Enpowering justice through recordkeeping

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•Identity & rights
•Archives & records
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As the world becomes more interdependent and populous, its needs and potential uses for records also expand. In civil societies, competing claims and ambitions for limited living space, trading advantages and resources must be adjudicated and records play the crucial role in achieving wise, fair and timely results.

Identity and basic rights through records

Records are especially crucial to individuals seeking to establish their identities or ensure their entitlements to basic human rights. One of the first and most important actions of the newly formed United Nations after World War II was the proclamation of the Universal declaration of human rights.

SITE TO VISIT - read the Universal declaration of human rights on the United Nations web site.

Certainly, the destruction or loss of access to one's vital personal records can be very disruptive, even life threatening, to those affected. Almost every major event generates important records that are needed throughout one's life.

For years, unique physical features such as footprints and fingerprints have been used to supplement to writing-only sources in establishing identify. Increasingly, these are being supplanted by new physical identifiers.

Can you name some of these new tools?
Check Answer

Click on these significant life events for examples and images of vital personal records essential to proving identity or verifying entitlements.

Awards
Investments
Employment

People who lose their homes, loved ones and livelihoods through natural or man-made catastrophe often suffer further deprivations as displaced persons because few have basic records to prove their identities or support claims for refugee status.

In fact, one of the harshest punishments an individual could receive in Tsarist Russia was 'legal death'. All the records documenting the victim's existence in law were destroyed. Such 'non-persons' could not travel, work, marry or own property. With no protection or recourse under law, they were vulnerable to robbery, assault, slavery, even murder, because such act against non-persons were not crimes.

When one must suddenly flee for one's life, fear and chaos reigns.

SITES TO VISIT - visit the UK Refugee Council home page and other sites that explain the experiences of refugees world wide.

Archives and records

All archives are records but not all records are archives

Only 1-3% of all records have enough enduring and varied usefulness to be retained indefinitely as archives. As material evidence of actions and decisions taken over time, unique flows of archival records are authoritative sources for anyone seeking to understand and explain what has actually occurred, be it yesterday or far in the past.

Archives are very managerially and culturally significant because they document the most significant decisions and events of our unfolding economic, political and social lives, individual as well as organisational. Individual and inter-related flows of records or record series are vital markers, enabling us to identify patterns of activity and influence, assess progress and trace responsibility over time. Records and archives are, in fact, the 'arsenals of Law and Accountability'.

SITE TO VISIT - find out what Sue McKemmish has to say in The smoking gun: Recordkeeping and accountability.

Record series come in a wide variety of forms, some very unusual like these paraffin blocks encasing human tissue samples. This pathology series of diseased specimens forms a valuable archive for medical researchers studying changes in medical treatments and diseases no longer extant in modern times.

It is no surprise that the success enjoyed by rogue elements in society can often be linked to recordkeeping. Many modern white collar criminals dare not attack public accountability mechanisms directly so they promote neglect and use graft to corrupt the reliability of the records on which accountability depends. Certainly, this has been the case in recent dramatic corporate scandals and failures. Examples abound in the news, among the most well-known are the collapse of energy company Enron and insurers HIH. Sadly, this situation has been especially prevalent in contexts that can least afford it: the public services of struggling countries in the developing world.

SITES TO VISIT - Find out more about Enron on the BBC News Online, HIH via the Understanding Company Law website and some of the issues of civil service reform on the World Bank site.

Ironically, some of the best recordkeepers in history are repressive regimes where the mechanisms of accountability were applied to exploit the citizenry and silence those who disagreed with those in them. Former regimes in Nazi Germany, USSR, DDR (East Germany), Khmer Rouge Cambodia and apartheid South Africa all documented their tyranny with excellent records. Today, new governments in these countries are utilising records to restore humanity and civility - first by acknowledging their terrible pasts and promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. Ahead there remains the task of promoting the role of archives and furthering trust in their new role.

Archives and records: Arsenals of law and order

To achieve stability and distribution of resources, governments enact laws and regulations which record in written form the structures and sets of rules governing the relations and activities of all legal entities within their jurisdictions. Although many copies of such statutes exist, the signed original is retained and securely protected by the public archival authority. Laws and regulations are infrastructural archives that underpin the rule of law and enable society to hold people and organisations accountable for their actions, control business activity and ensure transparency and responsiveness in government.

SITE TO VISIT - visit the Timetable of world legal history on the Law Museum's web pages.

Many cultures are experiencing a widespread demand for governments and individuals to demonstrate greater responsibility and accountability in the conduct and management of public and private affairs. This movement is particularly strong in countries that are recovering from the ravages of war and tyranny with shattered infrastructures and decimated populations.

The International Records Management Trust highlights the necessity for reliable recordkeeping regimes and prompts progressive governments and organisations to integrate specific recordkeeping requirements within program mandates, policies, laws and regulations. Recordkeeping professionals from around the globe are cooperating to repair collapsed systems thus creating the trustworthy public establishment to underpin a return to good governance and sustain economic and social recovery.

SITE TO VISIT - visit the International Records Management Trust site.

Our sense of ourselves and our vibrancy as individuals and societies depend upon our capacity to safeguard and refresh these memories over time. The commitment to creating and maintaining an independent cumulative 'collective memory' is the hallmark of institutions and societies that value social continuity, accountability and distinctiveness.

Thus, archival records perform two vital roles for society:

• they provide the structure and support required to manage organised activity
• and they comprise the building blocks for the construction and transfer of culture.

This essential resource is the foundation of stability and point of reference that keeps us on course amid the seas of change. Each generation adds a distinct and immutable layer to this 'societal memory' by consigning an elite body of records - its archives- to the protection of a public archival authority.

In the minds of many people, a suitable archives building should be a monumental stone structure, a classical temple to truth, heritage and authority. The original wing of the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, home to one of the world's great collections of Australiana, embodies this ideal. However, looks are much less important than functionality. Having a facility which is easy and economical to manage and maintain is paramount.

The mandate and work of archival authorities

Archival authorities ensure that authentic recorded evidence of administrative, corporate, cultural and intellectual activity is made, kept and used. The work is important, challenging and satisfying. What does this involve?

The overarching recordkeeping mission has two complementary responsibilities:

1. Documenting the present

Documenting the present involves designing, establishing and maintaining effective recordkeeping regimes within ongoing organisational and personal work environments. Activity primarily occurs within and on behalf of a 'host' institution (government or private body) and centres around the 'office' where the organisation's official records are managed in information systems designed to meet current business, regulatory and archival authority requirements.

SITE TO VISIT - for an example of policies, guidelines and 'how-to-do-it' support for developing sound recordkeeping regimes, visit the National Archives of Australia's online publication Designing and Implementing RecordKeeping Systems (DIRKS).

Out of sight is soon out of control! Unlabled records in unidentified, non-standard cartons stored anyhow in a spare office or cupboard, can become a recordkeeper's nightmare. Without commitment from private and government institutions to 'document the present', vital records can be lost forever.

Comprehensive programs that manage the records and archives of an entity or organisation are referred to as institutional archives and include such bodies as national archives and public record offices, business or corporate archives, and university or school archives.

2. Reconstructing the Past

Unfortunately, not all records are secure within formal recordkeeping regimes. People and organisations change their activities, move or go out of business. Catastrophes, sabotage and misfortunes may disrupt or destroy their operations. Thus there will always be a need for the 'forensic' side of recordkeeping which rescues and reconstructs the past from surviving records and other materials.

This shattered shell once housed a thriving business, but a disasterous fire swept through the building, destroying the recordkeeping systems.

Recordkeeping programs with this responsibility as their primary focus normally work out of centralised cultural institutions with an established collecting interest eg a local studies, moving image, photograph, sound and/or manuscripts collection serving a local, state or national area.

These collecting archives primarily acquire culturally significant materials from the past from a number of individual and organisational depositors. Once acquired, these items and bodies of records are organised, preserved and made available for research. Collecting archives mainly seek to document the personal side of life, leaving the government and institutional programs to take care of the 'official' records.

The John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library's primary collection focus is material related to the life and times of John Curtin, Australia's World War II Prime Minister.

SITES TO VISIT - visit some archives of different types with strong online access to collections

Thus the global mission of archival authorities is to ensure the long term management of the infrastructures essential to modern societies. Only through professionally managed, effective recordkeeping regimes will the essential evidence be captured and protected in useable form for as long as required. Whilst recordkeepers cannot hope to prevent irreparable, cultural losses caused when natural or human disasters lead to the destruction of archives, they can at least eliminate neglect as a factor.

SITES TO VISIT - visit sites which explore the role of archives in recovering and understanding the records of the past.

Crimes, scandals, risks and records

Even the most archivally advanced democracies find it a challenge to keep those in charge honest. Many recent and current crises faced by nations and governments have their roots in incompetent recordkeeping.

The Records Continuum Research Group at Monash University in Melbourne Australia in studying hundreds of accountability crises and management failures in the Australian public sector has isolated a number of serious failures and risks directly caused by neglect of recordkeeping. These deficiencies in recordkeeping include:

• Inadequate or non-compliant corporate recordkeeping systems in both the public and private sector
• Inadequate recordkeeping law
• Weak or non-existent links between agencies & accountability 'watchdogs' & 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
• Organisational level failures traced to recordkeeping - Eg. Outsourcing the Victorian Ambulance Service
• Failure of Cabinets, senior ministers, public servants, police officers, boards of directors, CEOs and businessmen and women to fulfil their legal responsibility to make records in the first place or to 'keep them faithfully' once made - Eg. The 'Sports Rorts' affair
• Deliberate cases of illegal destruction - Eg. The Heiner Affair

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.

It is also possible to characterise the types of risks associated with recordkeeping failures. The consequences of recordkeeping accountability failures can be analysed in terms of either

• Organisational risks
• or Societal risks.

SITES TO VISIT - find out about some famous forgeries and how manuscripts and records are tested for authenticity. Check out some sites about risks and crimes associated with recordkeeping failures.

Once records have been identified for discarding, they need to be disposed of under appropriate guidelines. Whether they are important or unimportant, all records must be suitably packaged to ensure confidentiality up to and during destruction. Public confidence in management is fragile and can be badly damaged when official records are found blowing about on the streets.

Records in fiction, film and exhibitions: Compelling viewing

Records lurk behind the headlines everyday! Go to your local newspaper or television news program and see how recordkeeping relates to many of the stories. Recordkeeping often underpins, even inspires major forms of entertainment. The plots of popular novels and movies, especially thrillers, frequently depend on some critical act of recordkeeping.

Archives and records in fiction and film

Never thought of archives and records as the stuff of best sellers or blockbusters? Think again. Records are there and in a very big way. Click on the following popular titles to discover their 'archival moments' and how records play a pretty important role in the outcome of events.

Star Wars (1976)
Erin Brockovich (1998)

SITES TO VISIT - explore The Fictional world of archives, art galleries and museums and identify the 'archival moments' of significance in art, books and film. You will be amazed!

Archives and records on exhibition

In the past, people wanting to view or examine archives had to travel to the 'bricks and mortar' repository where these unique records were housed. Today, many archives around the world are mounting exhibitions of their 'treasures' and life-changing records on the Internet.

A number of key institutions and many smaller repositories have mounted exhibitions of their most important or intriguing records on the WWW.

SITES TO VISIT - Check out some of these fascinating online exhibitions and explore the wide variety of documentary treasures.

The American Declaration of Independence is on permanent exhibition at the US National Archives and Records Administration. Thousands of visitors queue daily to view this symbol of cultural identity and other documentary landmarks of American democracy.

Archives and the construction of culture

'Archives have cultural value not because they are "old stuff" but because, as records, they link us to the transactions and activities which have lasting importance for symbolic or concrete reasons. The cultural value of archives is therefore a reflection of, and derivative of, their 'recordness".'

( Mark Stevens, Archives Manager, City of Sydney, Australia, quoting USA archives and museums advocate, David Bearman.)

Bodies of archives also constitute our 'cultural glue'. These cumulative layers of evidence legitimise and witness significant transactions and activities across time. The capacity to construct and transfer culture has always been respected, even revered, as an essential social function. There is no future for the past, other than those portions of it that are selected and kept alive because they are of continuing use in the present. Thus culture is and always has been an evolving organic accumulation, which is reinvented and transmitted with each new generation.

Archives are the means society uses to construct and re-examine its knowledge base of insights and achievements. They are the raw material we analyse or interpret to create new knowledge and to which we return to test existing truths.

Without archives to explain the context and thus supply the meaning essential for understanding, surviving artefacts remain objects of mystery and the human race loses its capacity to progress. Forensic fossicking among the ruins of record-less civilisations is undeniably fascinating and may recover important fragments of knowledge, but it is an extremely slow, inaccurate and expensive undertaking. What lost wisdom and skills could have been reclaimed if the builders of the Stonehenge or Macchu Pichu had preserved records amid their ruins.

SITES TO VISIT - find out more about Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, and about the Mayan civilisation for which records have survived.

Archives and other irreplacable cultural treasures are so important in today's turbulent world that the United Nations has designed special measures to protect them from damage during emergencies, armed conflict or terrorist attack. A comprehensive overview page from the UNESCO site includes links to a number of important sites and documents including the Hague convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict.

In the sparsely documented medieval times, we rely heavily on illustrations decorating rare manuscripts for our insights into courtly or ordinary life.

One of the most damaging actions an aggressor can take is to target an opponent's archives for destruction, as has occurred in recent conflicts. Without these vital records, the victim culture gradually loses its memory and capacity to sustain itself. The result is a form of collective dementia, not unlike Alzheimer's Disease. For an overview of the losses in the 20th Century, particularly in recent years, visit the UNESCO website's Safeguarding of vital records in the event of armed conflict and In focus: Conflict in the Balkans.

SITES TO VISIT - visit the UNESCO pages to access these sites.

Records also play a critical role in bringing terrorists and war criminals to justice. The United Nations is conducting inquiries and trials to ensure that victims of genocide and mass murder are remembered and avenged.

Investigators from UN member countries are gathering scattered records and conducting interviews to uncover the facts of these horrific crimes in Africa, the Balkans, Cambodia and East Timor. Of prime importance is recovering or replacing vital personal records so that refugees can be identified and access relief services.

SITES TO VISIT - visit the UN site Refugee News Net and the Cambodian Genocide Program pages for more information about recovering vital personal records.

Can we ever know what really happened?

Although the ultimate goal of record making is to capture actual experiences for replication, even the best record making technologies have always fallen short. Life is organic and colourful; it is sound, lights, action! An ongoing process not unlike an animated hologram. Record making deconstructs and documents the essence of this complex activity (thinking, feeling, acting, speaking) in static form- a 'freeze-frame snapshot' of a live situation - captured from the point of view of the recorder, who may or may not be participating in the action.

Record makers select symbols to represent key participants and relationships - usually the who, what, when and where - of experiences- and organise them in fixed structures - records - for retrieval and examination in future as evidence of what has occurred. Such an entity is unable to capture the dynamism of active processes (the how) and can only document purposes and motivations (the why) if consciously designed to do so and even then only inaccurately.

Our most familiar record approximating an authentic re-experience of 'what happened', the television instant replay with full motion, colour and sound, is captured from an objective view (the camera's), rather than from the participant's perspective(s).

Investigators trying to get the full picture break down the overall question 'What really happened?' into smaller segments and tackle them one by one.

Is it possible to capture the emotion of an event or the essence of an artistic performance? Certainly documentary video and motion pictures come close, but some things are still missing.

• What was the activity or event?
• Who was involved in the activity or event?
• What was the nature of their relationship or involvement?
• What actions, thoughts, decisions did they make?
• When and where did these begin and end?
• What was the result or impact of their involvement?

Answers to each of these may be full or fragmentary, but collectively they help us to approach the most difficult question of all - explaining WHY things unfolded as they did.