Confident Australian Records Managers pick up the Challenges of the Future
Confidence, that's the word for it. Brimming with it! Standards? Got them! Government attention? That too! World platforms? Yes, they are there. Software? It's the best!
What's this? The Records Management Association of Australia, and the 500 delegates at its annual conference in September. The theme of the conference: "Records management yesterday, today and tomorrow". Most enthusiasm came from members when looking forward to tomorrow's record-keeping world.
The most applause? For the local West Australia State MP, Philip Pendall, as he appealed to the association for support in a campaign to stop the State Government from watering down an election promise to appoint an independent State Records Manager.
 Ray Holswich |
The Perth, West Australia, conference took the plea to heart, and RMAA President, Ray Holswich, announced that the association would take action. I expect the result will be as satisfactory as last year's litigation when, with the Australian Society of Archivists, the RMAA took on and stopped a proposal to destroy evidential records from part of a Royal Commission on Government.
Australia is a commonwealth of eight independent regions with 13 million population. West Australia covers the western third of the continent, an area ten times the size of Britain but with a population of 1.7 million. More than half the delegates had travelled from the nation's eastern seaboard, four flying hours away across a country wider than the United States, costing employers around £400 in fares, up to £350 for accommodation and £300 registration fees. Now, that shows confidence!
Keynote speakers were flown in from British Columbia (Canada), Singapore, Wellington (New Zealand) and Melbourne -- all Pacific Rim market centres. Australia, the burgeoning giant of the South Eastern hemisphere, knows its greatest influence lies is Asia and South East Asia and its exploitation target is the biggest untapped market in the world, China, the awakening giant of the North Eastern hemisphere. At their 14th national convention, Australian records managers showed an awakening awareness of their importance in this game plan and an excited willingness to, as they would put it, "get stuck in".
 Prof. Luciana Duranti |
A world-leading information studies academic, Professor Luciana Duranti, opened the conference. She is a don in the Master of Archival Studies programme as the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. Previously, she was Researcher-Professor on the Special School for Archivists and Librarians in Rome and State Archivist in the State Archives in Rome. Her paper "looked for elements that would conjure an image … capable of generating a vision for modern record-keepers, provide them with new ideas and stir up their aspirations".
She found that record-keeping was not generally for artists or movers and shakers, but rather for guardians, guarantors, mediators, facilitators and for people one could trust. She outlined the history of record-keeping from the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, through 16th century Spain and 17th and 18th century China, from which came the roots of modern record-keeping, to "make explicit the relationship between records and the actions in which they participate, to authenticate and perpetuate it, and make sure that, as long as the records remain under the jurisdiction of their creator, such relationship will never be altered".
The diminutive, Italian-born professor told the attentive Australians: "There is no question that contemporary record forms have re-kindled the social need for traditional record-keeping systems controlled by managers of records as instruments of action rather than a source of information.
"It does not matter whether their names are record-keepers, record analysts, records managers, information managers, archivists, as in Latin countries, or even 'arsiparis' as in Indonesia. These professionals need to be entrusted with a clear competence; that is, the authority and capacity for establishing, implementing, monitoring, maintaining and updating records-keeping systems that include a registration function, an integrated classification, scheduling and access function, integrated business and commentary procedures, instruments of control serving retrieval, reproduction and authentication functions and clearly-defined transmission and security procedures."
She concluded: "If we wish to ensure that, in a world dominated by new information technologies, the people preserve the capacity to scrutinise the actions of their delegates, the administrators the action of their officers, employers the actions of their employees and the next generations the actions of their ancestors, we need to entrust the responsibility of keeping records of actions to professionals who are competent about both records and actions, and can act within their society as guardians of its right and a force for its continuity."
 Prof. Sue McKemmish |
Home-grown academic, Professor Sue McKemmish, an associate professor in the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records at Melbourne's Monash University, took the conference into present day record-keeping. She detailed the new Australia-devised "records continuum" process, a record-keeping philosophy to supersede traditional "life cycle" scheduling. She said: "In Australia, the records continuum has provided us with a way of articulating a professional mission that brings together records managers and archivists under the record-keeping umbrella. Records continuum thinking focuses on the unifying purposes shared by all record-keeping professionals."
The current Laureate of the Australian Society of Archivists, Professor McKemmish explained: "A records continuum perspective can be contrasted with the life cycle model. The life cycle model argues that there are clearly definable stages in record-keeping and creates a sharp distinction between current and historical record-keeping. The record continuum, on the other hand, has provided Australian records managers and archivists with a way of thinking about the integration of record-keeping and archiving processes.
"The life cycle model sees records passing through stages until they eventually 'die', expect for the 'chosen ones' that are reincarnated as archives. A continuum-based approach suggests integrated time-space dimensions. Records are 'fixed' in time and space from the moment of their creation, but record-keeping regimes carry them forward and enable their use for multiple purposes by delivering them to people living in different times and spaces."
 Hon. Philip Pendal |
M.P. Philip Pendal's paper took the conference by storm. He opened with the arresting statement: "The West Australian Parliament is soon to be confronted with a decision of a Bill about whether or not one can ever be 'a bit pregnant'. Put another way, the Parliament will be requested to pass a Bill that will create a Public Records Commission which will be paraded as an independent body but which, in a very real sense, may only be a bit independent, or partially independent."
The independent member for South Perth went on to argue that such a form of public records protection would be worse than no protection at all. With no protection, professional record keepers would remain vigilant, but a watered down version of the State Government's promise would only give the illusion that protective measures were in place, "a certain way of ensuring that the defenders of public records will drop their guard".
He outlined the background, well-known among Australian record-keepers, of the activities of a recent West Australia Government cabinet "where official papers were lost, deliberately destroyed or removed by officials". The Royal Commission that followed declared: "Records provide the indispensable chronicle of a government's stewardship the first defence against concealment and deception." (1)
Mr Pendal told the conference that ministers of the subsequently-elected Liberal Government had made a number of statements indicating their high regard for the Royal Commission's finding. The Minister for the Arts spoke of the creation of a statutory "office of independent keeper of the public record whose task it would be to report directly to Parliament where it has evidence that documents have been destroyed illegally" (2)
Now, he said, despite these statements, the Government was planning to reduce the office of keeper to that of a public records officer reporting through a public service line to the head of the Library and Information Service and establish a separate Public Records Commission, with the resulting confusion and duplication of activity.
He appealed publicly to the Arts Minister "even at this late stage not to proceed down (that) path. That will give us the worst of all worlds." And he appealed to the RMAA to pressure the State Government to reconsider. The conference was roused and applauded support for the appeal. It was stirring stuff and I got the feeling that the Association had taken the challenge confidently to heart.
 Mike Steemson and conference marketing manager Bonnie Allen dancing at the convention dinner. Pic: Gail Murphy. |
The conference was supported by a crowded exhibition of around 40 suppliers, universities and other organisations including the federal Australian Archives and several State archives. Social events included a welcome party on the beach in front of the conference headquarters, the Rendezvous Observation Hotel, a convention dinner in Perth's new casino and convention venue, the Burswood Centre, and a "mystery progressive dinner" which progressed no further than the first, Central American restaurant because the tortillas were so succulent - the Australian wine was pretty good, too!
Next year, the RMAA conference will be in Brisbane from September 6 to 9. For the organising Queenlanders, and for any conference organiser there or anywhere else for that matter, the RMAA's 14th annual convention in Perth will be a hard act to follow.
(1) Royal Commission on the Commercial Activities of Government (West Australia), Report No 2 - part 2, December 1995, p 36.
(2) Speech of the Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Mr Peter Foss, Q.C., Member of the Legislative Council (M.L.C.), 1994, quoted in Royal Commission Report No 2 - part 2, 1995.
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 Michael Steemson |
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