The Public Records Act 2005 (PRA) sets out the role of the Chief Archivist in providing standards and leadership in ensuring that public offices and local authorities meet their PRA obligations. In today’s blog post we’ll talk about how Archives is organised internally to provide these standards and leadership and profile some of the teams that a public office is likely to work with in its relationship with Archives New Zealand (Archives).
Archives is divided into two Directorates. The two directorates are named Government Recordkeeping and Holdings & Discovery. In today’s blog we’re profiling the Government Recordkeeping Directorate.
The Government Recordkeeping Directorate has recently been renamed from the Client Capability Directorate. The new name reinforces the fundamental role of the Directorate.That role is to be the face of Archives New Zealand in its dealings with public offices and local authorities. The standards and advice that Archives issues, the running of the PRA audit programme, setting of the structure around the disposal of public records and managing transfers to Archives are some of the roles that the Directorate performs. A longer list of the duties of the Directorate can be read here: http://www.records.archives.govt.nz/about-us/.
The Directorate is divided into three teams.
The Advice & Compliance (A&C) team is responsible for the records toolkit and for administering the rkadvice@dia.govt.nz mailbox. It also produces advice documentation, investigates complaints against recordkeeping practices of public offices and local authorities under the PRA and manages the PRA audit programme.
This team also has the lead role in the running of The Community Archive and Archives’ relationships with Iwi and Hapu groups.
Enquiries about recordkeeping best practice, the PRA audit programme and the records toolkit will be answered by a member of this team.
The Disposal and Acquisition (D&A) team is another team in the Directorate. This team can advise on the retention and disposal of records.If your office is looking to transfer records to the Wellington office of Archives an Archivist from the D&A team will be assigned to assist your office through the process. For transfers to a regional office of Archives New Zealand an Archivist from that office will be assigned.
The D&A team also work with implementing any necessary restrictions on transfer to Archives and can advise generally on making access decisions on records not transferred to Archives. The team also produces some advice documentation for the records toolkit.
Each Archivist in the D&A team is responsible for aa set of portfolios (with each portfolio covering a certain sector e.g. Defence or Health). This gives a public office a single point of contact they can consult with about the disposal, transfer and access status of records. If you do not know your contact simply email your query to: rkadvice@dia.govt.nz and it will be referred to the responsible team member.
The third team is System, Strategy and Standards (SSaS). This team is responsible for the formulation of Archives’ policy and advice concerning the many challenges of records and information management. For instance, the SSaS team is developing Archives’ approach to transfers of born digital records and considers and develops policy for the direction of the Directorate as a whole.
Given the more strategic focus of SSaS the team deals with public offices and local authorities less often that the other teams. The work of the SSaS team underlines much of the advice given by the other teams of the Directorate.
In a future blog post we’ll profile the Holdings and Discovery directorate. If you have any questions about this post, or how Archives New Zealand can be of assistance leave a comment or email us at rkadvice@dia.govt.nz.