The Department of Finance is set to pick the local tech industry's collective brain about its proposed whole-of-government Digital Records Platform after releasing a position paper on the plans and invite feedback on potential solutions that might be in the marketplace.
This is not the first time Finance seeks industry help to know what technologies are available. In 2016 a request for information determined the market was “not ready to provide a service capable of automating the record capture and lifecycle tasks”.
Finance wants the platform to use technologies including cognitive computing, keyword extraction and auto-indexing to ensure that all information is automatically captured and categorised, indexed, managed and disposed of with minimal interaction by the end user. The solution will, initially, manage unstructured data.
The platform would be the basis of a Whole of Government system of information management.
Finance wants a platform that will offer a more effective use of Australian Government records. It also wants it to make it easy to share data between agencies and other entities when needed.
The department prefers cloud-based solutions such as software- or platform-as-a-service. It also seeks offerings capable of interfacing with existing core productivity solutions and can accommodate the PROTECTED classification where required, and UNCLASSIFIED DLM elsewhere.
In 2015, Finance did a Feasibility Study into a Whole of Government Digital Records Management Solution in which it identified three key findings.
It is feasible to move agencies to a single, or reduced number, of electronic document and records management system (EDRMS).
The study also revealed that agencies are spending a considerable sum per annum to manage unstructured data in EDRMS.
They are not getting adequate return on investment due to poor user uptake, or they are not exploiting the technology to its full capacity.
Still, according to the study, industry, users and the records management profession agreed that current records management practices are not sustainable due to the exponential growth of government data.
To effectively manage this growth, record-keeping should happen automatically in the background, rather than being the responsibility of end-users.
