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ISSN 1321-6260
June 2022 - Number 153

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Legislative update

The Museums of History NSW Bill 2022 was introduced into the Legislative Assembly of NSW on 22 June 2022.

The Bill proposes the joining of Sydney Living Museums and the State Archives and Records Authority of New South Wales [SARA] to form the Museums of History NSW.  The Museums of History NSW will hold the State archives collection and the museums currently under the care of Sydney Living Museums, with the recordkeeping regulatory function undertaken by the current SARA developed into a focused, standalone public office.

The Bill proposes the transfer of the functions in parts 4, 5 and 6 of the State Records Act 1998 to the Museums of History NSW. The Bill provides that the current SARA will be renamed the State Records Authority of NSW, which will have responsibility to administer parts 2 and 3 of the State Records Act. The Bill also proposes reforms to the access and transfer provisions of the State Records Act, a new monitoring power for public office recordkeeping which will allow the new State Records Authority of NSW to issue a notice to require a public office to assess its recordkeeping practices, clarification of two definitions in the State Records Act, and an increase of penalty units under section 21 and lengthening the period of time in which proceedings under the Act can be commenced.

We will keep you updated on the legislative changes and will be in contact regarding specific changes that may impact you when changes are confirmed.

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Update on Monitoring Exercise and the new Monitoring Portal

A report on the results of this year’s Monitoring Exercise is now available on our website. Thank you to all the public offices who participated - we had a 65% response rate to our request for submissions. This is a great response to the first monitoring exercise in 9 years and establishes a baseline and overview of the level of maturity and conformity of public offices’ records management. The next Monitoring Exercise will be in March 2023.

The new Monitoring Portal will be launched in late July. Public offices will be able to access it via the Services Portal box at the top of the Government Recordkeeping page. We will contact public offices from late July and during August with information about setting up logons for the portal.

The Portal is designed to collect submissions from public offices each year as part of the annual Monitoring Exercise, and to enable public offices to access their submission and reports of the aggregate data/results of each monitoring exercise. Public offices will only be able to access their own data and will not have access to any other public office’s data. Public offices will have access to the aggregate results for the Monitoring Exercise and can use this information for benchmarking purposes. Public offices will also be able to compare their performance against the results for the cluster or compare against the ‘type’ of public office. As an example, NSW State Archives and Records will be able to compare its performance with the Premier and Cabinet cluster of government (this is the cluster we were part of for the 2022 Monitoring Exercise), and also compare our results against the ‘Government’ or Departments/Agencies/Authorities type of public office.

If you have any queries about the Monitoring Exercise or the new Monitoring Portal, contact us at govrec@records.nsw.gov.au

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Risk webinar recording and guidance

The recording and presentation from our Assessing records, information and data risks webinar are now available.

This webinar supports the Records, information and data risks and Identifying and managing high-value and high-risk records, information and data guidance released earlier this year.

Past webinars and presentations are also available.

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Disposal authorities approved

The Board of the State Archives and Records Authority of NSW recently approved the following records retention and disposal authorities:

  • Service NSW (new disposal authority)
  • Cemeteries and Crematoria NSW (new disposal authority)
  • Cemeteries and crematoria operators (replaces DA180 and parts of GA39). FA428 Please note we will be incontact with Councils when the new disposal authority is formally issued and GA39 has been amended.
  • Rural Assistance Authority (replaces DA116)
  • Forensic medicine (replaces GDA19).

Copies of disposal authorities are available from our website.

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Are you a new Senior Responsible Officer for records management?

If you’re a new Senior Responsible Officer for records management, we have a range of resources on our website to assist you with your new role:

And if you have queries about your new role, please contact the Recordkeeping Standards and Advice team at govrec@records.nsw.gov.au

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