Capturing the Evidence: Strategies for Keeping Records of Web Activity

1
THE NEW STANDARD IN RECORDKEEPING

• Capturing the Evidence Strategies for Keeping
  Records of Web Activity

2
Key Points

• Online Service Delivery can place corporate
  memory and evidence at risk if recordkeeping
  precautions are not put in place
• Archives produces guidelines that can help
  agencies to address the problem
• Guidelines are mandated by the Government Online
  Strategy

3
Recordkeeping issues for Web resources

• Is a web site a publication or record?
• How do we capture and maintain records of
  web-based activity?
• Can an agency be held accountable for something
  it had on its web site a year ago?
• No single rule exists to cover all types of
  scenarios

4
Diversity of web resources

• Static websites/resources
• Static websites/resources with form-based
  interactivity
• Web sites/resources based on dynamic data access
• Dynamically-generated websites/resources

5
Archiving Web Resources

• A policy for keeping records of web-based
  activity in the Commonwealth Government
• First released in March 2000
• http//www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/er/web_records
  /intro.html

6
Objective

• To provide clear policy direction to Commonwealth
  Agencies on their responsibilities to create,
  capture, manage and retain web-based records for
  as long as required.

7
Agency responsibilities for recordkeeping

• creating and managing full accurate records of
  transactions and activities
• setting up appropriate systems
• written policies and user training
• ensuring records are kept secure, authentic and
  useable
• enabling public access when required

8
Best Practice Statements

• Full and accurate records of web-based activities
  and transactions should be made and kept
• Agencies should conduct risk assessments of their
  web-based activities
• Adequate metadata is essential to manage,
  understand and find the records
• Agencies must keep reliable records of the
  information that is made available via their web
  sites

9
Archiving Web Resources

• Guidelines for keeping records of web-based
  activity in the Commonwealth Government
• Released March 2001

10
Content of the Guidelines

• Responsibilities
• Diversity of web-based resources
• Fundamentals of good web-based recordkeeping
• Risk Assessment
• Strategic and technological options
• Storage and preservation issues
• Determining the best option

11
Fundamentals of good web-based recordkeeping

• Take a systematic approach
• Assign and document responsibilities
• Determine requirements for records
• Apply metadata
• Capture records into recordkeeping systems

12
Assessing Risk

• Factors to consider
• Public visibility of the agency
• Purpose of the web site
• Complexity of the web site
• Frequency and regularity of content change

13
PURPOSE OF SITE

• Goods and services
• Communication Collaboration
• Information

FREQUENCY REGULARITY OF CHANGE
COMPLEXITY OF SITE
LEVEL OF RISK

• Dynamic generation
• Dynamic data access
• Static, with forms
• Static

• Frequent Regular
• Frequent Irregular
• Infrequent Regular
• Infrequent Irregular

PUBLIC VISIBILITY OF AGENCY

• High
• Medium
• Low

14
Strategic and Technological Options

• Object and/or Event Driven Approaches

15
Object Driven Approaches

• Managing the objects that constitute or are
  made available via a web site
• Site maps are important to preserve as a record
  of relationships between content

16
Managing Objects Separately

• metadata store absolute URIdata objectMIME
  typeStart and end date of data objectURI
  associationPublication records
• AGLS metadata

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Snapshots of Web sites

• Example of an object-driven approach
• Taking periodic snapshots of the site in
  combination with tracking changes to the site
• Can be useful for simple, stable sites

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Factors to Consider

• Complexity of the site
• Purpose of the site
• Results of risk assessment
• Results of analysis of recordkeeping requirements

19
Event Driven Approaches

• Capturing events or transactions that occur
  between the website and the user

20
Capturing Events

• date / time of event
• domain address of user
• user profile
• query or other actions performed
• the resources served to the user with relevant
  metadata attached

21
What About Metadata?

• Use AGLS metadata to help people find your online
  publications
• Create and manage recordkeeping metadata for
  administrative and evidential purposes
• The NAA maintains the standards for both AGLS and
  recordkeeping metadata
• There is overlap between AGLS and R/K metadata
  the same metadata can often be reused for both
  purposes

22
Preservation Issues

• Maintaining web-based records over time
• Ensure records are properly managed and protected
• Coping with Obsolescence - copying, migrating,
  reformatting
• Use Open Architecture standards
• Use persistent identifiers for online resources

23
Retention/Disposal Options

• Web objects can be sentenced under the
  AFDA/Keyword AAA Publication Function
• Records of events/transactions should be
  sentenced under the appropriate
  Function/Activity, usually in an agency Records
  Disposal Authority
• Archival records can be transferred to NAA
  custody, unless they have been taken into PANDORA

24
URLs

• http//www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/er/web_records
  /intro.html
• http//www.naa.gov.au/agls