposal of digital images, particularly if they are to be used for evidentiary purposes.

This case study describes a pilot business process digitisation project involving the human resource management records of the NSW Department of Education and Communities. The project highlights the importance of project management and change management for business process digitisation and demonstrates how careful planning can facilitate the automation of metadata collection.

'Distributed management' of State archives is an alternative to the standard option of transferring records to Museums of History NSW custody. Under the distributed management model, State records still become State archives when 'control' passes to Museums of History NSW, but the records remain in the custody of another person. In most cases this will involve the responsible public office or a repository (such as a regional repository) storing and managing State archives by agreement with Museums of History NSW.

This advice introduces public offices to the concept of distributed management of State archives and outlines the requirements that must be met when setting up a distributed management agreement.

This checklist is designed to provide information for the quick assessment of damage to records and their recovery.

The purpose of this policy is to establish a set of principles underpinning the New South Wales Government's approach to the preservation of digital records.

Digital State records must be properly preserved so that they survive in authentic and accessible forms over the whole of their existence - from a few years, or the lifetime of an individual or asset - or forever, in the case of digital State archives.

If digital records are not preserved, there is a risk that Government will lose essential evidence of its business, that citizens will not be able to access records documenting rights and legal obligations and that there will be a significant gap in the body of records documenting the society and communities of NSW in the State's archives.