The Smoking Gun: Recordkeeping and Accountability

By Associate Professor Sue McKemmish

Sue McKemmish is an Associate Professor in the School of Information

Management and Systems at Monash University. With her Monash colleagues
she has developed innovative, integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches to
records management, archival and information management education at
postgraduate and undergraduate levels within the framework provided by records
continuum and information continuum theory. She heads the SPIRT research
project which is developing a national framework for standardising recordkeeping
metadata. Through the Centre for Information Management and Systems
Practice, she and Monash colleague Barbara Reed currently manage a
consultancy project to deliver a Records Management and Archives Skills
Training Program to the National Archives of Australia. Sue McKemmish is editor
of Archives and Manuscripts and a Laureate of the Australian Society of
Archivists.

The paper begins by defining in broad terms the role of recordkeeping in public
accountability, then goes on to consider the interrelated theme of accountability
in public recordkeeping by dwelling on failures in recordkeeping accountability
and their consequences to organisations and society. Of course there are many
examples of how good recordkeeping underpins accountability, but the
interrelationship between accountable recordkeeping and public accountability
can be most spectacularly demonstrated through the failures. On a more positive
note, the paper then focuses on the components of accountable public
recordkeeping regimes and the role of the archival authority in them. It concludes
by considering how, in light of the reinvention of recordkeeping and archiving in
recent times, archival roles and accountabilities are being redefined in
fundamental ways. The paper was presented by invitation as the keynote
address at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Archives and Records Association
of New Zealand, "Records and Archives Now – Who Cares?", in Dunedin, 3-5
September 1998.

Before embarking on an exploration of the role of recordkeeping in public

accountability, it is useful to consider briefly how the ground is moving around us.
The shifting paradigms of our time include living and working in cyberspace, and
related changing social and organisational structures and relationships, as well
as the reconstruction of the public and private sectors associated with the politics
of economic rationalism. These radical changes in the way society and our
organisations are structured, and the way we relate to each other, share
information and do business, have far reaching implications for recordkeeping.
And in these contexts we need to re-think what public accountability and
accountable recordkeeping mean and how they are assured.
Here are two very different views on paradigm shifts:

A door like this has cracked open 5 or 6 times since we got up on our hind legs.
It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you
knew is wrong. (Valentine in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, Faber and Faber, London,
1993, p. 48)

He saw an ichthyosaur … He stood face to face with the skull of a beast that
must have lived … unimaginably longer ago than even the most generous
computations from Scripture allowed for the beginning of the world … and
thought – and thought what?
'… The moment of my unbelief. The beginning of my make-belief …'
(Matthew in Graham Swift's Ever After, Picador, London, 1992, p. 101)

Valentine is a late 20th century chaos mathematician commenting on the

'splintering and blurring' of Newton's vision of an orderly and predictable world
that has occurred in the last twenty years. He was excited and challenged by the
paradigm shift he was experiencing. Matthew was a 19th century surveyor,
amateur geologist and believer in God who came face to face with a dinosaur at
a dig in Lyme-Regis. He was dismayed and defeated – this was the moment
when his ordered pre-Darwinian world fell apart. In the late 20th century, it is
interesting to ask audiences of recordkeeping professionals: are you a Valentine
or a Matthew? Because at this point in history, if you're a Matthew, then you're
probably in the wrong business.

Throughout the paper I will be taking a broad view of the role of recordkeeping, a
view which is associated with records continuum thinking. It defines the role of
recordkeeping in relation to accountability as:

• facilitating good governance

• underpinning accountability mechanisms
• constituting corporate, national and societal memory
• constructing individual, community and national identity
• providing authoritative sources of information.

The definition of accountability embraced by this view encompasses historical

and cultural accountability as they relate to memory and identity, as well as
democratic accountability. It is important to note that recordkeeping does not
exclusively provide for accountability, although sometimes recordkeeping
professionals speak as if it does. A key issue for the profession is to work out the
specific role of recordkeeping vis a vis other agents that provide for
accountability, construct identity and constitute memory.
To begin our exploration of recordkeeping and accountability, thus broadly
defined, I want to look at some definitive statements of the recordkeeping-
accountability nexus.

Some of the most telling statements of the significance of recordkeeping to the

constitution of memory and the construction or memorialisation of identity come
out of periods of life and death struggles – they reveal how desperately
communities and societies fight to preserve or obliterate collective memory. This
first quote comes from gay writer Edmund White commenting on the imperative
in face of the AIDS epidemic to both "bear witness to the cultural moment" and
memorialise individual lives before it and they vanish.

Maybe it's tactless or irrelevant to critical evaluation to consider an artist, writer,

dealer or curator in the light of his death. Yet the urge to memorialize the dead, to
honor their lives, is a pressing instinct … There is an equally strong urge to
record one's own past – one's own life – before it vanishes … To have been
oppressed in the 1950s, freed in the 1960s, exalted in the 1970s and wiped out
in the 1980s is a quick itinerary for a whole culture to follow. For we are
witnessing not just the death of individuals but a menace to an entire culture. All
the more reason to bear witness to the cultural moment. (Edmund White,
'Esthetics and Loss'(1987), in The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Literature and
Sexuality 1969-1993, Picador, London, 1995, p. 215)

The next is from the ongoing fight to repatriate Catalan records seized during the
Spanish Civil War.

The collective memory of a nation is indispensable if we want to understand who

we are … where we came from … and where we are going. Archives are the
documentary base of this collective memory, which itself is so important to
maintain and strengthen national identity. (Avui, 1996: commenting on demands
for the repatriation of Catalan records seized by the Castilians during the Spanish
Civil War and held ever since in the Archives of Salamanca)

This quotation refers to the role of archives in maintaining and strengthening

national identity. However archives may also play a vital role in the
transformation of national identity – the South African experience being the most
potent current example. It is also interesting to note how the politics of national
identity and collective memory challenge traditional notions of the archives as
impartial custodian.

The following quote is perhaps the most telling of all.

Libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions throughout Bosnia have

been targeted for destruction, in an attempt to eliminate any material evidence …
that could remind future generations that people of different ethnic and religious
traditions once shared a common heritage in Bosnia. The practitioners of ethnic
cleansing are not content to terrorize and kill the living; they want to eliminate all
memory of the past as well. (Andras Riedlmayer, 'Killing the Memory: The
Targeting of Libraries and Archives in Bosnia-Herzegovina', Newsletter of the
Middle East Librarians Association, No. 61, Autumn 1994)

At one level the destruction of records in Bosnian-like contexts is about ensuring

that there is no evidence of the rights of the people you seek to oppress (eg their
ownership of land and other possessions, their rights as citizens etc.). At another
level, the deliberate targeting of repositories of collective memory in Bosnia is an
incredibly potent indication of the significance of collective memory and our
"memory palaces"1. For if a people is eliminated and their collective memory
erased, it is as if they never existed at all.

This next example is typical of the definitive statements about the role of
recordkeeping in relation to good governance and democratic accountability in
Australia in the 1980s and 1990s which have come out of the various Royal
Commissions and inquiries into cases of corporate and government corruption
and mismanagement. These cases have involved the fall of governments, the
collapse of state banks, the bankrupting of the empires of the so-called corporate
cowboys – "built on mountains of debt and creative accounting" – the prostitution
of professional management, accounting and auditing standards, and the
impotence of the regulatory authorities, the "muzzled watchdogs which failed to
bark"2. The casualties included Australia's largest industrial group and its three
largest television networks, Victoria's largest building society, Australia's three
largest merchant banks – and of course thousands of individual shareholders
and members of the public who ended up underwriting the debts. This statement
by the Royal Commission into the Commercial Activities of Government in
Western Australia (WA Inc) refers broadly to the role of recordkeeping in relation
to effective democratic accountability and historical accountability.

Proper recordkeeping serves two purposes. First it is a prerequisite to effective

accountability. Without it critical scrutiny by the Parliament, the Auditor-General
and the Ombudsman can be blunted. Secondly, records themselves form an
integral part of the historical memory of the State itself. A recordkeeping regime
that does not address both requirements is inadequate.
The record creation, maintenance and retention practices of government and its
agencies are matters for which ministers and chief executive officers bear a
particular responsibility. These matters, doubtless, are ones for which those
officials are to be held accountable in their management of their portfolios,
departments and agencies. But overall responsibility for records cannot be left
with these officials. A separate body should be entrusted with the general
oversight of public records, equipped with powers adequate to the purpose.
(Western Australia, Report of the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities
of Government, 1992, Part II, p.4.6)
What the Commissions and inquiries also typically reveal is both a failure in
public accountability and in recordkeeping accountability. Their findings highlight
the significant links that exist between mismanagement and corruption on the
one hand, and poor and negligent recordkeeping on the other. As the
Commonwealth Auditor General noted in relation to the notorious "Sports Rorts
Affair", "poor recordkeeping attracts corruption like flies to a carcass"3, a point
emphasised in the following quotation.

If the Police Service is serious about getting its house in order, and ridding itself
of the corrupt officers who are still left after the purge of the late 1980s, then it
must enforce standards of accountability, and it must keep its records faithfully.
(NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, Investigation into the
Relationship between Police and Criminals, Second Report, April 1994, p. 39)

As is evidenced in this quote, the recordkeeping and accountability failures

reported relate to both the macro level and the micro level.

The final quote on the recordkeeping-accountability nexus comes out of an

environment that is part of the shifting relationship between the public and private
sector. The case of the outsourcing of the communication system of the Victorian
Metropolitan Ambulance Service provides an interesting insight into the specific
role of recordkeeping in accountability4. For those unfamiliar with the Australian
scene, outsourcing refers not to the privatisation or corporatisation of formerly
government functions. Rather it relates to the contracting out by government
agencies of both core and housekeeping functions to private sector providers.
Significantly, responsibility remains with the government agency which is
accountable to parliament for the activities of the private sector service provider.

In virtually all of the arrangements relating to consultancies and outsourcing, key

documentation supporting critical management decisions could not be produced
by the Metropolitan Ambulance Service (Victorian Auditor General's
Office, Metropolitan Ambulance Service: Contractual and Outsourcing Practices,
Special Report 49, June 1997)

The background to this statement is that in a June 1997 report to the Victorian
parliament, the Auditor General reported on serious deficiencies in the
contractual and outsourcing practices of the Metropolitan Ambulance Service,
including the management of tendering processes, the specification of contract
terms and conditions, the award of contracts, and the monitoring of contracts.
These deficiencies had resulted in substantial financial losses to the state and
led to a police investigation into corrupt actions.

The Auditor General found that, in virtually all of the arrangements referred to
above, key documentation supporting critical management decisions could not
be produced by the Service for audit examination, and that this was a serious
impediment to the audit investigation, and likely to be a significant impediment in
the proposed police investigation.

The range of highly dubious practices followed in the past management of these
consultancy and outsourcing arrangements included the absence of
documentary evidence to substantiate how the thirty four registrations of interest
were short-listed to the four potential suppliers who were invited to submit
tenders. The Service was also unable to produce critical information to support
the evaluation of tenders and the selection of the preferred supplier, thus raising
doubts as to the integrity of the tender process. The Auditor General found that a
completely free hand had been given to consultants through total delegation of
responsibility without any evidence of scrutiny or assessment of their
performance by the Service. There was also a total absence of evidence of the
performance of any cost-benefit analyses to support the decision to enter into
long-term contracts with private sector providers.

The Auditor General also found that the Service's current Chief Executive Officer
has initiated a range of actions aimed at improving the effectiveness of the
Service's contract management. A number of the measures taken include
recordkeeping-related initiatives, eg the establishment of a contracts
management department, the creation of a contracts register, the development
and adoption of a contracts administration manual outlining policies and
procedures for all aspects of contract management, and the progressive
formulation of meaningful performance criteria for all contracts. A formal system
of delegations has also been introduced, and there is now a requirement for all
senior management to submit pecuniary interest statements. Finally an adequate
records management system has been implemented.

At macro and micro level the reports referenced, whether they refer to a more
traditional setting or an emerging environment, chronicle typical failures in
recordkeeping as presented below5.

Macro Level Failures in Recordkeeping Accountability

Piecemeal recordkeeping regimes

Inadequate recordkeeping law

Weak or non-existent links with other accountability players & mechanisms

Archival authorities not "equipped with powers adequate to their purposes" or

with outdated or distorted mandates

Lack of professional standards and benchmarks for recordkeeping best practice

Micro Level Failures in Recordkeeping Accountability

Failure of Cabinets, senior ministers, public servants, police officers, boards of

directors, CEOs and businessmen and women to make records in the first place
or to "keep them faithfully" once made

Deliberate cases of illegal destruction

Inadequate or non-compliant corporate recordkeeping systems in both the public

and private sector

And over and over again, the point is made that inadequate recordkeeping
regimes limit the ability of society's watchdogs and corporate compliance
managers to enforce accountability – in governance and corporate affairs, and in
recordkeeping.

The consequences of recordkeeping accountability failures are analysed below in

terms of organisational and societal risks6.

Organisational Risks of Recordkeeping Accountability Failures

Lack of evidence that an organisation did something under contract or according

to regulation

Inability to find mission critical information

Loss of proof of ownership, rights, obligations

Lack of documentation of who knew what when

Inability to locate in its proper context information that may be incriminating in

one context and innocent in another

Inability to demonstrate that policies and procedures were in place and

consistently followed
Societal Risks of Recordkeeping Accountability Failures

Functioning of society and its institutions impaired

Evidence of the rights of people as citizens and clients lost

Inability of societal watchdogs to call to account governments, corporations and

individuals

Loss of collective, corporate and personal identity

Loss of individual, corporate and collective memory

Inability to authenticate and source mission critical information

Having considered the role of recordkeeping in public accountability and explored

cases of accountability and recordkeeping failures, I now want to move on to
consider what actually constitutes accountable recordkeeping. This is a question
that is being addressed by the Records Continuum Research Group at Monash7.
So far the Group has concluded that the components of accountable
recordkeeping include:

1. Accountable recordkeeping regimes at macro level

An accountable recordkeeping regime is defined as a unified framework of

identified policy objectives and implementation directives, and a consistent
strategic orientation that operate throughout a jurisdiction over time. Within
a recordkeeping regime, an integrated set of laws, rules, policies,
directions and procedures are acknowledged, enforced & monitored.
Responsibilities and accountabilities are specified. (Monash Records
Continuum Research Group, 1998)

2. Independent recordkeeping authority with powers adequate to its purpose

3. Professional standards and best practice promulgated and accepted by
society

Examples of such standards and best practice include:

o Standards Australia AS 4390 Records Management Standard,

Homebush, 1996
o The proposed ISO Records Management Standard, based on AS
4390
 oThe Australian Records and Archives Competency Standards,
National Finance Industry Training and Advisory Body Ltd,
Melbourne, 1997
o International and national archival descriptive standards, eg
ISAD(G)
o Australian recordkeeping metadata standards currently in
development8.
4. Compliant recordkeeping systems at micro level

A compliant recordkeeping system implements the requirements of a

recordkeeping regime in an identifiable unit in the jurisdiction (eg a
government agency or company). It encompasses all records systems,
policies, procedures, business rules, responsibilities, accountabilities,
resources and technologies in the unit. (Monash Records Continuum
Research Group, 1998)

5. Beneficial alliances with other accountability players and relationships of

trust with accountability stakeholders

The accountability players at micro level include: CEOs, senior managers,

information managers, auditors, lawyers, FOI officers, business process
designers, software vendors, IT professionals, contract managers,
compliance and risk managers, and service providers.
At macro level, accountability players include: sociologists,
historiographers, information and cultural players, society's watch dogs,
standard setters, regulatory authorities, IT shapers, and law makers.
Accountability stakeholders include: all of the above plus citizens, clients,
consumers, individually and collectively.

To explore further what is involved in establishing accountable recordkeeping, it

is instructive to look at an example – the National Archives of Australia's
approach to trying to ensure accountable recordkeeping in outsourcing
arrangements, based on the philosophy expressed in this statement:

Proper recordkeeping is a crucial part of all government administration and

accountability. It is the basis for establishing and maintaining documentary
evidence of government activities and decisions supporting good business
practice. The need for proper RK is equally applicable if the activities are
outsourced. (National Archives of Australia, Records Issues for Outsourcing
including General Disposal Authority 25, A Guideline for Agencies about their
Responsibilities for Recordkeeping in Outsourcing Arrangements, March
1998, http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/techpub/gda25/GDA25a.html)

The National Archives' Guidelines include reference to many of the components

of accountable recordkeeping outlined above. They highlight the need to specify
the recordkeeping regime for records of outsourced services, including the
application of archival, FOI, privacy, administrative, and audit law. The role of the
National Archives of Australia in relation to records of outsourced services is
defined, and an overview of the interrelationship between the various
accountability players involved (eg Auditor General, Ombudsman, Privacy
Commissioner) is provided. The Guidelines recommend that the contract specify
requirements for accountable recordkeeping systems, including:

• record creating requirements

• appropriate ownership, disposal, privacy, security, disclosure and access
provisions
• minimum recordkeeping standards and the need for compliance with the
recordkeeping requirements of relevant law and AS 4390, the Australian
Records Management Standard.

The Guidelines also emphasise the need to specify the requirements for agency
recordkeeping relating to the management and monitoring of contracts.

As can be seen from this brief summary, the Guidelines highlight the importance
of identifying the appropriate recordkeeping regime for the outsourced service or
function, including relevant law, the role of and relationships between the various
accountability players, with particular reference to the role of the National
Archives, and the way that the rules relating to accountable recordkeeping mesh
with the rules relating to accountable business activity. A critical issue is the
identification of the recordkeeping responsibilities and accountabilities of the
service provider. Another vital issue relates to the way contracts are drawn up,
managed and monitored – this carries with it another "layer of recordkeeping
responsibilities and accountabilities" back in the government agency which is
administering the contract arrangements and is ultimately accountable to
parliament for the outsourced function. How recordkeeping responsibilities are
specified in a contract is in itself an enormous challenge – and it is essential, in
meeting this challenge, that "business and social accountabilities are mapped
against recordkeeping accountabilities"9. The outcomes of inquiries such as the
Victorian Auditor General's into the Metropolitan Ambulance Service should help
us to advance the specification of quality control and accountability related
recordkeeping requirements.

In the last section of the paper I want to return to where I began – with shifting
paradigms and the associated reinvention of recordkeeping and archiving. This
reinvention has involved going back to some very fundamental questions – eg
What are records? What is recordkeeping? What is the role of recordkeeping
professionals in organisations and society? What is the role of archival
authorities? Postcustodial thinking that looks to the integration of recordkeeping
and archiving, and views custody as a storage or preservation strategy, is
challenging the notion that custody by an archival institution is a basic principle of
archival science. In Australia, records continuum thinking has involved
reconceptualising appraisal, description and access as complex multi-layered
functions and processes that capture, manage and make accessible records for
business, social and cultural purposes as long as they are of value – a
nanosecond or millennia. This view sees such processes as beginning at or
before records creation and continuing throughout their life span. In this
reconceptualisation, appraisal is carried out through iterative processes that
evaluate business transactions, activities and functions to determine which
records need to be captured and how long they need to be kept to meet business
needs, the requirements of organisational accountability and community
expectations. Description refers to iterative processes that capture and manage
recordkeeping metadata. And access is concerned with iterative processes that
establish terms and conditions of access and use in accordance with the rights of
the parties to the transactions that the records document, the business purpose
of the transactions and community expectations10. Recordkeeping professionals
have been developing new roles as policy makers, standard setters, strategic
planners, system designers, educators, advocates and auditors, and this has
involved the forging of new partnerships. All of these developments have
fundamental implications for defining recordkeeping responsibilities and
accountabilities.

We see aspects of this shifting paradigm reflected in the way the roles of archival
authorities and archivists are being articulated. Take as an example, United
States Archivist John Carlin's vision for the National Archives and Records
Administration:

The National Archives is not a dusty hoard of ancient history. It is a public trust
on which our democracy depends. It enables people to inspect for themselves
the record of what government has done. It enables officials and agencies to
review their actions and helps citizens hold them accountable. It ensures
continuing access to essential evidence that documents

• the rights of American citizens

• the actions of federal officials
• the national experience…

NARA ensures for the Citizen and the Public Servant, for the President and the
Congress and the Courts, ready access to essential evidence.
(John Carlin, "Ready Access to Essential Evidence": The Strategic Plan of the
National Archives and Records Administration 1997-2007,
athttp://www.nara.gov/nara/vision/naraplan.html)

Another trust-related metaphor worth considering is that of the trusted third party
which has the advantage of coming from the electronic commerce model11. This
metaphor could be used to express the role of the archival authority as
concerned with setting up regimes and trusted systems that:

• authenticate records created in the context of social and business

activities
• validate the recordkeeping related competencies of the parties to the
transaction
• monitor the exercise of record-related rights and responsibilities of all
stakeholders, and compliance with accountability requirements
• manage meaning and accessibility of records over time and beyond the
domains in which they were created.

The changing role of archivists is reflected in the shift of perception which depicts
them not as passive keepers of documentary detritus, Luc de Sante's "caretakers
in the boneyards of information"12, or Jenkinson's neutral, impartial custodians of
inherited records, but as Terry Cook's "active shapers of archival heritage, …
intervening agents conscious of their own historicity in the archive-creating
process"13, or Margaret Hedstrom's builders of "interfaces with time"14.

This shift has enormous implications for what archivists and archival institutions
are accountable for and to whom. The following questions provide a starting point
in the exploration of these issues:

• Who is accountable: who are the players in the recordkeeping

accountability game?
• To whom are they accountable: who are the stakeholders?
• For what are they accountable: what are the specific roles and
responsibilities of the players?
• What kinds of accountability partnerships are involved?
• And what kind of relationships of trust?
• What are the layers of accountability in recordkeeping regimes?
• How can business and social accountabilities be mapped to
recordkeeping requirements and accountabilities?

In the Terry Cook and Margaret Hedstrom constructs, archivists become agents
of corporate and societal memory, builders of "memory palaces", participants in
processes which shape the record and provide interpretative interfaces to the
past. In these roles they leave archival imprints on the record. A key
accountability issue therefore becomes, how explicit and indelible should these
imprints be? And how should we account for them?

Earlier in the paper, it was emphasised that recordkeeping is but one of the
agents of corporate and societal memory. From a recordkeeping perspective,
more work has to be done on unravelling the dynamics and politics of corporate
and societal memory, keeping in mind, as Terry Cook exhorts us to do, Milan
Kundera's words that "the struggle against power is the struggle of memory
against forgetting"15. What is the specific role of recordkeeping in structuring
corporate and societal remembering and forgetting? A key insight in this
unravelling might relate to Barbara Reed's notion that recordkeeping is
essentially about the validation of the processes of remembering and forgetting.
But whose remembering and whose forgetting?

1 Terry Cook used this metaphor in his principal paper in the Third Plenary
Session of the XIII International Congress on Archives, Beijing, 1996: 'Archives in
the Post-Custodial World: Interaction of Archival Theory and Practice since the
Publication of the Dutch Manual in 1898'.
2 Trevor Sykes provides a comprehensive and damning account of these cases
in his book, Bold Riders: Behind Australia's Corporate Collapses, Allen and
Unwin, St. Leonards NSW, 1994.
3 The "Sports Rorts Affair" is a celebrated case that illustrates much about the
relationship between poor recordkeeping and incompetent, negligent or corrupt
public administration. It involved the former Minister for Sports in Australia, Ros
Kelly, her failure to account for decisions relating to the award of government
grants to sporting bodies, and her inability to counter allegations that she had
distributed the money disproportionately to marginal electorates to gain electoral
advantage for the Labor Party. The Affair centred around the use of a whiteboard
to record the process of decision making that went on in the ministerial office –
and its subsequent erasure. It spawned a splendid series of recordkeeping
related cartoons: in which Ros Kelly was eventually depicted as wiping herself
out as well. In the final analysis, the key question was: did Ros Kelly behave
corruptly and get caught out, or was she merely a poor recordkeeper, the victim
of an inadequate recordkeeping system and a piecemeal recordkeeping regime?
For an account of the "Sports Rorts Affair", see: James McKinnon, 'The "Sports
Rorts" Affair: A Case Study in Recordkeeping, Accountability and Media
Reporting", New Zealand Archivist, Vol. V, No. 4, Summer/December 1994, pp.
1-5.
4 The following information about the outsourcing arrangements of the Victorian
Metropolitan Ambulance Service is drawn from a case study prepared by
Barbara Reed for the Monash University-National Archives of Australia Records
Management and Archives Skills Training Program, 1998.
5 The typology of failures in recordkeeping accountability is based on analysis of
the findings of a range of Royal Commissions, inquiries and studies which
investigated public and corporate mismanagement and corruption in Australia in
the 1980s and 1990s, and related accountability failures. In addition to those
already referenced in this paper, they included: Office of the Auditor-General of
Western Australia, Performance Examination, Report No. 2, May 1994: Records
Management, 1994. This report relates to a review of records management at
macro and micro levels in the public sector in WA. The review was prompted by
the findings of seven other public reviews that had linked poor accountability to
deficiencies in records management, most notably the WA Inc Royal
Commission and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
Victoria, Pleasant Creek Training Centre Inquiry, Report to the Director-General
of Community Services Victoria, April 1991. This report dealt with incidents of
sexual abuse of intellectually disabled residents of the Pleasant Creek Training
Centre. Poor and negligent recordkeeping was found to be a contributing factor,
including incomplete, inaccurate, inconsistent or missing incident and
investigation reports, poor security resulting in unauthorised access to records by
night supervisors, and inadequate cross-referencing to Community Services
Victoria's central filing system.
Queensland, Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC), Issues
Paper No. 16, Archives Legislation, September 1991. This paper details the case
of the 'lost' records of the Queensland Electoral Commission which related to the
redistribution of electoral boundaries in that state in 1985. The records were
apparently either destroyed or removed following the 1989 election and change
of government. The discovery of this 'loss' led to EARC's decision to institute a
review of archival law in Queensland.
For further analysis of a selection of these cases:
Sue McKemmish, 'Recordkeeping, Accountability and Continuity: the Australian
Reality' in Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping,
edited by Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, Ancora Press, Clayton, 1993.
6 The typology of organisational risks was developed by David Bearman:
'Archival Management to Achieve Organisational Accountability for Electronic
Records' in Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in
Contemporary Organisations, Archives and Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh,
1994, p. 13, 23-4. The issue of societal risks was in part explored in Sue
McKemmish, 'Evidence of Me…', Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 24, No. 1, May
1996, pp. 28-45. The findings of a recent inquiry which highlight issues of
historical recordkeeping, public accountability and related societal risks are
reported in:
Commonwealth of Australia, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission,
Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, 1997 (available
at ( http://www.hreoc.gov.au/nat_inq/inq_cont.htm)
7 The members of the Records Continuum Research Group are Sue
McKemmish (Director), Frank Upward, Barbara Reed and Livia Iacovino. Anne
Picot has also contributed to the analysis of accountable recordkeeping
presented here, in particular the definitions of accountable recordkeeping
regimes and compliant recordkeeping systems. (For more information on the
Group, see: http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/rcrg/.)
8 For more information on the current Australian initiatives in this area, see: Sue
McKemmish, Adrian Cunningham and Dagmar Parer, 'Metadata Mania',
conference paper presented to the Australian Society of Archivists 1998
Conference, Place, Interface and Cyberspace: Archives at the Edge, Fremantle,
August 1998 (available onhttp://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/rcrg).
9 A particular area of interest of Records Continuum Research Group member,
Barbara Reed, who has explored the issues of the layers of recordkeeping
responsibilities and accountabilities involved in outsourcing arrangements and
their specification in contracts in modules of the Monash University-National
Archives of Australia Records Management and Archives Skills Training Program
1998.
10 These broad definitions of appraisal, description and access are being
developed by Records Continuum Research Group members Frank Upward,
Barbara Reed and Sue McKemmish.
11 Margaret Hedstrom has also referred to electronic commerce models:
'Building Record-Keeping Systems: Archivists Are Not Alone on the Wild
Frontier', Archivaria, No. 44, Spring 1997, pp. 44-71.
12 'The Contents of Pockets', Granta, No. 41, Autumn 1992, p. 140.
13 Terry Cook, 'Archives in the Post-Custodial World: Interaction of Archival
Theory and Practice since the Publication of the Dutch Manual in 1898', op.cit.
14 Margaret Hedstrom, 'Interfaces with Time', Keynote Address to the Australian
Society of Archivists 1998 Conference, Place, Interface and Cyberspace:
Archives at the Edge, Fremantle, August 1998.
15 From The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1980, quoted by Terry Cook,
op.cit.

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