Records Managers Hybrid Forum March 2025

Laura Baldwin: Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to our first Records Managers Forum of 2025.

As always, this is a collaboration between State Records NSW and Museums of History NSW.

We aim to host three forums each year to provide updates and helpful information to public offices.

For those of you who haven't met me before, I'm Laura Baldwin, Manager Policy and Advice with State Records NSW.

Our Executive Director, Martyn Killion, is unfortunately unable to be here today and sends his apologies.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we're meeting today.

For those of us in person, we are gathering on Gadigal country here at Museum of Sydney.

As many of you would know, this is a particularly significant and painful location for First Nations peoples as the epicentre of colonial government for the first 57 years of white settlement.

I would like to pay my respect to elders, past and present and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today, either in person or online.

So, you'll see the agenda on the screen now.

The Forum today is divided into two sessions.

The first one is relevant to people from all types of public offices.

The second session is targeted specifically at local government, although of course everyone is welcome to stay.

We're going to have a half hour break, which is planned at 3:00PM to divide the sessions.

For those of you attending online, there'll be a holding screen in place and all cameras and microphones will be switched off until we recommence at 3:30PM.

For those here in person, we will head back out to the foyer from where you came in originally to enjoy some afternoon tea, during which I encourage you to continue the conversations that you were having before.

Staff from State Records NSW and Museums of History NSW will be hanging around as well and are always very eager for a chat.

So to continue on with the theme of housekeeping, just to let you know in the unlikely event of an emergency there are staff from the Museum of Sydney who'll be able to direct our way out.

The emergency exit is the way that you came in originally.

The toilets are located downstairs, so if you go out the door, down the stairs and around, sort of past the shop when you first entered.

But Rishi is also available outside.

He's wearing a checked shirt so you can always ask him, and he'll direct you in the right place.

Please avoid using your phones wherever possible and at the end of each presentation, we will ask for questions.

If you're in the building, please raise your hand and we'll send some handheld microphones around to you just to ensure that everyone in the room and online is able to clearly hear you and I’ll also allow for some more general questions before the break as well, if they don't relate to a particular presentation.

If you're at home, there is a question functionality within the Team's chat, which I encourage you to use.

We do have team members on their laptops who will be able to respond to some questions, but where appropriate, we’ll actually hold those over until the end of presentations so that we can address them as a wider group, and all learn from your questions as well.

Just a reminder that this event is being recorded, and also you may have noticed that John is taking some photos, if you don't want your photo taken, please just talk to a member of staff and we'll be able to make sure that you don't appear in any photographs.

So I will hand over now to Joanne Carlos, who is one of our Project Officers here at State Records NSW.

Joanne Carlos: So, hello and good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Joanne Carlos. As Laura mentioned, I'm one of the Project Officers. In particular, I work in our Regulatory Strategy and Partnerships team.

I'm really here to give an overview of the standards and the code of best practice as well as to provide an update on our recordkeeping monitoring exercise.

So for anyone who is new in the room or online to records management, or even to us at State Records NSW, one of our principal functions is to develop and issue standards on records management.

And one of the ways that we do this is by developing those standards.

Currently we have two standards, the standard on records management, which was originally issued in 2015 and amended in 2018 and the standard on the physical storage of State records originally issued in 2000 and revised in 2012 and 2018 respectively.

I mentioned this in particular because in 2023 both standards had been in operation for five years, so as per our policy cycle, we were finally able to review both standards to ensure that there weren't any gaps and also to ensure that they essentially were still relevant and fit for purpose.

After a four-week consultation period with public offices last year, the State Records NSW Board approved both standards in December last year, as well as the renewal of our Code of Best Practice, which I will go into.

And last month, on the 14th, you probably would have received our correspondence where both standards were formally issued to public offices.

I just wanted to take this opportunity as well, just to thank everyone and the public offices who participated or who submitted feedback to us. It was truly valuable.

And so the standards themselves.

The Standard on records management establishes a requirement for effective records and information management.

It's designed to assist public offices or organisations like yourselves covered by the State Records Act, to essentially meet and discharge your obligations under the Act.

The standard covers records, information and data in all formats, both digital and physical, and has been framed to support good information practices in complex business environments.

I do want to note that the standard also applies to records created and maintained by contractors and service providers in the course of business.

Compared to its previous iteration, there have been no major changes to the standard itself, the principles of the standard remain unchanged and so do the compliance requirements under each principle.

We found from our benchmarking as well as our research, that the standard continues to stand up very well against the requirements in other jurisdictions around Australia and New Zealand, as well as at the industry level, and that the standard is still applicable now in the face of evolving technologies and improved service delivery platforms.

On the screen is a list of the changes to the standard.

I won't go into too much detail on them, but I did just want to highlight a few things, namely that the biggest change to the standard itself is highlighting data and clarifying that data is also included when managing our overall information assets.

We have also added a note in the introduction under scope, recognising the importance of records and information managers working very closely with data custodians and data managers to develop and achieve a more holistic framework and approach.

Now the bulk of the rest of the changes to the standard are in the examples provided to demonstrate compliance.

Some of these new examples include the establishment of information governance groups, reporting to audit and risk committees.

Documenting high risk and high value records, information and data into an information asset register.

Incorporating information security measures to mitigate against cyber security incidents, considering Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles and protocols when using and sharing data and metadata, notifying State Records NSW of incidents involving substantial damage to records.

Registering and keeping your access directions updated with Museums of History NSW when and where required.

And minimising the over retention of records by carrying out regular authorised disposal.

Now we don't intend for any of these examples to be restrictive in any way.

They're truly there as a guide and they're not definitive or prescriptive.

If anything, our purpose in expanding these examples is not only to reflect the changes in government, in technology and in the industry since 2015, but also to assist you when completing the RMAT during the recordkeeping monitoring exercise and by this we mean providing a more solid range of examples or evidence that you can use and draw from when choosing your maturity levels in answering those questions.

So the Storage standard.

As its name suggests, the standard establishes the requirements for the storage of State records which have a physical format.

The Storage standard is a lot more technical than the Standard on records management.

But every public office or organisation covered by the Act must comply with both, and this standard in particular, to ensure the safe custody and proper preservation of the State records in your control and to protect the records from damage, alteration or neglect.

Although perhaps obvious, but still important to note, the storage standard does not cover digital records stored on network servers, in the cloud and in data centres.

They are subject to requirements set out by the NSW Data Strategy, the NSW Cloud Policy and the NSW Cyber Security Policy.

As for the changes.

Notably, the biggest change is the introduction of a new minimum compliance requirement that requires public offices to formally notify State Records NSW if records are damaged or lost.

This new requirement essentially formalises an existing informal process.

The notification form is available and live on our website as I speak.

Other major changes to the storage standard include the amalgamation of short term records or records with a retention period of 10 years and medium term records or records with a retention period of 10 to 30 years into a single category of short term temporary records, which encapsulates all records that are required to be retained and stored for up to 30 years.

Other changes include a reduction in the temperature range and in relative humidity for long term temporary records and records required as State archives, and a simplified Table A for short term records and a simplified Table B for long term temporary records and records required as State archives.

The other changes are quite minor in nature and involve revisions or updates to existing minimum compliance requirements.

Similarly to the Standard on records management, the Standard on the physical storage of State records also lists examples to demonstrate compliance against each requirement.

Just to reiterate, these are examples only and serve as a guide.

So before I get onto the Code of Best Practice, I do just want to let you all know that both standards are accompanied by an implementation guide which are available on our website as well.

Since our standards are quite high level, the guides provide further explanation on each requirement and provides links to relevant guidance, advice or resources provided by us or other parts of government or from the National Archives.

So on top of standards, the State Records Act allows us to approve codes of best practice for records management after consultation with public offices and subsequent approval from our Board.

Codes of best practice are industry standards, which describe best practice and are a benchmark for measuring processes, practices and systems.

They really underpin and support mandatory requirements in the standards issued by State Records NSW.

The Australian and International Standard AS ISO 15489 was issued as a Code of Best Practice in 2018 to NSW and was approved for renewal alongside the revision of both standards in December last year.

So the Code of Best Practice covers concepts, controls, and processes around the management of records and record systems, policies and responsibilities, records controls such as metadata, business classification schemes, access and permissions, and processes around storage, the useability of records, migration and conversion and disposal.

We have for your reference also mapped the requirements of AS ISO 15489 to the requirements in the standards issued by us, and that information is available in the implementation guide.

So that's about it for standards and the Code of Best Practice.

Happy to receive any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

Any questions online? No. All right, perfect.

So in case there is anyone here or online who is new to all of this, State Records NSW conducts a yearly exercise called the Recordkeeping Monitoring Exercise, or the RME, that covers the state of recordkeeping across the NSW public sector.

All public offices covered by the State Records Act must submit a response.

If you have not formally withdrawn or if you have not been formally excused from participating, then you will likely find yourselves listed publicly in our State of Recordkeeping report.

For you, the RME or the RMAT is an opportunity to assess how your organisation is performing and where there may be opportunities for improvement.

We also encourage you to utilise the RME, or the RMAT in particular, where you can and the results of the RME, which is usually provided to your public office, to your organisation, as a scorecard which is addressed to your chief executive or equivalent and to your nominated senior responsible officer, to engage with upper management and to open up those conversations around records and information management.

On the flip side, for us, the RME is a tool to understand where the gaps are and where we can develop guidance to assist you and our jurisdiction as a whole to improve compliance with both the State Records Act as well as to elevate records management in NSW.

In saying all of this, as you're all aware, we are not conducting the Recordkeeping Monitoring Exercise in 2025.

Namely, to allow you time to implement any necessary changes as a result of the rollout of the revised standards, and also for us to refresh and update the RMAT to correspond with that.

We are also using this planning year to schedule the monitoring exercise going forward, and by that we mean developing a more risk-based approach to decide who should be completing the RME each year.

So you will definitely be hearing more from us in the coming months about our approach for 2026.

We really encourage you to use 2025 as an opportunity and a chance to prepare for the future RME that's coming.

The current RMAT, the tool that you may know either in its Excel version or Word version, is available on our website for your perusal and reference.

This assessment tool can be completed any time.

It's not purely restricted to the RME alone.

And just to close off, we're here to assist you in whatever way we can.

So please feel free to come to us today or any time via e-mail at govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au and we'd be happy to have a chat about the RME, the RMAT or even about the standards and Code of Best Practice.

Any questions?

Catherine Robinson: Deborah Naray is asking will agencies receive a draft of the RMAT well before 2026 so we can get a feel for the changes in the questions.

Answer: Thanks, Deborah.

And yes, I believe that public offices will be receiving a copy of the updated RMAT.

And Deborah, you'll be getting it well before 2026, trust me.

Question: Is it the intention moving forward for the RME to be biannual, because the first two years we did the RME back-to-back and then we've had the planning year this year, which I think has been really beneficial?

Is there a plan moving forward of what comes after 2026 or am I asking it too soon? Sorry.

Stephen Powter: Hi, I'm Stephen Powter.

I'm the Manager of the Regulatory Strategy and Partnerships team.

We've actually had three back-to-back RMEs after quite a long pause in formal monitoring exercises and I think we've found for those three years that we've had - pleasingly - an incremental improvement in the scores we're seeing.

We've also formed a view that from year to year, there's not a huge jump.

So that's our early thinking and we've told our Board this. There's probably not much missed if we don't do everyone every year.

The question for us is how often do we do it for everyone? And then what do we do in the in the intervening years?

And that's in line with the sort of more targeted approach where we're addressing risk and really offering the best help we can to the whole jurisdiction - using our relatively limited resources and targeting more.

So it could well be that it's a biannual thing. That would be a reasonable guess.

But it could be maybe once every three years, although we've already talked to the Public Sector Advisory Committee - and Deborah is on PSAC and part of today's session - part of the feedback we had from them early on was that there was a lot of benefit in having the biannual approach because it kept things on the radar within the public offices.

So we're very open to that advice. Hope that helps.

Laura Baldwin: Don't believe we have a way of unmuting through the system.

Catherine Robinson: Elizabeth, can you put your question please into the Q&A? We can't unmute your mic.

Laura Baldwin: Are there any other questions while that's coming through? Because if not, we could sort of move on and then circle back to that question.

Question: Hi, Joanne.

Previously, when we had to fill out the RMAT, it had to be completed all in the one go, like in the one session.

Will that change in the future so that you can, you know, do a bit of it, save your answers and then come back to it later?

Answer: A very good question.

We're actually pleased to say that yes, that has changed.

We have done a couple of enhancements to the Portal functions as you know it.

So you will now be able to save and resume.

You can also e-mail yourself a link to where you had perhaps paused and then come back to it later so that you don't lose that data as well, and that you're not restricted to that one sitting of having to submit.

Question: I'm Suzanna.

Hi, since the RME is now going to be expanded to data as well, do you foresee that there will be more guidance that you provide from that?

Because I know the organisation I used to work in, it was very data-driven, and it was really hard to get them on board because it just seemed like it's a separate discipline which we accept.

But in terms of just, you know, round them up to compliance the same as records information that was quite hard.

So obviously we provide links to the resources available from Data NSW and Digital NSW, but we are also in the process of developing our own guidance on data.

Answer: So we'll be having those conversations with other entities to make sure that it's a holistic, compliant approach and that that data is available from our website as well.

I guess targeted for that more records and information management sort of sphere.

Thank you.

Catherine Robinson: One more question, from Diana Pavkovic. I hope I pronounced your surname correctly.

Can multiple staff access the agency's RMAT via the Portal?

Answer: Yes. That is a function that's available, so it's not just restricted to a particular user in the Portal - not just your SRO, but anyone who does have a Portal login should be able to view the results of your previous RME.

And the RME that you are going to be undertaking going forward as well.

Laura Baldwin: There obviously will be more time for questions, so if you do think of anything a bit later, there will still be time to ask it.

So I'm just going to provide some more general updates for State Records NSW now.

The first thing; hopefully you've already had an opportunity to check out our new website.

We've recently moved to the nsw.gov.au platform.

The way that we moved across was with a staged approach, so we actually started to put content up on the nsw.gov.au platform in December and then at the start of February, we finally completed that transition and have gone fully live over there.

So now if you try to go to the old website, you'll automatically get rerouted to the new website.

For me personally, the greatest benefit of the new website is the improved searching tool.

I don't know about you, but personally I used to Google to actually find any content on our website.

And now I'm able to use the search tool within the actual website to find what I need.

So from a purely personal perspective, it's been a wonderful improvement, but hopefully you have found it useful as well.

Our website adopts a split structure which is favoured by the NSW Government.

We have an agency landing page which contains information about our structure and our policies, but the second landing page, so this is the recordkeeping in government landing page is the one that I highly recommend you bookmark as people within this industry.

That's really where you're going to find our retention and disposal authorities and any of our written guidance.

E-learning modules.

So last year we revised our e-learning modules.

We now have eight that are available for use in public offices to raise awareness of recordkeeping and improve understanding, and these are targeted to different people within the public office.

Some are targeted at all staff.

Some are specifically targeted at targeted at records and information staff.

And some are targeted at SROs.

We've had really strong interest in these modules to date, which is wonderful with large numbers of users enrolling in the training directly through our online learning management system or LMS.

And we've now also tested the SCORM dispatch method with a group of public offices.

So thank you for the public offices who have already volunteered to do that testing and have completed it for us, but that is to say that the new dispatch solution is now available to all public offices.

So if you are interested, please e-mail govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au and we'll be able to get the information we require from you to be able to enable that.

But the way it basically works in my non-technical explanation is that you're provided with a SCORM file, which is essentially a lite version which you can embed in your LMS.

So whoever in your organisation is responsible for your learning management system will understand what that means.

So you'll probably need to get someone else on board to help with that, but you embed it and it essentially is like a window to our LMS.

So we'll actually be hosting the real content, which means if we need to make any changes, we can make them and your content is automatically updated.

So that's the really great benefit from us.

For us, it means we'll also receive some completion statistics when your staff complete the modules, but because it's in your LMS, as far as the staff completing it will be concerned, it looks like your normal training, so they will still have their statistics recorded as they normally would.

You can set it as mandatory.

You can track progress.

As far as they're concerned, they're just completing it through your own LMS.

So again, please reach out to us if that is something you're interested in.

GA28, which is I'm sure very well known in this room and online, is the general authority for administrative records that was actually updated earlier this month.

It wasn't a significant update, but it is worth noting the change to the 1940 date limiter.

That's actually been removed now, previously records that weren't required as State archives that were created before 1940 weren't able to be destroyed, so we've just removed that date limiter.

So now you don't have to worry about the age of the records, you just need to assess them in the same way that you usually would.

If you do have any questions, of course, you're still welcome to reach out to State Records NSW and we can provide guidance.

There have also been some additional entries added for distributing grants which previously wasn't covered and also for expressions of interest for serving on panels.

And the last thing to update you on is just our satisfaction survey.

So hopefully everyone here and online subscribes to For the Record, and you will have already received notification of our satisfaction survey.

This is a joint survey between State Records NSW and Museums of History NSW.

And it's what really helps us understand how well we're doing in terms of our services.

It asks questions about our responsiveness to inquiries and the quality of our website in particular, which of course from a State Records NSW perspective is very on our mind at the moment.

We really want to get feedback about how you're finding that, and we do actually action the results of that survey.

That's part of the motivation for originally moving to the nsw.gov.au platform in the first place, so I really do encourage you to complete that if you haven't already.

It's open until the end of the month.

And I would love to see a really high participation rates, so we can action your opinions on our services.

Does anyone have any questions that are State Records specific before I hand over to Museums of History NSW?

Catherine Robinson: We have a question from Candice Martinez asking if training is added to our LMS, will we also receive staff completion stats question?

Laura Baldwin: So if you embed the SCORM files into your LMS, as far as you're concerned, your organisation is concerned, you will receive everything that you usually receive.

You'll receive all the usual completion stats.

From the State Records NSW perspective, we do also receive some quite high-level completion statistics.

If she's willing to reach out to govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au, we can give her a screenshot of an example of what will actually come through to us so that she can see that.

But from the organisation's side, you'll receive everything that you would normally receive from your LMS.

Wonderful.

Let me hand over then to Kristy Tiberi, who is Senior Advisor for Museums of History NSW.

Kristy Tiberi: Hello everybody, it's me again.

For those of you who may not know me, I am Kristy Tiberi.

I'm the senior advisor with the Agency Services team at Museums of History New South Wales.

We sit within the Collections division, and we are responsible for assisting public offices with transferring records into the State Archives Collection, registration and renewal of access directions and the new requirement from last year of submitting a transfer plan.

With me today is Kate Musgrave, who is the Manager, Collection Services.

Kate, give a wave.

We will both be available for a chat if people want to approach us and ask questions.

So we just wanted to take this opportunity, it's going to be a short update from Museums of History NSW this time around.

We know that we've spent two solid years of speaking to the entire jurisdiction about changes to the State Records Act, legislation that we are administering.

We spent 2023 talking about the changes to public access to State records.

And we spent 2024 talking about the new requirement for public offices to submit a transfer plan.

Thank you all for your responsiveness to those changes.

We've been really pleased with how people have actually actioned what we need them to action.

We ended up with 76% of public offices have submitted their transfer plan, which we're over the moon about actually.

Two hundred and eighty-two public offices are covered by transfer plans.

We still have 91 public offices who haven't submitted their transfer plan, but we'd like to just remind everybody that you can continue to submit information in the transfer plan anytime up until 2029, when we do the cycle again.

So just because you haven't submitted a transfer plan now that doesn't mean you can't do so.

When you're ready, we're available for if you've got questions or you'd like to have a chat about it.

We are using the information received now and we're starting to interrogate that information.

Part of what we're doing is assessing the information. We've done that initial preliminary assessment, and we've started to set up some meetings to follow up with people.

It’s quite ad hoc at the moment.

There's not a guarantee we're going to catch up with everybody.

But we have started contacting people about the information provided in their plan if we've got questions or it's unclear or we just had some questions about their dates, times that they're planning on doing things.

Along with that, if you have submitted your transfer plan and you have indicated that you are planning on transferring, I encourage you to contact the Agency services team, especially if you haven't transferred before or it's been a long time since you've transferred.

We're always happy to set up a Teams meeting if you're a regional public office. If you're in the Sydney metropolitan area, we're also happy to come out to your office, look at records that you're looking at transferring and answering any questions about the process.

We've got our contact details there.

If you've got questions about transferring records into the State Archives Collection that covers physical records and born digital records.

If you've got questions about your transfer plan, if you want to add things to your transfer plan or change your transfer plan or submit for the first time, and if you've got access direction coverage that you've got questions about, you want to register a new one you need to renew them, we're the team to contact at Museums of History NSW.

We can be contacted via transfer@mhnsw.au.

So, a short and sweet update from me this time round, but does anybody have any questions?

I've stunned everybody to silence after talking for so long so often. So, like I said, we're here, we're friendly.

We're always willing to come and discuss your records with you, and if you're ever unsure, quite often we'll get queries that we direct to our colleagues at State Records NSW.

We still work very closely together.

Obviously, we're here together.

Quite often they get inquiries that they direct to us as well.

So if you're unsure, feel free to reach out to either of us; it will always end up in its correct home for response.

Thank you, everyone.

Laura Baldwin: I might just give a last opportunity if anyone has any general questions for anyone, please feel free to again raise your hand, put something in the chat.

Catherine Robinson: Elizabeth asks, we are a large department and require a minimum of six-month lead time to ensure that RME is completed for the department and public offices.

Can you be more specific about when the RME will be released?

Stephen Powter: Elizabeth, we're very conscious that larger agencies have a lot of smaller entities that they're working with and the need for planning time.

I can't name the month for you.

I would say early in the second-half of this year, we'll be able to give much clearer guidance, but you can be sure that there will be enough time to meet your planning requirements.

If you'd like to have a more detailed conversation with us about that.

Please do reach out to us at govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au and we're happy to talk about your needs because that may give us clues to other people's needs as well.

Hope that helps.

Laura Baldwin: OK, then still welcoming any questions.

So if inspiration hits you, just raise your hand and that's completely fine.

But I think we will move now to break for afternoon tea.

I know it's a little bit early, but sometimes informal conversations are easier than the more formal, and that's completely fine.

As we originally planned, we're still going to start back at 3:30PM for the local government, just mindful that some people may have potentially jumped out for the first half with the intention of coming back specifically for the second session.

So luckily, you've already committed the time to us anyway.

It just means you get longer time having afternoon tea, which I am assured food is already out for.

So I'm sure it will be wonderful.

If you are on Teams, as I mentioned, you will see a holding screen and will start back at 3:30PM, so feel free to either jump out of the call and come back in before 3:30PM, or you're welcome to just leave it on in the background.

That's completely fine if you aren't from local government and you don't plan on hanging around.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank you so much for joining us today.

If you do think of any questions after the fact, please feel free to still e-mail State Records NSW or MHNSW.

For those of you here in the building.

As I mentioned, we have food available out in the foyer.

If you're part of local government.

Again, please make sure you're back in this room for 3:30PM.

Everyone from other public office types, if you're so inclined, you're welcome to continue to hang around.

We'll probably have some of our staff hanging around outside as well than the second session starts, so if you are continuing conversations then that's completely fine as well.

Thank you.

(BREAK)

Laura Baldwin: Welcome back everyone.

It's good to see that we still have lots of people here.

So the focus of this second session is on local government.

Specifically, we're looking at the new retention and disposal authority for local government, but this will also be a really good opportunity given that we'll mainly have local government participation if you have any questions that are specific to this sector that you wanted to raise towards the end of this session, that's completely fine as well.

I'm going to hand over now to Jin Leicher, who is another Project Officer with State Records NSW.

Jin Leicher: Good afternoon.

My name is Jin Leicher.

As Laura already introduced, I’m another project officer.

I work under Angela McGing on retention disposal authorities.

It's my pleasure to be here today to give you all an introduction of our new disposal authority for local government records, FA450.

I'll start with some background first.

As we all know, prior to FA450, councils were using GA39 for their records and G39 was issued in 2011, and it was the largest disposal authority with 928 entries.

In 2022, State Records NSW announced that they would be reviewing this disposal authority because of its age, being over 10 years old at the time, and also because of its size, the largest disposed authority.

Soon after the announcement, State Records NSW started the reviewing process, working very closely with Museums of History NSW.

During the reviewing process, it was decided to make the new disposal authority a functional disposal authority rather than a general one like GA39, so that the new disposal authority would focus on the unique functions of local government.

Following some painstaking work, mostly Angela’s, two exposure drafts were released to all councils for feedback.

The first draft was released in October 2023 and the second was in August 2024. We received feedback from 18 councils. Thanks to the councils who have provided feedback

We then held a working group meeting with the Councils that had provided feedback in September 2024.

After that, we also conducted additional external consultation with 14 other organisations, including ICAC, NSW Police Force, Office of local Government, etc.

The final draft was approved by the State Records NSW Board in December 2024, and then it was issued on the Valentine's Day this year, 14th of February.

That shows how much we love councils.

The issuing of this new disposal authority means councils no longer can use GA39 to destroy or transfer records.

Here we have a list of some of the significant changes from G39 to FA450.

The first one is the number of entries being reduced from 928 down to 99 entries and then three level structure down to two level structure.

Also, 30% of entries are now required as State archives.

The reason I'm sure is quite obvious - entries relating to administrative records that are covered by G28 have been removed, as well as some of the entries that are already covered by other dispose authorities.

Now the disposal authority becomes smaller so quite a large percentage of the entries are now State archives.

And as a result, this new disposal authority specifically focuses on the unique local council functions.

Also, to streamline the disposal authority, we have consolidated entries with the same or similar retention requirements.

Here is a list of some of the other disposed authorities that councils might need to use.

Here on the screen we're looking at some GAs - general disposal authorities.

The first one I don't have to elaborate too much.

That's GA28.

I'm sure you are already well aware of this one.

And then we have GA45.

It’s mainly for like, for example, if you have paper records and you have digitised them and you wonder how you're going to manage those paper hard copies so you're going to look at GA45.

And then we have GA48. That's for digital records. After you migrate digital records and you wonder what you are going to do with the source records, that's what you are going to look at.

And then we also have GA35.

For example, if you are using cloud service providers, if their services are located outside of NSW you might have to look at GA35.

And then we also have a list of some of the FAs that councils might need to be using.

The first one is FA404.

That's for early childhood education and care.

Just be mindful when you're looking at this one, you're only going to use classes under 1.1.0 because 1.2.0 is about the regulation of childcare services, which is not one of councils’ functions.

And then we also have FA402.

Cultural recreation and facility management.

And then we have FA428 for cemeteries.

We also have FA367.

This one, I believe most councils do not have water supply function anymore.

So if you don't have that function, you don't have to look at this one.

But if you used to provide water supply services and you still have some legacy records from that function, you might still have to look at this disposal authority for the legacy records.

We know that it’s been a huge change for councils from using GA39 to FA 450.

That's why we have developed some resources to support the implementation of this new disposal authority.

I'll just quickly show you the list first, then I'm going to show you how to find these resources on our website.

So the first group of resources are the mapping tables, we have two types of mapping tables.

The first type is a consolidated mapping table.

All the entries from GA39 are covered in this consolidated mapping table and they’re mapped to all the different relevant disposal authorities.

And then we also developed the second type of mapping tables which are the individual mapping tables.

What that means is we actually grouped the entries with the same retention changes, for example, retention has increased, decreased or no change, and we separated all these entries into individual mapping tables.

It might sound a bit confusing for now, but when I show you on the website you will have a better understanding.

And then the second group of resources is the implementation version of the authority.

This is actually a consolidated version of the authority, combining six different dispose authorities into one document.

However, it's not the entire disposal authorities all combined together.

It's only the relevant entries from the six disposed authorities combined into one document.

This version has a nickname, we call it Frankenstein.

It comes in PDF and Excel and also has an index for use together with this version.

And then the third group of resources of course is the FA450.

It comes in PDF, Excel and also has a web version of it, and it also comes with an index.

The last group of resources is the FAQs.

There are 12 answered questions on our website.

I'm going to show you all of these resources on our website so that you know where to find them.

As Laura mentioned, we now have a new website.

We have two home pages now, as Laura already mentioned, the first home page is, as you can see, State Records NSW.

You can just Google State Records NSW and you'll find it.

However, this home page is not as useful as our second home page, so I would recommend you bookmark our second home page as the home page for State Records NSW.

Scroll down and when you see this picture and then you see this area - resources for recordkeeping in government and you click on read more and open it.

This will take you to our second home page.

I recommend you bookmark it as our homepage.

To find FA 450, as you can see already under recordkeeping quick links, you can see local government FA450.

You can access FA450 here, however we might update this area from time to time because it's four quick links so we might put anything here.

One day you might see this link has disappeared from here.

So the proper way to find all the disposal authorities is, if you scroll down and then you find these three-picture area and, in the middle, and the very last link, you click on this one. This link is records retention and disposal authority.

So click on this link.

Here you will find all the disposal authorities here.

So again, you will see FA450 on the top only because it is our latest disposal authority.

So it can also go down one day and might disappear again.

So the proper way to find any disposal authority is to use the search bar.

If you type FA450.

And enter then you will find the disposal authority you want.

So now I'm going to click on this.

This is the page I'm going to show you and I'm going to show you a few things on this page.

The first thing is this search bar, but I'm going to come back later.

And I'm going to show you this area, implementing FA450, I'm also going to come back here later.

I'm going to show you Download, this area first.

Under Download we have three files for you to download.

The first one is PDF, and we have Excel and then we have the index.

I’ll open up the PDF for you first.

So this is our PDF version of the FA450.

I'll just go back all the way to the front of the document.

As you can see, we have a new cover now, so all our disposal authorities will have this same cover and then we actually have also recently updated the Introduction section of the new disposal authorities thanks to Rianna who spent a lot of time and effort making this section beautiful and informative.

OK, there’s some of the new information we have added to this introduction section.

For example this Note area.

‘For records that are severely damaged by fire, flood, etc. you have to contact State Records NSW immediately’, so this is to align with our new requirement of the standard.

And then we also have this dotted note here. ‘Artworks, artefacts etc. collected or acquired by councils are not State Records’.

And we also have another area - we have removed the entry relating to pre 1920 local government records from GA39.

‘If early collections of local government records that are not identified as State archives in FA450, but you still think they have continuing value, please contact Museums of History NSW’.

So we have some very important and very useful information here and I do recommend councils just have a read through the new introduction section just to refresh your knowledge.

Now let's just scroll down to the content page.

All the functions are listed here, and they're linked to the proper entries under each function.

If you would like to get back to the contents page, on the top left corner of the screen you can click on this and then all the functions will pop out for you to click on.

So, this is how we use this PDF. And also, of course, you can use ctrl+F to find any keywords, for example rates.

Now let's get back to the website.

This is the Excel version of the FA450. It's not as exciting. Nothing really new, so I'm not going to open it up.

Index, same. Yeah, just very similar so I'm not going to open it up.

I'm going to show you the next area.

This area is the HTML version of the FA450, which is the web version.

If you want to just view any of the functions, you can just click on one function and that will take you to the web version of the authority.

We clicked on ‘Community Liaison’ and then the list of functions are listed on the right. You can click on any of them and it will come up.

And if you want to go back to FA450 the page we just came from, you can just find this top button here saying local government records FA450.

Click on this you will get back to the FA450 page.

So these are the things I was going to show you.

Now let's get back to the very top here which is the search bar.

So the search bar actually searches through the web version of the authority. OK, so if we want to search, for example, rates.

I'll actually give you a few heads up when you're using this search bar - you might find a lot of irrelevant results.

For example, I was looking at the results was like, oh, why?

What does ‘Libraries’ have to do with rates?

So I clicked on this one and then I realised that rates is not mentioned in ‘Libraries’.

So I press Ctrl+F and look for where rates showed.

It was actually shown as a list of functions.

So when you're using the search bar just be a little mindful. Don't have high expectations.

Like this one - maybe you are going to look at the top two results I guess that would be relevant.

The rest, maybe not. So personal preference, I still prefer the PDF version of the disposal authority.

Now let's get back to FA450 page again and back to the last thing I wanted to show you on this page - implementing FA450.

So I'm going to click on this blue button ‘How to implement FA450’.

I just click on it. All the resources supporting the implementation of the new disposal authority are on this page.

Let's look at a few areas.

The first area is this list of other relevant disposal authorities to use so we have a list of them, and we also have the use, i.e. which types of records are covered by these disposal authorities are listed here.

And then we are going to look at this group of resources - mapping tables.

As I mentioned before, we have two types of mapping tables.

The first type is the consolidated mapping table.

It comes in PDF and also in Excel.

Let’s just open one PDF to have a look.

So this is what it looks like. It is numerically arranged.

So GA39, starting from 1.2.1 and then you will see the mapping in the second column and then you will see comments column.

That just gives you an idea of what the changes are. For example, from 10 years to 7 years, etc.

And again, you have this button on the top left.

Oh, it's not very useful anyway, sorry.

Now let's just get back to this page again to see our second document I'm going to show you.

It's the Excel version of the same consolidated mapping table.

It's basically the same table, but it has an extra column here, so it's called ‘Change Summary’.

So it gives you a summary of what the changes to the entry are.

For example, no changes or entry removed.

The Excel version lets you sort or filter however you want.

For example, if I want to see entries removed, i.e. which GA39 entries have been removed.

If I click on that, it will just show all the entries that have been removed.

You can sort as well.

Now let's look at these 5 individual mapping tables.

These five individual mapping tables are the second type of mapping tables I was talking about.

They are grouped by the changes in retention periods.

For example, here we have the decreased, we have increased, we have removed. Let's just look at one as an example.

This is what it looks like.

So entries with increased retentions are in this mapping table.

We have the no changes mapping table as well.

As you can see, this mapping table is huge, which is good news because that means most of the GA39 entries have no changes in their retention periods.

Now let's look at this area now - implementation version of the RDA.

This is the Frankenstein version that we just mentioned. This one combines relevant entries from six different RDAs together into one document.

It comes in PDF, Excel and also comes with an index.

We'll just open up one document to have a look.

This is the Frankenstein version.

As you can see from the content page, you can see some signs of Frankenstein. You can see FA450. You can see FA428, FA402, FA404, they're all here.

So that's for you to use.

The last bit of resources we have here is frequently asked questions.

There are 12 answered questions.

You can expand them all and see all the answers.

Or you can just open up one question at the time.

Using as an example.

We'll look at the first question, how do I resentence from GA39 to FA450? So here we have provided, again Angela has provided some comprehensive answers to this question.

She has thought about every scenario, for example, retention periods have been changed from how many numbers of years to administrative, and what council should do?

And then what about retention periods have increased? What should councils do?

All the scenarios are here, it’s very comprehensive.

I do encourage all councils read through all the answers here.

And if you still have questions, we're here to assist.

And you can always e-mail us or ring us.

So that concludes my presentation today.

Thank you very much.

Laura Baldwin: You don't get out of it that easily.

It's time for questions now.

So does anyone have any questions about FA450? Maybe she’ll get out of it that easily.

Question: I'm just intrigued about the pre 1920 rule and were there large collections of Pre 1920 that you didn't think were required as State archives?

Angela McGing: There were transfers of records to Museums of History NSW under that class that tended to be routine records such as cash books and financial statements, which didn't really have any merit.

My understanding is that class was there, the theory was there weren't a lot of pre 1920 local government records around – which isn’t really the case.

If you do have pre 1920 stuff and you think it's worth transferring, happy for you to give us a call.

GA39 can’t be used to destroy records anymore but this is only an issue when you start destroying records.

So if you're not going to do it for a year or two, you've got a little while to look into it.

Question: Just another thing I was thinking about when you said 30% of it is required as State archives, whether now you've rolled up so many classes from FA into FA 450 compared to the amount of classes they were before, do you find that you're actually keeping more State archives than before.

Angela McGing: No – it's more the classes have been consolidated from 928 to 99.

Question: We just found we haven't used it a great deal yet but when we have used it, we've found that some of the specificity is gone, which means we end up having to keep more than we want to keep.

Angela McGing: if you’re not clear about something, just send us an e-mail.

Laura Baldwin: It is really helpful if you do have questions about interpreting the disposal authority to send them through to us, because sometimes we do actually find that we need to add notes which are just sort of interpretive help.

There's a chance that it's actually affecting other councils as well, so that's actually helpful for everyone if you do that.

Catherine Robinson: We have a question from Ben Pierce, and Ben asks what is the best e-mail to ask those questions about retention govern State records?

Laura Baldwin: Govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au.

It's on the website under contact us.

Question: Would it be possible to get some of the existing web pages that have GA39 on it, linking to the new FA? One of the web links I've got.

I accidentally type in GA39, hit enter and then it just spat me out to the front page of State Records NSW.

So they never kind of remap my way through.

I'll remember FA450 probably by the end of today, but there might be other people in the meantime who have got a lot of saved links to go GA39.

That would help us bumping across.

Laura Baldwin: Thanks for raising that.

Obviously, we've just moved over to the new website and I'm guessing what you've hit is a redirect from our old website which makes it a little bit difficult because we can't edit the content.

That's automatically pushing you across the new website wherever possible.

It’s entirely possible that there are instances of GA39 on the new website because of the stage transition.

So we were moving across when that change has occurred.

If you ever do notice that we have the wrong retention and disposal authority mentioned, please let us know.

Just send an e-mail to govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au and we'll update it as quickly as possible.

But if you just do a Google search for GA39, there's a potential that you'll actually be getting a result from our old website pushing to the new website, which is why you would land on the home page.

Because that's the default page, so I don't think that it's something that is within our technical capability of stopping.

But at least if you do get to the recordkeeping in government page, I don't see in the foreseeable future that we'll removing the Quick Link up the top for FA 450 because it does relate to so much of our jurisdiction.

So we're trying to make it as easy as possible, and please let me know if there are other things we can do, but that particular question I think is outside of our technical ability.

Well, thank you for the questions that we did already get. If you're anything like me, you'll probably go home after this and then think of the questions.

So as I mentioned before, please feel free to send them through if they’re State Records NSW specific to govrec@staterecords.nsw.gov.au or to the relevant Museums of History NSW e-mail address transfer@mhnsw.au.

Thanks again for joining us today, either in person or online.

I hope that this has been helpful for you.

As I said, please do reach out if you have any other questions or equally if you have any other suggestions or feedback related to forums, because we'll definitely take that on board as well.

Sneaky reminder.

Please complete the satisfaction survey.

We would really like a lot of responses.

So far, I believe we have eight which I don't feel is representative.

So if we could get more than that, that would make me happy.

And we look forward to seeing you at future forums.

Thank you.

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