Stap isi

17 June 2009

Keeping accountable

In April I made like a fool and said “web 2.0 recordkeeping – it’s not that hard, is it?!”

Now with the heat on, a whole lot of edge cases are appearing. Time to look to the experts for some simple answers! Of course they’re smart enough to avoid that trap…

State Records say they’re building NSW’s first digital archiving solution. I think that means they’re on our side. Their excellent blog Future Proof makes all the relevant resources handy and encourages participation in this daunting project.

Recordkeeping might be the most difficult aspect of local government engagement with the open web. Councils must honour the State Records Act 1998. And it’s not as simple as just registering everything into your document management system.

As an amateur, it seems to me that the legislation probably needs to be looked at again in the light of a white Google search page. But social media cheerleaders (myself included) should also move beyond a simplistic shout for #gov2.0. Transparency and accountability are predicated on good recordkeeping, right?

It’s a fascinating technical challenge.

For a more informed view of the debate, I recommend Records Management in a Web 2.0 World by Steve Dale and the accompanying podcast.

PS I wonder how State Records are archiving their blog?

— b3rn   councils, recordkeeping   Jun 17, 10:36 PM   #   Comment [2]

16 April 2009

Archiving Twitter

Concern is expressed at the shallowness of Twitter’s archive and by extension the implications for record keeping arising out of interaction on 3rd party sites.

But it’s not that hard, is it?

We have machine-readable data on public-facing websites and, with Twitter, an API. There’s nothing stopping us from periodically and programmatically accessing this data and adding it to our existing document management and record keeping systems. The data is already structured and ready for re-use.

Some complexity is added when you need to consider not just your own published data but responses, conversations and context.

The finesse would be to build a simple admin interface for Council officers to register feeds, hashtags and other searches as required along with an optional date range – for consultation periods or other time-limited events.

Or, build a Pipe that aggregrates and rebroadcasts your information to the cloud in an endless loop.

— b3rn   recordkeeping, twitter   Apr 16, 09:24 PM   #   Comment