Web and Social Media

Decommissioning websites

Aleana.Frost — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 18:46:23 +0000

Decommissioning websites Aleana.Frost Wed, 2022-30-03 05:46

NSW Government web content are State records under the State Records Act 1998. Web content is currently considered as a publication and the website as the digital publishing platform.

In parallel with the requirements of decommissioning other legacy systems, use the relevant retention and disposal authorities to identify:

web content which are required by legislation to be accessible and/or available online
web content which can be removed from the website as they are time-expired or duplicated elsewhere.
web content required for longer term retention
web content required as State archives.

Planning

The development of a detailed archiving plan is an essential element of website archiving or decommissioning process. The plan should consider including the following tasks:

identification of required resources including task list, people, time and cost
securing approval and support of the agency’s senior executive
identification and engagement with affected stakeholders, including the website creators, administrators, managers and its audience which may be internal to the agency in the case of an Intranet, or external, if a publicly available website
website content audit which includes determining the function of web pages and corresponding retention periods. This activity will also enable identification of technical specifications for:
- website/s which will be decommissioned and retained, including storage options
- web content which should be prepared for transfer to Museums of History NSW.

Website Content audit

A comprehensive content audit of the website needs to be undertaken prior to the decommissioning or archiving project in order to identify business records, their owners and to make retention and disposal decisions. The audit needs to incorporate the following tasks:

Identification of the agency’s specific recordkeeping requirements in regard to enabling legislation or legislation overseen by the agency
Identification and application of relevant retention and disposal authorities
Identification of web content for retention in the agency’s records management system for appropriate retention either by the agency or ultimate transfer to Museums of History NSW
Identification of web content for migration to other agency websites or their website partners (when relocating content for agency reorganisation and/or consolidation)

Technology Considerations

Agencies need to work closely with their IT staff, website vendors/hosts and other technical stakeholders/partners in order to:

Determine to what extent website content has already been archived elsewhere. Check National Library of Australia’s Pandora, and State Library NSW’s Internet Archive pages for more information. Museums of History NSW is not duplicating the collecting initiatives of these institutions.
Determine and communicate strategies and processes for the migration of required records to an appropriate business system enabled to meet record keeping requirements (See Checklist for assessing business systems)
Determine if a snapshot of the website is required or will be required. This decision should be based on risk, availability and accessibility requirements
Determine feasibility of migrating required website documents to newly consolidated websites for reuse and/or updating
Ensure broken website links are identified and addressed using a broken link checker
Audit the impact of the website archiving project on existing vendor, software and hardware contracts and licenses
Manage the retention, transfer or redirection of the website domain name and impact its impact on agency profile, recognition and reputation.
Determine the format of the identified web content for retention and storage and for transfer to Museums of History NSW.

Best practice

It is best practice for public offices to manage public expectations in relation to availability and accessibility of web content. Some strategies to consider are:

Providing a notice that the website will be decommissioned, why the website, web page or web content will be removed and when it will happen
Providing contact information that will respond to public enquiries regarding the website and its content
Redirecting users to another website, if applicable or available.

Published November 2020

Recordkeeping Advice

Web and Social Media

Recordkeeping A-Z

Keeping records created in whole of government collaborative tools

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 23:23:34 +0000

Keeping records created in whole of government collaborative tools Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 2017-23-10 10:23

Using collaborative tools for government business will create official records. These records need to be managed and kept as they provide evidence of the decisions and outcomes of the collaboration, and demonstrate the work which has been undertaken and that participants acted accountably.

Responsibilities of the lead agency

When establishing a collaborative project across government or within a cluster, it’s important that a lead agency is identified. The lead agency is in effect the secretariat of the group and responsible for:

convening the group
inviting additional members to the group
ensuring all members of the group are aware of the protocols with working in the collaborative project space (e.g. what types of business discussions/activities are permitted in the collaborative space, confidentiality of information including cabinet-in-confidence requirements, access to information, security of information etc.)
ensuring that the primary records created by the project are managed and kept for the minimum retention periods required.

Capturing records of the collaboration will not be onerous and in many cases will happen seamlessly ‘behind the scenes’.

The lead agency will also be responsible for disposing of the records in accordance with the State Records Act 1998.

Retention and disposal requirements

State Records NSW issues retention and disposal authorities which mandate minimum retention periods for records. It is important to remember that not all records created in collaborative projects will be required to be kept for lengthy periods.

Some records will have very short retention periods. If the collaborative tool can manage the records for the required time, then there is no need to consider moving the records out of the tool.

Some of the records (e.g. those documenting decisions made at senior levels, and project outputs) may need to be kept for longer periods. These records may need to be exported out of the collaborative tool and captured elsewhere to ensure their survival. Lead agencies should consult with their organisation’s records management team for advice on where these records should be kept.

If records are identified as State archives, they will need to be migrated to the Museums of History NSW for permanent retention.

Following is some general advice around what should be captured and how long it needs to be kept. Please note that retention periods given below are drawn from the General retention and disposal authority – administrative records (GA28) and cover records common to many agencies.

If your organisation is using collaborative tools for internal (within cluster) projects, records of project outputs will likely be covered by your organisation’s functional retention and disposal authority. Please contact your organisation’s records management team for advice on how long these records should be kept.

Retention requirements are very dependent on the context of the records. If you are unsure about using any of the retention periods listed below, please contact us at govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au.

Type of activity	Lead agency to create and maintain:	Retention period for lead agency	Retention period for non-lead agencies
High level whole of government or inter-agency strategic planning or policy development collaboration	Establishment of the working group including members and terms of reference	Required as State archives (GA28 1.0.2 or 1.0.3)	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.4)
	Proposals and initiatives	Required as State archives (GA28 1.0.2 or 1.0.3)	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.4)
	Significant drafts, discussions that contribute to the final recommendations/decisions/output	Required as State archives (GA28 1.0.2 or 1.0.3)	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.4)
	General discussions that do not contribute to final decision/outcome, reference material, operational matters and administrative arrangements	Retain until administrative or reference use ceases (GA28 1.0.9)	Retain until administrative or reference use ceases (GA28 1.0.9)
Inter-agency collaboration on operational, administrative matters	Terms of reference, membership, discussions, decisions	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.4)	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.4)
Internal (within cluster) strategic planning or policy development collaboration	Establishment of the working group including members and terms of reference	Required as State archives (GA28 1.0.5)
	Proposals and initiatives	Required as State archives (GA28 1.0.5)
	Significant drafts, discussions that contribute to the final recommendations/decisions/output	Required as State archives(GA28 1.0.5)
	General discussions that do not contribute to final decision/outcome, reference material, operational matters and administrative arrangements	Retain until administrative or reference use ceases (GA28 1.0.9)
Internal (within cluster) collaboration on administrative or general operational matters	Terms of reference, membership, discussions, decisions	Retain a minimum of 5 years after action completed (GA28 1.0.7)
General conversation on routine matters and events	General discussions that do not contribute to decision-making, setting of policies, operational matters and administrative arrangements	Retain until administrative or reference use ceases (GA28 1.0.9)

Published October 2017

Recordkeeping Advice

Web and Social Media

Recordkeeping A-Z

Social media - Frequently Asked Questions

angela.mcging — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 23:28:16 +0000

Social media - Frequently Asked Questions angela.mcging Wed, 2017-19-07 09:28

We are often asked questions about recordkeeping and social media.

There is no single retention period for social media records as this is determined by the purpose, content, or result of the communication and not the format.

Agencies should refer to the relevant general and functional retention and disposal authorities to determine retention and disposal actions for their social media records. Retention and disposal authorities identify the many different forms of business that NSW government organisations perform and specify the rules for how long information about each form of government business needs to be kept.These rules are risk dependent in that they differ according to the type of business being performed. They do not normally specifically mention social media records as they are just a particular format.

For low level business, retention rules are generally short – that is, information about this business often only needs to be maintained for one or two years. Information about higher risk, longer term or strategic business generally needs to be kept for longer periods of time. Below are some examples of disposal classes in our retention and disposal authorities that provide coverage for records of social media:

the General retention and disposal authority: administrative records COMMUNITY RELATIONS - Marketing - (GA28, entry 2.14.2) covers records relating to general promotional or explanatory information about the organisation, its services and activities. This includes background research, draft and final versions of information published on websites, blogs or via social media. These types of social media records are only required to be retained until withdrawn, superseded or when reference use ceases.
official social media accounts of Ministers are covered by the General retention and disposal authority: records of a Minister's Office, and are required as State archives (GDA13, entry 1.1).
communications on Twitter and Facebook during a bushfire by the Rural Fire Service are covered as part of the records of the management of the incident (FA326, entries 10.2.1 and 10.2.2) and would be required as State archives or for a minimum of 25 years depending on the incident.
notifications on a Council’s Facebook about road closures (which have a 2 year retention period under GA39, 28.10.4)

If you are in doubt about where your social media records are covered please contact govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au for advice.

Social systems, even if they are third party hosted systems like Twitter and Facebook or internal communication tools like Yammer, are government business systems when they are used by a government entity for business purposes.

They are therefore subject to all standard legislative requirements, including defamation, criminal and other legal requirements.

Information-related legislation such as the State Records Act, Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, Government Information Public Access Act and the Copyright Act all also apply to socially generated information. Social systems are also subject to discovery provisions, like any other business application.

The fact that social tools are often used to have informal conversations does not stop legislative requirements from applying to them.

Current experience is showing that very broad notions of business purposes are being applied to new technologies. For example, personal mobile devices are frequently subpoenaed or subject to discovery orders if those devices have also been used for business communications. Therefore the fact that social tools host informal chat as well business specific conversations do not prevent social systems from being subject to the standard range of legislative requirements affecting any business environment.

Proactive information management strategies for social systems, particularly those supporting high risk business processes, can therefore help in the management of any legal issues that arise.

Yes, social media information is a record under the definitions of the State Records Act.

This does not mean that all social media information must be captured and managed as an official record but it does mean that some high risk and key business value social media information will need to be managed and kept for appropriate periods of time.

In Australia, the Federal Court has held that a party could be liable as a publisher for defamatory comments posted by members of the public on corporate social media accounts.

This raises information management issues for government organisations running social media sites where people have the ability to post comments.

The advice, Online defamation: what you need to know (May 2013) says it is important to have appropriate policies in place regarding the management of sites, to monitor these sites and any comments posted, to remove posts that are offensive or potentially defamatory, and to appropriately document the action taken by your organisation in case the issue escalates.

The incident should be documented, the post deleted and appropriate senior management and legal staff informed in case the issue escalates.

The PPIP Act requires you to be upfront about what you are doing with personal information.

Social media communications are in the public domain. Care must be taken to not use social media applications in ways that collect or disclose personal information. Privacy protection and management therefore needs to be proactively considered and designed into social strategies.

Example: Educate staff not to obtain or disclose personal information via social media

The University of Sydney’s Privacy Management Plan says:

Use of social media such as Facebook or Twitter is limited to providing information to students on a broadcast basis, as for any other website presence.

Social media must not be used for responding to any current or prospective student’s question where the response would include personal information or would be giving specific advice regarding candidature.

Example: Tell your clients that you will not obtain personal information through social media.

The Commonwealth Department of Human Services says:

We will never ask you for personal information through social media. If we need personal information to answer your question or help you, we will ask you to use a more private channel, such as Express Plus apps, Online Services, by calling us, or visiting your nearest service centre.

To manage privacy, you also need to be very clear about how you will be using any personal information provided via social channels, and this includes capturing information and making records of social media activities.

Example: Tell people how their feedback will be used

The NSW Government’s Have Your Say site includes advice in its Privacy statement (as at February 2014) that tells people how the feedback they provide will be used:

The Department of Premier and Cabinet provides feedback facilities on this site to allow users to provide input into the future development of the site and to comment on the provision of service by the Department.

Users provide personal details for the purpose of receiving a reply to their feedback. This information will only be used for the purpose for which it was provided. We will not add your email address or name to any mailing list.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet may publish aggregated information about feedback on the site, to the extent that it does not identify or cannot be used to identify individual users.

Example: Tell people about your intended official uses of their information

As reported in New Zealand Government Controller and Auditor-General’s Learning from public entities’ use of social media (June 2013), the Law Commission in New Zealand actively consulted on its New Media Review through social channels. It made clear that content submitted through social media would be treated officially.

Its terms of participation stated that comments made through social channels would be treated as official submissions, could be used by the Law Commission and could form part of any final report.

Example: Tell people if you are going to be capturing information about your social media operations

This organisation notes that some publicly available personal information posted to this organisation’s blogs may be captured and kept as a record in this organisation’s internal business systems.

This organisation only captures and keeps the information it needs to support its business operations and any publicly available personal information that it captures, such as personally identified comments, responses and questions posted to its blogs, will be managed in accordance with the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998.

To mitigate any potential privacy risks, consider strategies like:

providing clear guidance to people, advising them not to provide personal information via social media accounts and advising them of any official uses of the information they may provide
moderating comments before they are officially published
monitoring any complaints received via social media and ensuring that if people share their personal information or the personal information of other people, this information can be removed from the public arena and passed through other more appropriate channels
advising people to contact you through alternative channels if they have personal issues they do not want to raise in a public forum.

Like all records and information management issues, this is a risk based decision that you need to make based on an assessment of what your social media channels are designed to do and based on how your community is engaging with them.

For example, if you sporadically tweet marketing messages via a corporate account, there is limited community engagement with your messaging and there is no long term business value in the information you are broadcasting, you do not generally need to worry about capturing this information and can leave it in your social media application.

If however you want comprehensive information about all of your social media communications, you should develop a schedule to build governance and accountability around this approach. There are a variety of tools you can use to export full records of much of your social media engagement but to build a schedule around when you deploy those tools to capture these records, consider your social channels, the frequency of your communications, the extent of community engagement with your communications and the exact nature of your communications and your community engagement.

For example, are you using a very large and relatively stable social media platform like Twitter? The size and ubiquity of Twitter means it is unlikely to disappear tomorrow and this means that for low value or routine business information, you don't need to schedule urgently information capture immediately or every week. Instead you may assess your requirements and decide that you only need to capture comprehensive downloads every 2-3 months or every 6 months for less dynamic accounts.

But, say you are tweeting about a specific project or campaign and getting a lot of community response and your organisation is investing a lot in the success of this project. For this form of business, there is likely to be more need for accountability, information sharing, reporting, business analysis and use of your social media information. For this type of business you are likely to want much more frequent capture, possibly on a daily or weekly schedule, to ensure this high value business information is captured, shared and made available to all staff with a need to know in the organisation.

Again, if you are using social channels to engage on issues that would be regarded as high risk - they impact vulnerable communities, or are about very high value projects or they are seeking community feedback on significant issues or plans or projects etc - you should schedule regular capture. There are real business risks and accountabilities in these areas and you want to be sure your organisation has good, accessible, comprehensive and accountable information about this business whenever it needs it.

There is more discussion of these issues in Strategies for managing social media records.

While it can be legitimate to ask your community to use existing formal channels rather than your social channels for particular types of communications, you should not have statements on your corporate social accounts with messages like: 'complaints received via Facebook are not officially registered' or 'requests for services made via this account will not be logged'.

You could include a statement on your social channels saying ‘If you would like to request a service please use our Customer Service Request form’ and include a link to that form, or saying ‘Please submit all complaints via email’ and provide an email address or a link for people to use.

However even with these statements, people are still likely to use your social accounts to request services or to make complaints or interact in other ways with your organisation. As your organisation is itself using these social channels as official communication channels, you do need to respond to valid business issues submitted via your social channels and, where needed to support your business, make and keep records of these issues.

If business issues are submitted via social media but you prefer to use existing formal channels to handle these issues, you can do this. You could have a process in place to ensure that whoever monitors or manages your social accounts takes a screenshot of the comment or issue, or runs a Facebook Activity report etc and then emails this to the relevant action officer for attention. This business issue which was initiated through social media then becomes part of your normal business channels.

However, if your community prefers to engage through social media, you should consider ways of managing business issues that arise there on social media. To support this, you should consider applying a ‘needs based information strategy’ as described in Strategies for managing social media records. This just means you manage information coming through your social media channels as and when you have a business need to do this.

This depends on the nature of your social media business.

In many instances it may not be significant but, if in particular business areas it is going to be important to know exactly what a tweet or post was referring to, you should develop a means to capture a record of the referenced web page where necessary.

To determine whether you need to do this you should ask questions like:

in a year’s time, is it going to be important to know what the advice a client was referred to was?
in the future, will we need to know what webpage a client was pointing to in their comment?
if our policies or official advice change regularly, will it be important to know what version of our policy or advice a client was directed to at the time of their enquiry?

If these types of issues are likely to be important, then you should develop a process that will enable you to capture information about your web content that will support your high risk social media business.

Capture of this information could be a manual process to capture either the full URL or a screenshot of the page itself. Alternatively it may be possible to develop an automated process and deploy a tool that will automatically take a copy of the web pages referred to in your tweets.

It may be that you will consider different strategies for different social media accounts. For example, depending on their business purpose, some Twitter accounts will reference external links much more significantly than others. A Twitter account used for marketing or communications may generally point off to many web-based resources, while another that is used to facilitate discussion and debate will primarily host conversations and will not reference as many external resources.

You also need to be aware of issues associated with content that is referenced using short URLs.

Short URLs are likely to be less supported and accessible than regular URLs. They are designed as a short term service, designed to facilitate short online communications and no guarantees are provided about their longevity. Also, a regular URL generally provides information about the location and context of an online resource whereas an auto-generated short URL does not.

In a social media information strategy you may want to look at the short URLs contained in your organisational tweets or other social media sources and determine whether there are any specific circumstances where you need these represented as a complete URL, in the information you capture about your social media communications.

No it does not.

First and foremost, your information management has to be achievable and sustainable. If your information is required for accountability, reporting or reuse purposes, it should is presented in an accessible, human readable way. Capturing data exactly as it looked in the system is desirable but, for most business uses, it is not as important as achievability, sustainability and accessibility.

In some cases, social media formats and presentation styles may be too difficult to replicate and keep. AJAX, the format that Facebook pages are presented in, is very complex. It is excellent for presenting dynamic, mixed content but could create a complex legacy problem if you wanted to manage data in this form indefinitely.

If, for specific your business or legal purposes, it is important to keep a record of how your social media site looked at a particular point in time or if you need to capture a record of a specific comment in the context that it appeared, consider capturing screenshots saved as PDF as a way to make and keep this information.

If you are concerned to maintain the accuracy and integrity of your social media information you need to ensure your information management strategy enables you to:

identify what social media channel the information was received through
identify the user account names of those involved in the communication/s
provide a time and date stamp for the communication/s
ensure the information is well managed within your corporate environment.

See our advice on Strategies for managing social media records for more advice on how to manage the accountability and integrity of your social media information.

This depends completely on the specific business needs your social media strategy is supporting.

The following questions help to identify the type of business your social media engagement is supporting:

Is high risk or strategic business in your organisation being performed in social channels?
Are corporate decisions being made or communicated through social channels?
Is significant advice communicated to clients through social channels?
Will your organisation have long term needs for the information generated through social channels?
Will members of the community base decisions or actions on the advice you are providing through social channels?
Will business reporting and/or planning and assessment rely on information contained in social systems?
Will business areas want to reuse content from social systems?
Does business information generated through social need to be shared through the organisation to inform decision making?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is likely that you will need an information management strategy to support your social media operations.

Again, this depends on the social media channels you are using. If you are using lots of different channels, you may need to look at using a variety of tools to work with all your social systems.

This is because social media tools are generally proprietary and commercial technologies. There is often little similarity between them and tools generally need to be configured to work with each specific social applications. Therefore, generally, it is complex for tools to be configured to collect content from all forms of social systems. Social systems are also constantly evolving which means that the tools that support them change regularly as well, making it difficult to use one tool consistently to manage all relevant business information.

See our advice on different tools for capturing social media information for more information about different social media tools and how they can be used.

We are keen to expand our list of tools so if you have any recommendations to add, please contact us.

You definitely need to capture the date and time of broadcast when communicating messages through this system. Emergency broadcasts provide critical information to the community and it can be very important for organisations to be able to account for the information that they broadcast at specific points in time.

However you do not need to capture information about when someone receives your communication as it is often not possible to do this. Geographical coverage issues, volume capacities, specific device issues and their availability can all affect transmission time and capacity. In these circumstances you do need to capture a record of what was communicated from your environment but you cannot control what occurs in other environments.

When using a broadcast system to generate and broadcast social media communications across a variety of channels in emergency situations, you may also want to ensure that your system can generate an exception report, to make sure you are informed if some posts are not successful. This can serve immediate business needs for re-communicating certain messages and can also provide a record of communication transmission.

What information management considerations apply to wikis?

With these types of complex systems you need to ask fairly complex questions to try and determine exactly what parts of the system you need to keep as ongoing business information.

Wikis are often used for specific projects where collaboration, clear versioning and tight management controls are required.

If staff performing high risk business or projects wish to use a wiki and it is determined that there are going to be ongoing accountability and business needs for the information contained in this wiki, organisations should:

ensure that the preferred wiki platform enables information export
determine the formats in which information can be exported and determine whether these formats are interoperable with your current business systems and processes
identify whether all content within the wiki should be exported or whether export is limited to certain areas
communicate to the project team deploying the wiki that the information in it is of ongoing business value and therefore must not be purged at project completion
communicate to the project team using the wiki that the security rules they apply must not impede any necessary information management practices
ask the project team to determine whether wiki content should be preserved at intervals or at a specific project completion date
get the project team to determine whether core wiki content should be exported or whether only certain content has ongoing business value
determine whether the rules, access and use authorisations or project controls that govern use and update of the wiki also need to be exported out of the wiki as necessary accountability and authentication data
determine whether it is desirable to capture screenshots to record the look and feel of the wiki.

What information management considerations apply to collaborative editing tools like Google Docs?

With collaborative editing tools you need to consider your ongoing business needs for the information generated in these tools. If your business requires ongoing access to this information it should consider issues such as:

can the information be protected, shared, used and kept in the Google Docs environment for as long as it is required?
if not, what information should be exported out of Google Docs, who will export it and where should it be kept?
when will information export be performed – daily, weekly, at key decision points, at project completion etc?
after immediate collaborative business purposes have concluded, do any accessibility restrictions caused by password controls limit corporate information availability and reuse? If so, should export into more accessible corporate environments considered?
what technical and administrative controls are required to access information, such as secure log in and does this impede corporate ability to manage necessary information?
for accountability, traceability or version control purposes, does any revision history need to be captured in some instances?
is there the capacity to lock down pages when complete or at specific approval points, to prevent their subsequent alteration?
how is ownership between multiple collaborators to be determined? Are formal agreements around this required?
who has capacity to purge unnecessary drafts or extraneous information?
are staff aware of the need for version control and for clear labelling of content so it is clear what the most relevant, useable and definitive business information is?
if the information on Google Docs needs to be kept for periods of 5+ years, have you determined strategies to ensure ongoing accessibility can be maintained? Can you ensure that the content is not restricted to just one personal login? How will all relevant staff know the content exists and is useable for business purposes?

How can I manage information generated in LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has limited capacities for information export.

If high value business discussions are taking place in LinkedIn there may be limited amounts of information you can export from LinkedIn and manage within your organisation.

Certain information about first degree contacts can be exported as a CSV file and some LinkedIn comments or discussion threads be sent via an RSS feed to a nominated email address, but broader information export appears to be limited.

While group owners, moderators or managers have controls to delete content from LinkedIn discussions or comments, it is not possible to export a current list of group members involved in a discussion group, nor to export a discussion.

Therefore, if significant business communications are taking place on LinkedIn and if you have an ongoing business need to refer to and reuse this content, you may determine that LinkedIn is not the most appropriate location for these corporate discussions.

In many organisations there is no coordinated, overarching strategy for social media use. Social media technologies are adopted by different business areas without reference to corporate policies or strategies and without considering the information management requirements for the business they are performing.

This approach can lead to information loss or process duplication, as a lack of corporately available information means staff reproduce effort or operate without all information available to them. It can also mean that important, long term value business information can easily be disappear.

It is therefore important to identify all uses of social media technologies across your organisation and to develop an information management strategy that encompasses all areas of your social media operations.

A social media information strategy will enable you to:

comprehensively identify what business processes are moving to social media
determine what information generated via social media is needed to support these business processes
identify the legal and business information use and retention requirements that apply to your social media operations
identify the client needs, expectations and public accountabilities that apply to your social media operations
identify the business areas in your organisation that need to access, reference, respond to, use or reuse the information generated via your social media channels
identify and manage the information that your organisation needs long term access to
identify appropriate management strategies for high risk, high value business information
identify the business records that can stay in their native social media applications.

Assessing and understanding each of these will help you to determine how your organisation’s social media information can best be captured and managed.

It is important to keep a watching brief on your social media systems and consequently your social media strategy. These systems are very dynamic and how your organisation uses them can change quite rapidly. These changes can be driven by the community who might start to use your systems in different ways or they can be driven by staff who want to maximise the potential of social media.

If use of your social media systems start to change, you need to look at your current social media information management strategies and determine whether these also need to change.

Things to look out for include:

Are members of the community starting to ask specific questions about policy or services on social media?
Are you receiving compliments or complaints via social media?
Are staff members providing advice about new policies or programs via social media?

If these changes start occurring then your organisation’s information needs might change too. This is because you may now need the information from your social media system:

as input into policy or program development
as evidence of how a question or complaint was handled
to give to business areas as part of workflow processes
to enable effective client management.

As information in social media systems is not stable, if your business use of social media is changing, you may decide to start to schedule regular exports of your social media transactions to ensure your organisation is able to continue to access and use the business information it is generating and receiving via social media.

Your IT manager may be focussed on the blurry line between some of the more informal communications on your social media channels and the more substantial business that may be occurring there.

This however should not distract from the fact that organisational decisions and programs may be being publicly questioned on your social media accounts, that your organisation may be publicly promoting its programs and operations on social media and that you may be using social media for other legitimate business purposes, such as public consultation on policy or regulatory proposals.

If you are using social media for business purposes then the information being made available or the information received via social media is official government business information and you do need to assess whether you need a social media information management strategy.

A social media information management strategy will enable you to:

account for your business operations that are moving to social media environments
assist clients who choose to engage with the organisation through social media
ensure that the business intelligence generated in social media is fed back into business operations and is maintained and accessible for business purposes for as long as it is required
determine what business records in your social media channels need to be exported out of their native environment and into corporate business frameworks
evaluate, monitor, improve and assess your social media strategies and the business processes you are moving to social environments.

The very public nature of social media-based operations brings with it a public expectation of openness and accountability. If government is engaging in social spaces, people expect that fit and proper processes will apply to the social media communications as much as they apply to traditional, more formal communications. Good management of your social media information is a key way to meet this expectation.

Is Facebook a government business system? My IT section says that it is not.

Yes. If you are using it for government business purposes, then it is a government business system and you need to make arrangements to manage the information you are producing and receiving.

Facebook however is not a business and information management system – it is owned by an external commercial third party and it is located in the cloud.

If you need the business information in Facebook to account for your actions, to incorporate in business processes, to track decisions you have made, to provide input into policy development etc, then you need to actively export this information out of Facebook because there are no guarantees that it is going to stay accessible in your Facebook account for as long as you are going to need it.

This however does need to be a risk-based decision. For example, if a Facebook account is used by a library just to promote new acquisitions and (for example) library promotional material only needs to be kept for business and legal purposes for 2 years, then you may decide that leaving this information on Facebook is an adequate information management approach.

If however officers are providing development advice on Facebook or answering questions about high level business plans, then this is more contentious and trusting Facebook to keep this information for the much longer retention periods that apply to this type of information is not appropriate.

The standard process at this stage for managing information in Facebook and other social media environments is to do a regular export of your data from these systems, often using tools like Facebook Activity Logs.

All organisations need to understand that Facebook is a business system and that genuine and risky government business is already taking place there. So the export you do and the information you need to capture from Facebook needs to be an accurate representation of the business that is being performed. You need date and time representation of transactions, of comments, of posts, possibly of likes. It is important to sit down with business and determine exactly what they are going to need to account for the actions and transactions that are starting to take place in Facebook. And the business moving to social media and mobile environments is only going to increase, and so it’s important to put in place strategies now that are going to enable you to have good and meaningful information both now and in the future.

Published April 2014 | Updated December 2016/ July 2017

Recordkeeping Advice

Web and Social Media

Recordkeeping A-Z

F S

How long do records of social media need to be kept for?

angela.mcging — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 23:54:18 +0000

How long do records of social media need to be kept for? angela.mcging Tue, 2017-18-07 09:54

As our sister organisation the Public Record Office of Victoria states very succinctly, 'the retention period for any record is set by the purpose, content, or result of the communication and not by the format of the record. Therefore, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer with regard to how long social media records should be kept'.

Agencies should refer to relevant general and functional retention and disposal authorities to determine retention and disposal actions for their social media records. Disposal classes do not normally specifically mention social media records as they are just a particular format. Below are some examples of disposal classes in our retention and disposal authorities that provide coverage for records of social media:

general promotional social media records are usually covered by the General retention and disposal authority: administrative records under COMMUNITY RELATIONS - Marketing - (2.14.2) Records relating to general promotional or explanatory information about the organisation, its services and activities and to the development of promotional objects, e.g. souvenirs. This includes background research, draft and final versions of information published on websites, blogs or via social media and publications designed to promote or publicise aspects of the organisation's activities, e.g. posters, brochures, leaflets and published histories. These types of social media records are only required to be retained until withdrawn, superseded or when reference use ceases.
official social media accounts of Ministers, the records are covered by the General retention and disposal authority: records of a Minister's Office, and are required as State archives under class 1.14 as they are considered to be media releases or statements issued by the Minister.

When the Rural Fire Service uses Twitter and Facebook to communicate with affected residents during a bushfire, the social media records are covered as part of the records of the management of the incident under FA326, Records relating to the management of fires ...including warnings and declarations etc. These social media records would be required as State archives or for a minimum of 25 years depending on the incident.

If you are in doubt about where your social media records are covered please contact govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au for advice.

Recordkeeping Advice

Web and Social Media

Strategies for managing social media records

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 16:02:12 +0000

Strategies for managing social media records Tue, 2015-10-11 03:02

Executive summary

NSW Government has a strong and growing social media presence.

Studies of government use of social media show that social media can enable government to reach new audiences, establish communities of practice, provide services and deliver important and effective messages to the community.

The benefits of social media for government business includes:

improved customer services
increased access to information
increased involvement of the community directly in government decision making.

Information generated through social media can provide value to business and the community and should therefore be well managed in order to maximise this value.

Social media use by government is also subject to community expectations and legislative requirements for the appropriate management of information. These guidelines clarify how agencies can meet these obligations for good information management.

The guidelines state that:

Information about government business is increasingly located in social systems

If this information is needed by your organisation to help perform, improve or report on its operations, then you will need information management strategies to support your social media business.

You only need to manage the social media information that meets your business needs

You do not need to make and keep information about all your organisation’s social media business. Information management rules do apply to social systems but they are governed by your organisation's specific needs and risks.

Social media information strategies must be planned and proactive

These strategies need to be proactive not reactive because social applications are subject to regular change and cannot be relied upon to maintain business information for as long as it may need to be kept.

Different strategies may be required for different social media applications and a wide range of tools is available to support your information needs

These guidelines assist in managing information generated by all forms of social media including social networking tools, blogs, photo and video sharing and wikis.

The guidelines also provide detailed social media information management strategies, and provide an overview of tools which can assist with the management of social media business information.

There are many forms of social media applications

Types of social media applications used in NSW government include:

micro-blogging sites (examples: Twitter)
weblogs, or 'blogs' – online diaries for pictures and updates (examples: Tumblr, Blogger)
social and professional networking sites (examples: Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer)
video and photo sharing websites (examples: Instagram, YouTube, Flikr, Pinterest)
wikis and online collaboration tools (examples: Wikipedia, Sharepoint)
forums and discussion boards (examples: Google Groups, Ning, Whirlpool)
video on demand and podcasting (examples: SoundCloud)

Information in social media applications needs to be managed

Information about government business is increasingly located in social systems.

If this information is needed by your organisation to help perform, improve or report on its operations, then you will need information management strategies to support your social media business.

But only manage the social media information that meets your business needs

You do not need to make and keep information of all your organisation's social media business. There are no blanket rules that say 'you must make and keep information about everything you tweet and every update on your Facebook wall'.

Information management rules do apply to social systems but they are governed by your organisation's specific needs and risks. Social media is a delivery channel for business and decisions to keep information is based on business needs for information, not the fact that social media is being used as a delivery platform.

Business needs could include the need to:

integrate information received through social media with business as usual processes, or business improvement strategies
keep social media information of long term business value
enable corporate accountabilities operating in other business areas to apply in social systems.

A basic rule of thumb to apply to information in social systems is: If you need it, manage it. If you don't need it, leave it.

Social media information strategies must be planned and proactive

Social media information strategies need to be proactive, not reactive. Strategies need to be proactive because in general social media applications are:

third party owned
located in the cloud
subject to regular change
unable to be relied upon to maintain business information for as long as it may need to be kept.

Recent advice in the United States, The Sedona Conference Primer on Social Media (October 2012) says that:

Social media data is often hosted remotely, is dynamic and collaborative by nature, can include several data types and is meant to be accessed through unique interfaces.

It recommends proactive export and maintenance of social information that has ongoing business value, because maintaining accessibility to core information in social systems is challenging.

It is also important to be proactive in the management of social media information because the majority of social systems make it very clear that it is not their job to manage your business information.

Example: LinkedIn User Agreement, Section 4.1 – Services availability (last revised 12 September 2013)

We may change or discontinue Services, and in such case, we do not promise to keep showing or storing your information and materials…For avoidance of doubt, LinkedIn has no obligation to store, maintain or provide you a copy of any content that you or other Members provide when using the Services.

Therefore, if your organisation is likely to need the business information you are generating through your social systems, you need to plan for this information to be kept.

There are a range of information management strategies you can apply to your social systems, based on your specific business needs and risks.

The strategy you choose needs to be based on an analysis and understanding of business needs and risks. You may need to choose different information management strategies for each of the different social media channels used, depending on the different levels of traffic, risk and discussion within these channels.

Any information management strategy you choose should be regularly reviewed, as your organisation’s use of social media may move from a fairly passive use to active and engaged. Once social media channels become widely accepted for business communication and engagement in your organisation, it is likely there will be a greater need for effective management of the information generated.

Leave the information where it is strategy

What this means

You choose not to capture and keep information of your social media business operations in internal systems, choosing instead to leave your business information in its native social media application.

For example: You do not export any tweets out of Twitter. Instead you choose to leave all tweets, retweets, mentions etc in your Twitter account.

It is important to note that you cannot choose a default ‘leave the information where it is’ strategy, it must be a specific risk-based decision.

Why would I choose this?

You would choose this strategy if you believe there is no long term value business information in your social media application, and your business areas will not require ongoing access to this information. You would also need to ensure that all staff who require access to this information are able to gain access to it through the social media system.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Does not guarantee ongoing accessibility of business information	Many social media service contracts give providers the right to permanently remove content at any time, without recourse. Therefore using this strategy, there are no guarantees that social media-based information will remain accessible.
Could result in unacceptable risks	If business, reporting or legal requirements mean that you will need to access your social media information for 2 or more years, it may be an unacceptable risk to rely on social media applications to maintain this information for you.
Needs to be deployed following specific risk-based decisions	In many scenarios it may be that a 'leave the information where it is' strategy may be an appropriate business choice for you, but you do need to assess and accept all associated risks before making this choice.

Case study: State Records uses the 'leave the information where it is' strategy for some of its social accounts

State Records NSW runs a Facebook page for its Future Proof strategy. This Facebook page duplicates the information posted to the @FutureProofNSW Twitter account. No information is posted specifically and uniquely on Facebook.

Strategies are in place to capture and keep information about Twitter activity.

A very limited number of comments are received on the Future Proof Facebook page. An RSS feed has been set up which enables these comments to be sent as emails to a defined account and these are captured into the corporate records management system.

Therefore:

the information on Facebook is generally duplicated elsewhere
the information does not need to be kept long term
the Future Proof Twitter and email accounts already have defined information management strategies
the organisation is prepared to accept the risk that Facebook makes no guarantees of the long term accessibility of the information it hosts

The decision has consequently been made that the Future Proof Facebook page does not need a defined information management strategy.

Low level information management strategy

What this means

You capture regular, scheduled downloads of your social media information using freely available online tools.

Why would I choose this?

You would choose this strategy if you wanted to keep simple yet comprehensive information about of your social media transactions. Available tools are also online, easy to use and frequently free or available at a very low cost.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Requires scheduling	This strategy requires someone to perform regular downloads of social media content and to capture this information into an appropriate storage location. If this is not performed, the risk is irregular, non-systematic information management.
Generates standard data dumps	This strategy creates data dumps in standard formats which may require additional processing in order to be reused for other business purposes.
Results in data duplication	Online tools that can generate these downloads are often designed as data backup tools. They will generally download all data in your social media account, and will not necessarily enable you to specify that you only want data from a specific time period.This can lead to duplication in your social media information, particularly for active accounts. This can lead to duplication in your social media information, particularly for active accounts.

What tools can be used to do this?

Cloud-based backup systems like Backupify
Social media monitoring or dashboard tools
Reporting tools that come with social media applications, such as Facebook Activity Logs
Analytic tools, such as Google Analytics or blog software analytics

Monitoring-based information management strategy

What this means

You use a social media monitoring tool to capture information about your social media conversations as well as reactions to this engagement.

Why would I choose this?

Monitoring tools can capture both social conversations and also reactions to your conversations and operations. As such they can provide information and business intelligence about your social engagement.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

May be hampered by a lack of export capacity in some tools	Risks may arise if the monitoring tool you are using is unable to export or fully export data into your corporate business systems.
May be hampered because some tools export data in limited formats	Some systems may only export information in formats designed to support machine processing, such as CSV, rather than formats that support information dissemination or business use and reference.
Can be costly because monitoring tools can be expensive	Some monitoring tools can require a more significant financial investment than other, simpler strategies.

Case study: A number of NSW government organisations use monitoring tools

Government organisations are using monitoring tools and exporting information out of these tools to use for business and information management purposes.

For example, some organisations are using monitoring tools to:

identify all tweets that mention the organisation or its products and services, in order to monitor public opinion of the organisation or reaction to its services
track the organisation's own tweets and any responses to these
track the rise and fall in followers, likes or retweets
compile broad metrics to assess the impact of their social engagement.

The benefit of using these systems for information management purposes is that they overlay social media information with business intelligence. They are valuable for business reporting and can therefore serve multiple business purpose rather than just a specific information management objective.

What tools can be used to do this?

Social media monitoring or dashboard tools
Reporting tools that come with social media applications, such as Facebook Activity Logs
Analytic tools, such as Google Analytics or blog software analytics

Needs-based information management strategy

What this means

You deploy information management strategies as specific needs arise.

Why would I choose this?

You would deploy a needs-based strategy if most of your social media traffic was very low risk conversations. However, if a specific issue arose or if you wished to consult on a particular project, you could deploy an information management strategy to capture these specific conversations.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Requires ownership and management	If no one takes ownership of information management when it is required, the risk is a strategy will not be deployed to support higher risk conversations.
Requires active awareness and engagement	This strategy requires an active understanding of your social systems and an awareness of when more high risk transactions and conversations are taking place, and an understanding of what information management strategy should be deployed to support these.

Case study: Using needs-based information management as a strategy when things go wrong

On its Facebook page, an organisation posted details of a community event it was running in a regional area. For the next several days there was a large negative reaction to this event and many negative comments were made on the Facebook page. The organisation ultimately managed to diffuse and deal with this reaction but they used screenshots to capture their initial post and all subsequent responses to it.

This information management was to:

compile reports to management on the significant public reaction
provide intelligence and lessons learned for future event planning and communications
protect the organisation against any defamation or legal action that could possibly have resulted

Case study: Waikato District Health Board

In New Zealand, the Waikato District Health Board mounted a specific social media campaign to contain the spread of a measles outbreak.

Their social media campaign contributed to the successful management of the outbreak, and capturing information about their social media communications and all positive and negative responses to them could provide useful business intelligence for the management of future outbreaks.

What tools can be used to do this?

Cloud-based back up systems like Backupify
Cloud-based information services such as Social Safe and Archive Social
Social media monitoring or dashboard tools
General third party, cloud-based reporting tools like Storify
RSS feed
Screenshots

Reporting as an information management strategy

What this means

Documents compiled to report on social media campaigns and strategies are maintained as information about these campaigns and strategies.

Why would I choose this?

If you need to compile regular reports to assess the performance of your social media strategy against identified benchmarks, then good information that summarises social media operations is already being created. Managing this can provide good ongoing information about your strategy.

This strategy is particularly effective for campaign-based social media use as it provides regular information that can help focus messages, respond to feedback and improve performance, while also providing an ongoing record of social media operations.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Needs to be reassessed if social media becomes normalised	Regular reporting on social media strategies may only take place for a specific period of time. If social strategies become business as usual processes and continue to operate beyond identified reporting periods, new strategies may be required to capture any required business information.
Creates high level, not operational information	Reports generally capture high level information about communications and metrics. If more detailed information about specific social media transactions is required by operational staff, other forms of information may be required to support these business needs.

Case study: Reporting on consultation strategies

The following case study comes from the New Zealand Government Social Media in Government Toolbox

To help us with reporting on our ‘Making Tax Easier’ online consultation, our web team showed us how to access the comprehensive and free details about the traffic on our site on Google Analytics. This helped enormously when our senior management team asked for regular progress updates during the 6-week period the consultation was open for public submission. This was both the keep them up-to-date with the comments that were being received so they could advise the Minister of progress.

We combined key statistics from Google Analytics with an overview of the comments posted on the forum, highlighting trends and key issues, into a simple two page weekly report. Weekly reporting also gave us the opportunity to reflect as a team, and to think about deploying further marketing strategies when the numbers of new visitors started falling.

Brent Lewers, Senior Policy Analyst Inland Revenue

Information for reuse strategy

What this means

You capture information from your social systems in order to reuse this information for future business purposes.

Why would I choose this?

You would adopt information for reuse if you are performing lots of transactions on your social sites and there is the potential for cost, time and performance efficiencies through the effective reuse of the information generated through these transactions. The information for reuse strategy involves capturing information about advice provided on social systems in a spreadsheet, database or other searchable and accessible environment.

When similar advice is required in the future it does not have to be redeveloped but can be copied and reposted as required. This provides benefits through the provision of consistent advice and can also assist if many different staff across your organisation are providing customer service through your social channels.

You would not choose this strategy if you needed specific evidence or accountabilities around each specific instance of advice provided. If you need clear accountabilities and evidence of specific instances of advice, you require a ‘information management for accountability’ strategy (see below). With the information for reuse strategy, you are just reusing good advice for efficiency and consistency.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Must be fit for purpose	If reuse strategies are not well designed and fit for purpose, there is the potential that information reuse may not be efficient or result in time or cost savings. Appropriate assessments need to be made to identify what information should be captured to enable easy and effective search and retrieval.
Does not provide evidential or accountability	This strategy creates reusable information, not evidence and accountabilities for high risk business areas. If evidence and accountabilities are required, use the ‘information management for accountability’ strategy below.
Must be supported by all relevant staff	If all necessary staff are not engaged in capturing relevant information, comprehensive information will not be available for reuse. Tools used need to be accessible to and updatable by all relevant staff.
Must be supported by clear guidelines	Staff need clear advice about what information they need to capture into these tools and how they can reuse the data in the tools. Advice about common keywords or terms to use to aid information retrieval can help to ensure information is accessible.

Case study: Efficiencies achieved by information for reuse strategy

One government organisation runs a large spreadsheet where customer service staff record the questions that clients ask on their corporate Facebook page and the answers staff post. Now, before responding to the majority of questions, staff perform a quick search of the spreadsheet and can frequently reuse advice previously provided.

What tools can be used to do this?

Purpose-built databases or spreadsheets are commonly used for this purpose

Information management for accountability strategy

What this means

You deploy a rigorous management approach to all your social media activities. You capture full and accurate records of all your social media business.

Why would I choose this?

You would choose this approach if:

high risk business operations are moving to social systems
you have long term business and community accountabilities in these business areas
you need clear accountability and evidence of advice provided via social media and of your social media transactions
your organisation has a high risk profile and needs to be able to fully account for its public statements and operations

In all of these scenarios, a rigorous information management strategy will ensure strong evidence of your social media operations is accessible, accountable and useable for as long as you require it.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Can be expensive to implement effectively	Purpose built software tools can be expensive to design, configure and deploy but this cost could be justified in key strategic circumstances.
Is a maximalist approach	This is a comprehensive strategy that will capture a lot of transactional information, but this may be warranted in high risk business areas or for key social strategies.
Requires good configuration and management	Because of the volume of information that potentially will be captured, systems used for the information as accountability strategy need to be well designed and configured, to help apply business appropriate management rules to the social information generated.

Case study: Accountabilities don’t change in social environments and so rigorous information management may be required

A large government department operates in a high risk, complex, litigious business environment with lots of stakeholders and lots of necessary community consultation.

To broaden the reach of their communications, they have moved most of this consultation to social media. As a business and communication strategy, this is a sensible approach but as part of this approach, information governance and information management needs must also be considered.

Given the contentious and long term implications of their business processes and decisions, the legal rules that apply to their business mean that they have to keep the records of their public consultation for many years. These legislative requirements do not change because business processes have moved to social systems.

What tools can be used to do this?

Purpose built social media information management systems, available from a variety of vendors have the capacity for this management

Another advantage of comprehensive and purpose built systems is their capacity to capture, manage and leverage much of the native metadata attached to social media communications. Leveraging this metadata in these systems allows social media content to be navigated, authenticated, managed and used.

Information management through broadcast systems strategy

What this means

Some large organisations, such as those involved in emergency management, need to be able to communicate mass broadcasts in emergency situations and communicate these messages through multiple delivery channels.

Why would I choose this?

These systems would be adopted by your organisation if it has business needs for large-scale or pre-programmed communication.

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

This strategy:

Does not guarantee ongoing information accessibility	In terms of information management, there are no guarantees that the information maintained in the broadcast system will remain accessible for long periods of time.
Requires a strategic understanding of information needs	The majority of information in these systems will generally be secure for the life of the system, but if the system is upgraded, replaced or decommissioned, you will need to determine if any information in the system needs to be kept for ongoing business or legal purposes.
May require export capacity to ensure ongoing accessibility of long term value business information	If communications generated by the system need to be kept for long periods of time or if they need to be presented in court cases, these may need to be exported out of the broadcast system and managed elsewhere for as long as they are required. For high value information, it may be easier to export this regularly after an emergency event out of the system and store it in a central business system, rather than determine at system decommissioning what information requires export for ongoing support and management. If it is likely that this information will be needed in legal cases, governance around any information export and system decommissioning processes should be rigorous and clearly demonstrate the comprehensiveness and accuracy of these processes.

Case study: Emergency fire communications

Fire and Rescue NSW’s Bush Fire alert system can be programmed to issue emergency bulletins. In January 2013 on a day of extreme fire danger, the system broadcast 40 emergency alerts through social media and 784,000 SMS and 224,000 fixed line messages in fire forecast areas.

What information management strategy should we use?

You need to base your information management strategies on what your specific business needs are:

We are broadcasting standard marketing messages to our clients and user community

If these communications are routine and you have no business needs to maintain information about them:

consider the leave the information where it is strategy and leave all information in the social media application/s you are using.

If you need basic information about these communications for reporting or monitoring purposes:

consider a monthly or half yearly export of your messages using the low level information management strategy.

We are having conversations with our clients and user community on social media

If these conversations are routine, self contained or provide standard advice and you have no business needs to maintain information about them:

consider the leave the information where it is strategy and leave all information in the social media application/s you are using.

If advice provided by staff is not routine in nature, if it is complex or involves vulnerable clients or relates to ongoing matters or needs to be referred to by other staff members for advice:

these conversations require much more rigorous management. Processes need to be in place to export these conversations for case management, business continuity and/or accountability purposes.
consider deploying a needs-based information management strategy or an information management for accountability strategy, depending on which best meets your business needs.

We are publicly consulting on a plan, strategy or project using social media

If there is a business need to use the public feedback received through social media:

consider deploying a needs-based information management strategy or an information management for accountability strategy, depending on which best meets your specific business needs.

We post videos explaining how to use our services on YouTube

If these videos provide routine advice to your community and you have no specific business or accountability needs to maintain them:

consider the leave the information where it is strategy and leave your videos on YouTube until you no longer have a corporate need for them, then delete.

If these videos are significant, explain an important policy or mark a significant public statement or new public direction for your organisation:

develop an appropriate management plan for your corporate video before it is uploaded to YouTube.

Content exported out of YouTube and back into corporate systems can be of lesser quality than the original uploaded content. Organisations frequently do not maintain copies of video content on internal servers when it is accessible via sharing mechanisms like YouTube. For high value or significant videos, however, it can be important to maintain a copy in internal systems.

We use social media to monitor community sentiment and to revise our products, advice or services accordingly

If this monitoring is routine and informative and does not result in significant changes to your business and you have no ongoing business needs to reference this data into the future:

consider the leave the information where it is strategy and leave all information in your social media monitoring tool.

If the monitoring data informs planning and decision making in your organisation and is needed as justification for changes in policy direction:

consider a monitoring-based information management strategy or a needs-based information management strategy.

We have some difficult users engaging with our community in our social channels and we want to remove some challenging content

Organisations can be responsible under defamation legislation for defamatory content that others post on corporate social media accounts.

If you have concerns about defamatory or obscene content that is posted on your social media channels:

use a needs-based information management strategy to capture a record of inappropriate content in case legal or other business needs arise to explain your actions and then remove the offensive content from your social channel.
use internal information management processes to manage the offensive content removed from your site.

As social media is relatively new and rapidly evolving technology, there are no defined, best practice ways for making and keeping social media information as a business asset.

Organisations also use different social media channels, in a variety of different ways and for various different types of business operations.

Given there are no easy answers for how you should capture and manage your social media information, you should choose the strategies that best meet your business needs and technological environment, while making a full assessment of the potential risks involved.

The table below lists a range of strategies for capturing and keeping your social media information, and the pros and cons associated with each approach.

This does not constitute an endorsement or provide an exhaustive list of vendors or products offering tools or services for social media information management, instead it provides details of products and services we are aware of. We welcome suggestions for new content on this list, please contact State Records to suggest new tools or services. We will update this list periodically but cannot guarantee the currency of this advice. We welcome vendors providing us with updates to the descriptions of their products and services. State Records disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this product information.

Tool/approach

Pros

Cons

Leaving data in its native social media application

No separate information management effort required

No additional software or applications required

Staff using the application will know how to access and use the information it contains

Short term value information is not likely to be at risk

Long term value or high accountability information will be at risk due to projected frequency of system change

Risks to ongoing information accessibility exist because information remains under the control of an external third party

Limited corporate information accessibility if a log-in is required to view or use data

Using available APIs to regularly export your information from social media applications

Information is regularly exported into corporate system

Corporate information is brought back into corporate control

Exported information can be fed into all relevant business systems and processes

Technical knowledge is required

APIs can change and so API-based export strategies may require ongoing update

Different APIs will be required for each social media channel

Cloud-based social media archiving services

These types of social media archiving services can capture content from a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube.

These services captures the context or full native record of social medial information in JSON/XML formats and directly from the social media platform.

Cloud-based back up systems like Backupify

Free, basic online services

Support a wide variety of social media applications

Information can be regularly exported

Corporate information can be brought back into corporate control

Some information is exported in open, non-proprietary formats (For example, Backupify generated Twitter reports are in PDF)

These services work with a range of social media channels, including Google apps

These tools are back up tools, not information management tools.

Their interfaces and data exports are designed to satisfy IT and backup requirements, not business or information management needs. For example, Facebook data is exported by Backupify in JSON which meets backup needs but which is not readable or accessible for standard business environments.

With these tools, export of information out of social media applications is automated but downloading of this information out of the cloud is not. Downloading and capturing into corporate systems must still be performed as a manual, scheduled process.

As they provide backup services, these tools generally download all your social media information, not information from a specific time period. The same legacy data will generally be downloaded each time you do a backup, resulting in significant amounts of duplication for high transaction accounts.

These services also change. For example, in late 2012 Backupify announced that it would no longer provide backup services for LinkedIn accounts.

Local backup systems such as Digi.me

Support a wide variety of social media applications

Snapshot copies of your data onto local servers

Information is flat and not dynamically available to reuse or repurpose

Free basic online services, scaling to fees for full service options

Application specific export tools like Instaport

Application specific tools (like Instaport which exports images in Instagram) are available for information export.

Generally free, online services

Generally export to widely open, accessible formats

Dependent on log-in access to social media account where content is housed

Instaport exports in .zip file which may not be the most efficient for reuse purposes

May be limits on the number of images or other forms of social media content that can be downloaded

For images, you may need to assess whether full metadata attached to each image, such as location coding is maintained through export process.

For images, export format may be limited (for example, Instaport exports images as 612 x 612 pixels) and may be smaller with lesser image quality than the original image.

Social media monitoring or dashboard tools

Many third-party, cloud-based tools are available for free, such as HootSuite

Can aggregate information from several social media channels

Can piggyback information management needs on the back of existing reporting or monitoring arrangements

Provide reporting and listening services to monitor the effectiveness and impact of your social media presence

Limited information accessibility if a log-in is required to view or use data

There may be limits on the reporting and analysis information that is available for export

Key business intelligence and reporting information is contained in reports and analysis so exportability of this information needs may vary

Some organisations use licensed applications such as Radian6 and Alterion. While offering good functionality, these systems can be expensive to deploy and maintain and the exportability of their information needs to be verified

Export tools associated with blog or wiki technologies

Free tools offered as part of blog or wiki services

Simple to use

Can export some or all of your content, depending on your specific business needs

Export information in open formats which can enable reuse and repurposing

Not all blogs or wikis have export capacities

Export is often limited to specific formats. For example, Wordpress version 3.8.1 exports all content only in XML.

Export is primarily designed to carry data from one blog or wiki version to another, not for business reuse or ongoing information management purposes. Information may require subsequent processing to render it in formats suitable for specific business use.

Reporting tools that come with your social media application, such as Facebook Activity Logs

Free, online services

Generally export to PDF and other widely open, accessible formats

Capture all activities that occur on social media sites

Export needs to be manually performed

Information is flat and not dynamically available to reuse or repurpose

Analytic tools, like Google Analytics or blog software analytics

Free, online services

Useful for monitoring blog use, search engine terms, referring sites, top posts and pages

Some information can be exported

Some corporate information analysis can be brought back into corporate control

May not export reports

May not export reports in business-ready formats

May need to be supported with screenshots, written reports or other ways of capturing the business information

General third party, cloud-based reporting tools like Storify

Free, online services

Can allow you to gather a range of disparate social media information sources into one place to tell a story

Particularly useful for capturing different sets of online information about events or conferences

Export functionality may not be present

Use a purpose-built software tool

Can be designed to meet your specific business requirements

Can be designed to integrate and share information with your corporate business applications

Can provide a very comprehensive and accountable recordkeeping solution

Information capture and management can be automated

May involve initial purchase and subsequent licensing costs

Will take time and money to implement effectively

Will possibly need to be upgraded as social media applications and approaches change

RSS feed

Free

Useful for a range of social media applications

Useful for auto-populating Twitter and Facebook based on blog updates

Can be configured to send an email containing a complete blog post, or tweet or comment etc to a designated account

Emails will require manual intervention to capture into corporate systems for accessibility and useability

Screenshots

Information can be kept

Information can be kept in accessible formats

Images provide an exact representation of the content as it appeared in the social media application and have been submitted as evidence in legal cases

Information needs to be manually updated

Information will require regular staff commitment to keep up to date

Information is flat and not dynamically available to reuse or repurpose

For active accounts, there will be a significant cost in staff time

Reports of pre-scheduled posts

Information is compiled as part of process of developing and authorising social media posts

Information is not an exact representation of what was posted on social media sites but is an approved records of what was authorised to post

Strategy: Records and information management staff can deploy social media monitoring tools

Rather than rely on business areas to make and keep business information of their social media activities, records staff can deploy social media dashboards and monitoring tools to monitor all internal social media accounts and to export the information from these accounts as required.

Services in this area are very subject to change

It is very important that you keep an eye on any information management solutions you implement for your social media. Many of the free online services that are available offer very good and useful functionality but these technologies are evolving rapidly.

A solution that suits you today may evolve into something different tomorrow or a solution that exists today may disappear tomorrow.

Many free services are experimenting with formats, functionalities and services and the capacities they offer may change quite regularly.

All the free services are ultimately actually commercial operations and so the services they offer will be driven by business imperatives. For instance, Backupify announced in December 2012 that they will no longer be providing backups of LinkedIn data. Increasingly their corporate revenue is coming through backup for enterprise-based SaaS applications. They are therefore focussing less of their resources on consumer back up requirements and more on corporate requirements.

Therefore be very aware of change and vulnerabilities in this space and monitor whatever services you deploy to ensure they continue to meet your business needs.

Use information management channels that you already have

One organisation, when seeking community consultation via social media, directed people back to its organisational blog to provide feedback. The blog was set up with an RSS feed so that any comments received on it were emailed automatically to relevant staff. Staff were able to capture these emails into their corporate records system, based on existing processes and procedures.

Published April 2014 | Updated December 2016 | Updated links and content 2022

Recordkeeping Advice

Web and Social Media

Web and Social Media

Decommissioning websites

Planning

Website Content audit

Technology Considerations

Best practice

Keeping records created in whole of government collaborative tools

Responsibilities of the lead agency

Retention and disposal requirements

Social media - Frequently Asked Questions

How long should social media records be kept?

What is the legal status of information in social systems?

Does the State Records Act apply to social media?

Does defamation law apply to social media?

Does the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act apply to social media?

How frequently do I need to capture records of our social media engagement?

Can we tell clients that we don't want to receive their feedback or complaints via social media?

Do I need to keep information about what content the hyperlinks in my social media posts led to?

Does the information that I make and keep about my social media business need to look exactly like it did online?

How do I know if I need a social media information management strategy?

Can I use just one tool for managing all my different social media information?

We have a broadcast system to communicate emergency messages via social media when needed - do I need to know the time and date that I broadcast a particular social media message and know when someone receives it?

What information management considerations apply to wikis?

What information management considerations apply to collaborative editing tools like Google Docs?

How can I manage information generated in LinkedIn?

Why should I develop a social media information management strategy?

My IT manager says social media applications are not official business systems and therefore we don’t need to keep records of corporate social media activities. What should I say to her?

Is Facebook a government business system? My IT section says that it is not.

How long do records of social media need to be kept for?

Strategies for managing social media records

Executive summary

Why social media information needs managing

There are many forms of social media applications

Information in social media applications needs to be managed

But only manage the social media information that meets your business needs

Social media information strategies must be planned and proactive

Management strategies for social media information

Leave the information where it is strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

Low level information management strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

What tools can be used to do this?

Monitoring-based information management strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What tools can be used to do this?

Needs-based information management strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What tools can be used to do this?

Reporting as an information management strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

Information for reuse strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

What tools can be used to do this?

Information management for accountability strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

What tools can be used to do this?

Information management through broadcast systems strategy

What this means

Why would I choose this?

What are the risks of this approach from an information management perspective?

What information management strategy should we use?

We are broadcasting standard marketing messages to our clients and user community

We are having conversations with our clients and user community on social media

We are publicly consulting on a plan, strategy or project using social media

We post videos explaining how to use our services on YouTube

We use social media to monitor community sentiment and to revise our products, advice or services accordingly

We have some difficult users engaging with our community in our social channels and we want to remove some challenging content

Tools for capturing social media information