Australian archives agency is allowing 'national treasures' to deteriorate, internal review finds

National Archives of Australia could be in breach of legal requirements as funding shortage limits document preservation efforts

The funding-starved National Archives of Australia is allowing documents to deteriorate, potentially against its legal obligations, and is struggling to meet its mandate to preserve government records and make them public, a damning review has found.

In January 2020, ex-senior public servant David Tune handed the federal government an internal review of the function and efficiency of the National Archives of Australia.

The government has sat on the report since then, and has resisted making it public, despite freedom of information requests from independent senator Rex Patrick.

The NAA released the review late Friday afternoon, following the Guardian asking questions about it earlier on Friday.

The report made several startling findings. It found the NAA was “struggling” to meet its mandate “to secure, preserve and make public, the archival resources of the Commonwealth”.

“In particular, the National Archives has struggled to fulfil its mandate and to invest in the systems it needs in the digital age to meet this mandate,” the report said. “Resources are needed to invest in contemporary technologies that will meet the volume of digital transfer, preservation, storage, declassification, and public access required under the Act.”

The review noted the NAA has been defunded and starved of resources. The strain on resources has harmed its service delivery and led to redundancies.

“As observed in recent independent audits, this has impacted the National Archives service delivery to both government and the Australian public.”

The report identified an immediate and pressing concern: that the NAA is allowing the “deterioration of many records” that it holds. This, it found, was a potential breach of the Archives Act.

“Limited capacity in the Archives means that many records (in a variety of forms) will be lost if action is not taken. As such, the National Archives could potentially be in breach of Part 5 Section 24 of the Act due to unauthorised loss of records.”

The report said the NAA was also failing to respond to “requests for records within the period defined in the Act”.

“Long response times were highlighted in many public submissions to this review and have also attracted media attention for some time,” the review said. “Part of this criticism relates to the time taken by the National Archives to obtain advice from other agencies (particularly for security related and other sensitive records) before it can take decisions on whether to declassify records and release them.”

The report was finally released publicly after it was provided to Patrick through FoI.

The independent senator said the FoI should not have been necessary.

“It is unfortunate that it was necessary to have to resort to an FoI application to secure the release of a major report on the principal institution responsible for safeguarding and making available to the public the historical records of the Australian Government,” he said. “Mr Tune’s report should have been published as soon as it was submitted to the government.”

Patrick said it was “worrying” to read that the deterioration of records required immediate action.

“The National Archives is charged with responsibility for safeguarding what are national treasures; documents that tell our nation’s history – from big political decisions down to the service records of individual Defence Force personnel or the immigration files of the millions of people who have come from overseas to make Australia their home,” he said. “The vast and fragile photographic collections of the National Archives are a unique and irreplaceable part of our nation’s visual history.”

“It’s worrying, therefore, to read Mr Tune’s assessment that the deterioration of many records held in the Archives requires immediate action.”

Contributor

Christopher Knaus

The GuardianTramp

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