Records Managers Online Forum 24 May 2024

my name is Martin Killian and I'm speaking to you in my capacity as director of collections uh this morning

this is a takeover uh of the usual state Records New South Wales uh Records

managers Forum by museums of History New South Wales um and it's very much

designed to focus on uh the new legislative requirement under the state records act uh concerning transfer plans

or uh Records identified as uh being required as state archives I'd like to

start the meeting by acknowledging traditional owners of the lands on which we're all meeting today for me that's

the daring people at the Western Sydney records Center better extend that welcome to um that respect uh to uh

those countries that you are coming to us from um and paying respects Elders

past present and emerging uh just a bit of housekeeping uh before we start the Forum this

morning um so most people's cameras and mics have been disabled um but if you

could ensure that uh those continue to be disabled throughout the course of the

morning please um and if for any reason uh you uh do appear on our screens

please also just be aware that the Forum as per usual um is being recorded and

that recording will be available on our website uh fairly soon so they'll the

opportunities of course to ask questions uh throughout the Forum and we do

encourage you to use the chat function of teams to ask those questions or make

any comments and we'll have people uh from museums of History news Southwire

subject matter experts attending this morning and uh those people will be able to answer those questions as we go but

there will also be a question and answer section uh at the end of our presentations this morning so there's a

number of uh both museums of History New South Wales people and also uh State records New South Wales people uh here

this morning and so I'd like to welcome uh my colleagues so Kate Musgrave he's the manager of collection Services uh

Christie toiri who's our senior advisor agency services and Allison gron um

who's our uh advisor of our officer of agency services and Ashlin Bon who's one

of our wonderful archists within uh the collection Services team and in particular the agency Services

team so our agenda this morning is for me just to spend a couple of minutes on

refreshing your memories around transfer planning and the new requirement uh then

to hand over to Allison for a demonstration of the transfer planning tool in our online service portal uh

many of you will already be familiar with that portal from uh the access directions work as an example that you

did last year but Allison's intending to step us through uh how to build a

transfer plan uh through using that portal uh we'll then have a question and

answer session that uh Christie will be leading uh and then we'll wrap up uh by

11:00 um so that's the that's the plan for today um in terms of questions and

answers also as I said uh do use the chat function as we go throughout this

morning's Forum so uh transfer plans so this is a

new requirement under the state records act which came into uh uh operation at

the beginning of this year uh so it has been a requirement that uh from that

time AG gencies or public offices covered by the state records act uh required to submit a transfer plan uh to

museums of History New South Wales now that transfer plan uh is only for those

records of enduring value that have been identified as required of State archives

um and needing to be required needing to be transferred at some point to the state archives collection the intent

behind this change to the state records Act was fun fundamentally to ensure greater visibility and greater uh

management of those assets of enduring value that are State archives or will

become State archives once they're transferred to museums of History Us South Wales um it's important for us all

as recordkeeping professionals to be aware of those records and the conditions in which they may be stored

at the moment these are um historically important uh documents that will be of

enduring value today and into the future so it is important that we care for them

uh and manage them as assets the intention also though was for us at

museums of History New South Wales to have a sense of what's out there in

terms of those records so that we can better plan and ultimately provide you with a better service by being able to

flex up and flex down uh when we know that uh officers are likely to transfer

to us and what sort of material they're likely to transfer to us so as I said uh the the requirements

started on the 1st of January we are intending that uh the transfer plans are

submitted to us through the online tool that you'll learn more about today uh I'm very pleased to say that a number of

public officers uh have already done so uh and really pleased that around 40 or

so public officers have already submitted transfer plans to us we have been communicating this requirement

throughout last year and earlier this year and that initial plan is to be

submitted To Us by the 31st of December so you have the rest of this calendar year to submit your transfer

plan once submitted those transfer plans can be updated periodically and a new

plan won't be required until 5 years after that 31st of December

uh 2024 deadline so the 31st of December 2029 uh you'll be required to submit a

new transfer plan but during those 5 years you're able to update that

material now we recognize that for a number of agencies this could be

challenging that you may not necessarily have that visibility and control over

these particular records and as we've always maintained with

adopted a very pragmatic approach uh to the transfer plan at least in this first

cycle where we're requiring basic details of the material that you will

still have so the requirements of those transfer plans are to provide us with a

high level description of what the material is at the format of that material whether it's in physical format

or in digital format an idea of the quantity of that material and the intended date of the

transfer submitting a transfer plan does not mean you have to transfer it means you have to provide us with a transfer

plan but you don't have to transfer uh I would certainly hope that by getting

better uh awareness and management of these records through needing to do a transfer plan you may then consider

transferring records to us um as part of the state I's collection

it's not mandatory transfer it's a mandatory transfer plan now the actual

requirements um of a transfer plan will be articulated in the State records

regulation which is being finalized at the moment however that uh content that

I've just outlined of a high level description the format and quantity in it and the DAT of transfer uh will be uh

those requirements that are articulated in the regulation so uh we have while not having yet been able to provide the

regulation it hasn't yet been uh prolongated and so on uh we are have

gone forth with those requirements um as being the the basic requirements of the

transfer plan so that's the overview um as I said the requirement is intended to uh really

provide better visibility better management and better care of these records that will become State archives

on track transfer um and I know that there are uh out there with you in

public offices some of this material uh and that there are some public officers who don't regularly transfer to us and

this requirement is all intended uh to try and uh assist um and uh Foster uh

that transfer of material um because at the end of the day once you've finished with those records for business needs um

and that they are required for S CLS um it is uh just merely more work for you

to do to have to manage that material um on transfer uh that material then

becomes the responsibility of museums of History New South Wales uh to manage to

arrange and describe and to provide access to um through the access

directions requirements of the State records act so once you've identified the material um and submitted to a transfer

plan and then trans transfer um yes there's probably um work in doing that

um but once the material itself is transferred you're actually transferring um obligation for the ongoing care and

management of that material uh to museums of History New South

Wales so without further Ado I'm going to hand over to Allison uh who is as I

said uh our officer of agency services for a demonstration of the trend for

planning tool so Allison over to you thank you Martin uh good morning

everyone just going to share my screen and walk you through um how you can get

your transfer plan submitted to us through our service portal um so when

you log on to your service portal uh this is the uh landing area and you'll

see we've got a number of different tiles to navigate to the transfer plan area you just need to click on the

transfer plan

P um is if you have any questions as I'm going through uh the transfer plan steps

here please feel free to add them to the chat and christe is going to be responding to questions as we go through

and we also have a question and answer session at the end as well so you'll have plenty of time um to uh get any

answers that you need as we're moving through um so once you're in the transfer plan area you have two to Iles

a create a transfer plan and a transfer plan Explorer tile I'll show you the Explorer tile uh in a little minute for

now let's get started on creating a transfer plan um once you've landed on the

transfer plan creation you have an option to create a new or add to the transfer plan as Martin mentioned

earlier we have the facility or you have the ability to um add and edit transfer

plans during the 5 years that they're active and I'll show you that in a moment for now get started with creating

a new plan in the portal any um field with a

red asterisk as you'll see there is a mandatory field and will require filling in before you can move to the next

step so the first thing um to do with your transfer plan is to give it a meaningful name um we suggest the name

of your um public office and perhaps the years that the uh plan is pertaining to

so this is just a free text field

and we'll go from this year and they fiveyear

plans uh there's a start date this will open up a drop down a calendar field and

you can select navigate and select the date that's applicable for your

plan and there's an end date also which again when you click in there it'll drop

the calendar and you can navigate through and select the date that is

applicable there's also a description field uh for the beginning of the plan this isn't mandatory but again we'd

suggest that you put some meaningful um text in there that'll just help give the plan some context uh for yourselves and

for people in the future looking at it um

so this can be any kind of text that you'd like and then we uh select the next

button we have an authorizing officer name uh when you click in this field it will drop down and any contacts that are

linked to your profile in the portal will appear as someone to select if the

person that you'd like to select is not already there you can uh click on the uh

box here that just says I can't see the person that I'm looking for when you click on the box it brings up a first

last name uh phone and email field you can complete those and click next and

that person will then be created the person won't be automatically created in the portal or

have any communication sent to them it just adds them to that drop down list that before so for now I'll just use the

list and you select next and then we come to the guts of the

trans plan so we've given it a name and now we're actually going to add line items to give us more information on

what we actually putting into the plan what we're planning to

transfer so you can see the first line item here is the type of record so I'll

click in and it gives you two options a digital or physical record set so for

this we'll start with physical you then have a format again we've Prov provided some options here

there's a drop- down so you can see audio visual glass plate negatives maps and plans Etc and you can scroll down if

the format that you're looking for isn't there we do have an other selection and then you could use the description field

at the bottom of the line item to provide more details about that if

required so for this example pick volumes um in terms of intention to

transfer like Martin said um popping a record set or a format into the transfer

plan does not indicate an immediate or automatic uh transfer and we do

acknowledge that some people will have no intention to transfer whether that's in the lifetime of the plan or

potentially maybe at all with certain record sets so you can see that that is an option as a tick box but we've also

got indicative data transfer Fields so if you have an idea about when

it potentially your records will be ready to transfer you can pop them into um this field here again the C the um

field uh sorry the date field works as a calendar drop down so for now we'll just say that

potentially we're going to transfer these I'm just clicking through using the buttons and then selecting a day

that we may uh be transferring these records then we have a current

location so we've put a few here for people to uh select from the physical

records could be onsite in your office they could be with you but offsite in a um another location they could

potentially be with a third party where that um or potentially with a regional

archive Center so a third party could be a commercial vendor for example who's storing your records on your behalf um

well this one we might s just on site it's just to drop down and select from the

list uh the next field we have are the condition again this can be quite General uh We've provided a couple for

you to select from insect rodent damage mold or water damage uh other tyes of

types of damage whether it be loose or torn papers Etc overall good um or the

vinegar syndrome uh which again is a breakdown mostly of acetate based um

format so things like Motion Picture film or image negatives so you can select what's

applicable we do mold for this example um and then we have a physical quantity

now we understand if you're looking at different formats and people have things stored differently getting an idea of

physical quantity may be challenging so what we've based this field on is the

assumption that a shelf a standard shelf is about one meter so if you'd like to

use that in your equations you can kind of do a quick count of how many shelves of certain records you may have and then

equate that to about a meter um you can this is just a um numeric field so you can't type any um

text in here but you can type your numbers and you can do partial so let's say we have 1 and a half Metter of these

volumes at the moment for this particular line item and then we have a description

here the one um titling of the transfer plan is that this one is mandatory so we

would like some um context popped into this description field that could be uh

if you know the disposal class of the record set you could start typing that in or if you have any extra information

you'd like to provide us about the records or indeed yourself it's your plan so it might be handy for you to have information in your description

fields for you to look upon uh in the future so we'll just pop some information in here that to

demonstrate um n 10 so it takes um numbers and takes

text obviously and it's free text you've got quite a bit of room

um let's say so that's the kind of information that we may

want um now you've reached the bottom of the page if you uh click the submit

button from here you can see in this lovely bold writing that's there to catch our attention that that will then

submit the plan uh which is fine if you only have one line item that's fine if however your intention is to add

multiple line items you just need to scroll back to the top here and you'll see there's an add button so clicking on

that add button will allow you to continue to fill in the plan before submitting

it uh if you click that add button by mistake there is a delete field and I'll

just hit that delete it just takes that line item away but for now we'll do a

second I'll just walk through a digital so you can see the different options that you have if your transfer plan will

include um entry so again we have the type of Records so we'll go to digital

so when we talk about digital records talking about digital born records databases um records you may have in

your electronic Management Systems Etc and those are the formats that we have here so you can see that now that we've

selected digital our dropdowns are going to change we have database electronic Management Systems unstructured data or

other that lovely other and again you could use the description field at the bottom uh to give us more information on

that I'll just demonstrate if we have no intention to transfer you'll see that the date field here will disappear so

I'm just going to click that for now so you can use that button the current location so locations of digital um we

have Hardware so if you know you've got things on hard drives or floppy discs perhaps um um things like that your

local network perhaps with new southwales gov DC or it might be the data that's um stored off site or in

cloud storage the condition of digital records

we just have two that it's pretty easy um it's currently in use or potentially

in a legacy system uh we have a digital quantity

again we've got it in uh gigabyte so if it is larger um you might have to do some conversion to get it to the

gigabytes or again you could put a number in and then provide us um further um information in the description

field so I'll put 50 for now and then we have the description

field so as I've mentioned before you can um put some context in here

there we go so this one we just for um the purposes of this demonstration we're not intending to transfer because the

records are in ongoing business use currently um so that's an example as I

said I'll just scroll up for the physical um just for a relook and we have the digital there now

let's say that we' finished and we're ready we're actually going to click submit and you'll get a successful thank

you your plan has been saved you'll you'll also note that when you've saved a transfer plan you'll actually get a um

prefix added with a plan number so you can search for your plans in the plan

Explorer through the number or the title and I'll show you how to do that

now if we want to go and view a plan I'm just going to jump back to our transfer plan area of the portal by clicking

transfer plan here and we can look at our Explorer

so the new one that you'll be creating this year will appear like so you'll have your transfer plan number your name

the status of it which will be active for everybody and then some other information is populated on that front

screen to access the plan and look at it in more detail you can click the

number that will open up the plan so the front page of the plan view is um kind

of high level you can see here we have the transfer plan information the name

uh the controlling agency and some of the other information you'll see it's got your quantities uh we have digital quantities

displaying a zero because we actually um clicked the not intended to transfer button so that's why that's saying zero

even though we put that information in there so if you do click that you have no intentions to transfer you'll notice

that those totals might not um display and and then we can look at the

individual line items down the bottom uh and so we can go into them in more detail if we'd like we can open those up

and I'll show you in just one minute how um how you can do that through this hyperlink while I'm at the front I'd

just also like to show you that you can print your um plans so if you're needing

to share them through your business uh or keep them as uh record somewhere or

at hand you can print them so from the top level again it just prints off that

information the higher level information the number the name uh the totals Etc and that there are two line

items but you can also get a more detailed printable view of those line items and I'll show you how to do that

now so we're going to scroll down we're back at the transfer plan view just going to scroll down the bottom and I'll

just open this top line item here and you'll see it has that full uh

information that we imported into the transfer line item earlier so the quantity indicative date of transfer

description Etc and at the top of this view you've also got that printable view

again so you can click on that and then you can print uh this view

as well okay now from here to get back to

the transfer plan view you can just there's a hyperlink here here under transfer plan that number you can click

on that and it takes you back to the [Music] plan one more feature of the transfer

plan view is that there is a file upload functionality here so if you have any

files you'd like to um upload onto your plan again to add any context or

information for yourselves in the future or for us please feel free to use that you just click that upload button uh

file and it links to your file explorer and you can um attach things as

required okay just going to go back to transfer

plan so we've mentioned a few times that these plans are Dynamic and can be added to or edited over time we understand

that's not going to be a function that everyone's going to want to use but I'd just like to demonstrate at the moment if you do uh say for example your

quantities change or you have you find a new format a year in into the plan how you can make those edits to your

transfer plan so for the first example I'm going to go back to create transfer

plan so let's say for example we've submitted our transfer plan um and a

little while later you find a room uh or a desk or a shelf and there's some extra formats or an extra record set that

you'd like to add to your plan to do that you can go to create new plan like we just did and then this button here

add to transfer plan you can click on that um click into the transfer plan

field there and either by starting to type your uh transfer plan number so you can see there that came up or

alternatively if you don't remember the number but you remember your um uh title

the name that you gave it you can start searching through your plans that way this is the plan we'd like to add to and

click on next and what it does it opens a new transfer line item um which you

can then add the information to so for this example we'll go another

physical just going to add paper on this example and we'll say that we

have just there we go an indicative date current location we'll say it's offsite

just for something different um and overall good we're going to say we've got three

M and and for this one we'll say that we found some media releases

that need to come

in and we've got a disposal that we know so we'll add that into our description

as well okay um and then submit so it works

exactly like when you're creating a new transfer plan and if we go to our plan

Explorer there's our plan we'll open it up I'm just going to scroll through and

you can see that our total physical plan meterage has increased and I'll just

scroll down the bottom and you can see we have a new line there and there's our paper U new line item 1079 so that's how

over time if you have um record that you can add line items um let's say for

example however we have changed our quantity of Records or something in a existing line item has already changed

if you'd like to make that Amendment you can come into your transfer um plan like

we are currently scroll down to the applicable line item you can click on

that and then you can see um something I didn't mention before but you may have noticed we have the little pencil

uh so if you'd like to edit a field here what you can do let's say for example we found some more of our volumes you can

just click on that pencil and then increase that number let's say we found 5 meters and then save that's all you

need to do and then you can use the hyperlink to go back to the transfer

plan and you can see that again our quantity has changed so these um are

functions that you can use um some people may have a set and forget approach and that's fine Others May sort

of want to use the plans a bit more dynamically um and so that's that's what I've shown you

today okay I'm just going to take you back to the transfer plan because that's really

the demo done um Thanks Martin I'll hand back to

you thanks very much Alison uh for that comprehensive at the portal uh while

you've been speaking the chat function has been fairly um active I think is the

word uh so what I might do while we've been answering some of the inquiries and

questions uh while we've been going I might now hand over to Christie uh who

many of you will already know who's our senior advisor agency Services um and uh

Christie can lead us through some of the question so Christie there have been quite a few as you know uh some of which you've

answered so I would encourage people to also have a look at the chat function um

while we go through some of the questions just to um answer one of the questions uh before

we start uh there was some suggestion about whether the chat function of today

could be circulated as um information sort of as an faq's for people um we

will certainly do that so we've already got a bit of an faq's uh section for the transfer plans on the website and we'll

add to that um as a result of this discussion and um and certainly happy to to provide that that information and

information more broadly other than just to the people who've been able to attend this morning um so Christie over to you

to lead us through the questions and answers my little fingers are saw after typing all the responses um so I've

gotten through some of them before we start we did um invite people to email through some questions for answering in

the Forum and we did get a few of them so I will go through them first um just

to answer those questions that we were asked in advance and then what will I'll do is I'll hand over to my colleague

Ashlin to start calling out some of the questions that I probably missed answering in the um chat so the first

question we received um via email was can you please explain if I need to

create a line item for each separate file or record in the transfer plan for our paper records um and can we bundle

records in the same series and upload as one on one line item so yes you can

group records together we're not expecting an individual item list um we're expecting

thing for one entry for one series or group of similar records so the example I provided back to this inquir was for

example research papers from 2010 to 20 you can do that and just an estimate of

the quantity that there are um the next so I have been asked

that question a few times um do I need to list every single record no you don't you can group them together um another

question in regard to the transfer plan of State archives records is there a form that can be reviewed or filled out

in regards to the possible transfer um so as Allison's demonstrated to you the

form is the online form we don't have a backup spr spread sheeet um that you

could submit to us but there is nothing to stop you from actually having a look at the fields that require in the portal

going away developing your own spreadsheet and then coming in and adding that information to the the plan

um as you've also seen it is something that you can sort of go into and then

add to later so you can start your plan but then you might find another set of Records or you might find that you've

got more shelves of minute books than what you expected tucked away in the corner so you can go in and update that

information as well um so you can add to your transfer plan throughout this year

if that um makes it easier for you the other question we got so this is

the last one we got via email was how detailed should we be in adding each record series to our transfer plan um

this was a local Council who asked this there's almost 150 State archived classes in

g39 and our Council would have records for a lot if not most of those classes

do we need to add the records for each reference class to the transfer plan separately for a lot of them we might

have some in digital and some in physical so they might be a h hybrid set so do we need to add all of our physical

for this class and then all of our digital for this class that would make quite a lot of details in our transfer

plan um or should we add at a higher level um such as making an entry per

function or activity and per format that is perfectly fine we're not expecting you to actually have to um some people

so the transfer plan has been designed for a very wide level of maturity we know some people who actually have these

details to hand and could provide us with very detailed information about the state archives that they hold we have

some people who I've spoken to who don't even know where to start and don't know what state archives they hold so this

has been designed for a very wide level of maturity um as such if want to go on

a deep dive you're more than welcome to but we're not expecting you to do that so if you've got for example um

something like your rate books so the answer to that question is a bit of it's it depends so if you're a council and

you've got the rate books as Council that would be one set one entry that you'd put in your um transfer plan you

know rate books for um Kingswood city council from 1901

to 2005 for example and you might have

20 shelves of those records so 20 meters um but then you might have more nebulous stuff like correspondence files

we're not expecting you to break things up into separate classes so you could just have a set of Correspondence files required State archives um we don't

expect you to complete an entry for every single disposal class that you have but we appreciate any information

you can provide to us for that future planning that Martin indicated earlier it'll help us to plan for the future and

to better support you and it will also give us a bit of a overview of what's out there across New South Wales as well

um that individual also asked if um we could provide a sample transfer plan

dedicated to local Council so we've taken that on board and we will be doing that and we'll publish that to our website once we've done so so that was

it for the pre- askk questions Ashlin do you want to call out some of the

questions that I haven't gotten a chance to oh okay Allison's doing it apparently

ashin can't unmute so sorry Alison sorry ashin uh no problem so we did have um

some questions popped in the chat that we haven't gotten to yet um one of the questions was does the plan include

records that the closed access or records not available to public so yes it does um irrespective of

the access conditions of those records they are still required of State archives and you can still transfer them

into the state archives collection and if you are no longer using them um it is

recommended that you would consider doing so um the access directions for a

record that's transferred into the state archives we follow the guidance provided by the public office so you can transfer

closed records into the collection and they would remain closed until the period has

elapsed by which the public can access it so um yes even if they're closed records still provide the information to

us great um just representing there was a

question about what do we do with hybrid record sets if they are both hard copy and paper and representing that in the

line items or how can you do it in the plan yeah we're not expecting you to put

it in twice um I'd recommend that you put in that description field when you're sort of telling us what the records are you could Indica in that

that you know these records were you know physical until 20 21 um but when we

move to a digital system after that so I'm not expecting you we're not expecting you to put them in twice just

something in the description would be great

so sorry just scrolling through now give me one moment I'll just have a look at some of

them that have come in more recently I'll let um Allison look at the older ones

um some requests for some more examples some different examples of transfer plans not just local government yes we

can look at doing that um Christopher has asked what exactly will museums of

History New South Wales and State records be using the transfer plans for so do can I do you mind if I take that

question take that one yeah I was going to say you've already mentioned that so yeah so Christopher just to be clear um

uh this is museums of History New South Wales not State a state records matter so it's what museums of History New

South Wales will be using the transport plans for um effectively we will be

using them to be able to plan our resourcing much better um than we've

been able to in the past so uh up until now we have not been able to in any way

shape or form predict forecast or plan for transfer from public officers what

that has meant is that uh we can receive you know a large transfer of material

and not have the resourcing to be able to respond to that or to provide the

service um to you all as public officers to um assist and support that transfer

knowing what is coming uh over the period of time of the transfer plans

will allow us to um plan our resourcing much better so in a very practical sense

we'll be analysing all the transfer plans and then slicing those in ways of

around for what formats are we expecting when are we expecting certain material is they going to be a bumped in

transfers in 2027 um and then it falls off in 2028 um

what's the pattern of transfer um so that's what we'll be using the transfer plans for thanks

Christie no worries so we've just been having a chat internally here just if we

don't get to answer all of the questions because there are many um we will be following up with free sponsors and we

will also be adding to our FAQs on the website so don't worry if we don't get to your question um it will be answered

um one of the questions we've had um can we link access directions to the transfer plan no you cannot um the

access direction is required for State records that are in your control or when

transferring into the state archives collection as a transfer they're not required for the transfer

plan [Music] um where should we note the access

controls that are required on the records that's a similar question um that would be at the point of transfer not required for the transfer plan um do

you have priorities or targets for groups of records that you wish to catch up or acquiring so for example our

examples are about local government um no we don't have priorities we're

interested in all information um the reason we focused on local government is because most of the queries we got in

advance were from that particular jurisdiction um so we are interested in

all records um and we're not going to Target particular groups so

um Allison great I've just found one um we haven't gotten to yet um the question

is if a public office doesn't have any records classed as a state archive is a transfer plan submission still mandatory

okay so it is very unlikely that there is any public assis out there with no

records required as a state archive um for example the annual reports of a public officer required as a state

archive and um pretty much every public office does have to submit a annual report so there

will always potentially be something that is required um we would still like

you to submit a transfer plan even if you are a recent office that hasn't got a backlog of Legacy records or if you've

still got records in current use um that are required State archives but yeah if

in doubt contact us and we can provide some support of your particular public office um but yeah it's likely that

there would be no State archives required from your organization because you are working on behalf of the citizens of New South Wales and some of

what you do is obviously important because the government has created your agency

so um chrisy can I just pick up on another one so Kevin's asked if there's a succinct memo that we can leverage to

escalate the transfer plan requirement to Executive leadership um so Kevin I'm not sure whether you're aware but our

chief executive Mary Dar wrote to all Chief Executives a couple of weeks ago

um and that was followed up by communication from me uh to senior

responsible officers a few days later um so I'm hoping that that message has been

heard at various levels within public offices um by all means as uh the the

following weeks and months unfold if there's more communication support uh

that we can provide to individual agencies or the sector a whole uh please let us

know okay um Jana has asked we have a number of physical paper records

currently in storage at State archives I'm assuming that means potentially with the government records repository um if

they're already with State archives and they've been transferred in the past you don't need to provide us with information they've already been

transferred this is just for material that has not been transferred um you can contact the government records repositor

customer service team for information about your Holdings if it is records that are in the government records

repository um just be aware that the government records repository is the commercial wing of museums of History

New South Wales records held in the grr that you're paying storage for are not part of the state archives collection

yet so a formal transfer process is required and they can be included in your transfer

plan um how do we send files and physical items to museums of History

that's not really part of the transfer plan discussion that's more of the actual process for transfer and we have

got advice on our website about transfer so um by all means reach out to us

separately from this and we can talk you through the process um Allison will drop in the links to the website for you um

can we have an explanation of the creation of and reference to a series on the Q&A fact sheet

please I'm not sure about that one I'll have to check up on that cuz I'm not

really sure what is referring to

um how large can the file is the file that can be uploaded um good question

actually I assume you mean uploaded to the transfer plan I usually it's we'll

find out but I haven't seen that there's a restriction um it's designed for things like you know if you had a

conservation report done on some records because you worried that they're archives but they look but you've

actually already paid for a conservation work on it um it's not there for you to provide an entire

list of your Holdings um it's just more there if you want to provide us with some additional information but I

haven't got information on that to hand but we will find out um what else where are the physical

items stored will the records be kept across multiple physical sites so the state archives collection in the main is

held on site at the Western City C record Center at Kingswood we do have Regional archive centres in various

locations across the state that do house some of the state archives collection on our behalf and which are available to

members of the public so Charles St at wagger wagger is one of them University of New England at Armadale is another um

there are several um but in the main the records are held at the Western City record Center at 161 a Connell Street

Kingswood

all over the place because the questions keep coming

in um I had a clarification on the series question so yes you can put the series details in if you already have a

series registered for them so um if you've got board minutes in your transfer plan yes you can sort of say

board minutes series NRS 1 2 3 4 5 um you can do that so the description is

there for you to provide whatever information you'd like to a question I've been asked separately is is there a character limit for that field 255

characters is the limit for that description field so you can put in there what you would

like um just scrolling

up there with me if you transfer items for the

transfer plan should you then delete that series off the plan or is there a section to place the transfer date

um you don't need to do anything so you've provided the information to us

you don't need to go back in and update it if you don't want to if you do want to there is the ability I believe um and

Allison will confirm this for me to actually go in and edit the status to

transferred um but I'll get Allison to check that while just while we're chatting here um

is there a field to identify security classifications for highly sensitive records no but you could put it in the

description

Brian should the indicative date be the date you expect to finish all the transfers for that item or the date you

will be doing the First Consignment listen we're not going to be that prescriptive about it Penny um any

information you give us is great um you can start transferring at that date you

could aim to have it all done by that date we we just appreciate the information

being provided to us so sorry Allison has just um confirmed that for me I was

look at the transfer plan and how you can change that if you've transferred if people would like me just to jump on and share my screen again and I can just

walk everyone through that yep thanks Al okay so in terms of editing um line

item so if you finished a transfer or again you've an indicative date but you've you'd like to sort of firm that

up um so I've jumped straight back I'll just go a bit slowly again because everyone's learning here we'll go to

transfer plan Explorer so this is you've submitted a plan already and then you've actually

potentially finished a transfer go into the transfer and you can scroll down to the

line items so let's say for example our

physical records that we put in on our first example we've actually completed a transfer and we want to update that you

can see at the plan here we have a status and the Planned um so when you add a line that's kind of a default

status you haven't set that in any way it's just there um as part of the system applies that but what you are able to do

is edit that so you could for example use the pencil and it opens up all the fields

you can click on planned and you can see here that we've actually got a transfer completed selection

so you're able to do that um also you could add anything in the description if

you'd like if you wanted to sort of update that description and say this was transferred and then leave a specific date in that um description field you

could um or as well you could actually change that date to the date that you

finish to transfer if that's how you would like to use your plan um so I'll just save that so you can see that that

status changes we'll go back to the transfer plan

scroll down to the line items for you so you can see it doesn't remove the line

item from your plan so it doesn't delete it or remove it it just changes the status there and again if you change

that in if you had to change that indicative date to an actual date the column is still called indicative date

but you would have that information there so you can see now we have three different statuses we have the transfer

completed cuz we've just edited it our no intention to transfer which was our digital ongoing use um line item and

then we had our new one that we found when we opened a room so that's gone to status planned by default of the system

so I hope that helps everybody thanks Christie okay I took that opportunity to

answer some more um questions who updates the status the agency or MH nssw listen you can

update the status if you want to um we won't update it um basically what will happen is the we'll ensure for the next

5 years in 2029 we'll do this again um and what we will do is basically close

the transfer plans that were previously submitted as the new ones are

received um when a plan is edited does it have to be authorized each time or only in the

initial submission no we don't we don't mandate that we don't monitor that um that's up to your own internal processes

um so no we don't require an authorization each time

is there anything else we've still got a few

minutes um so Jana's asked our court recorders

are listed as um retain for 10 years and then dispose of them

so after 10 years they'll be deleted so do we need this as a line item no we're only interested in records required a

state AR iives we don't need anything that's not going to eventually come into the collection um so I would be focusing

on that um we we don't need to know anything about records that you might be holding on to inh house um it's only for

stuff that's required to State archives that you need to put in your plan um Deb nay has asked to save on

time can we look to move entries across in 2029 rather than re-entering everything again from scratch at the

moment no we don't have that um I have already been asked that so I've put it on a list of a wish list of future

enhancements um depending on funding and budget and everything at the moment no you would have to start your plan again

from scratch but hopefully it would be lesser because you might have transferred some of the material you identified

previously um what else have we

got if there are large groups of Records yet to be assessed should we prioritize that work or can we note in the transfer

plan for now listen this is all designed to help public offices focus on gaining some

control over those important assets as Martin referred to them for the state and the citizens of New South Wales

um we don't mandate how you do that enage you to start focusing on

identifying those records and providing that information to us I know that's possibly a bit of a wishy-washy answer

for you um we have had some people submit a transfer plan to say um here's my plan

I'm going to start planning that's not really what we need we actually need some detail about the records you hold

um so we probably would prefer for that assessment to be done and that information provided um Martin have you

got something you want to add to that no I was going to move on to another question actually so um I just wanted to

pick up on Sharon's question about the rmat question 18 regarding transfers

um Sharon I'll take that on notice um and convey that to the state Records New South Wales team um I think that is um a

good point to raise um I I would for those of you and it's only been a small

number of you uh who are saying yes but we have no intention to transfer um I

fully appreciate that there are often good reasons that uh you wouldn't

transfer uh but I would also encourage you uh to uh hear the words I said

earlier that um once that material is transferred um management of that material also becomes a responsibility

of museums of history in New South Wales so um as I said fully appreciate there

can be very good reasons why people would want to hold on to material that is required to these State archives but

I would also encourage you to to Really interrogate um the reasons as to why

your agency is holding on to that material and to talk to us um about about those reasons um and and have a

discussion with us about that yeah Christie I think we probably need to

call a Hal there I mean we have so many questions we knew that we would we did know that we would we were prepared to

answer yes so thank you for fielding as many as we could get to um we will uh

extract the chat uh from this and uh circulate uh information about it an FAQ

document um that will be uh made available to you so um thank you all

very much for the really active active engagement um throughout the the session

this morning you can see uh on your screens the final uh slide is uh some

information uh about access and transfers uh that you should contact museums of History New South Wales uh

about that material and that email addresses transfer MH nw. um however for information about

record giving obligations under part two of the state record act then the email address to State records is gstate

records. nw. thank you all for uh your attendance

uh this morning uh we knew that this would be a popular topic we've had uh around 200 people uh join us online this

morning so I knew that it would it was bound to generate conversation as well I

think it's fair to say that you've uh asked a lot of questions that we have

already thought of and that we will communicate those answers to you uh in a

broad way so that everyone has that information there's a couple there that we will certainly take on notice um and

come back to you about for now uh I'll close the session

uh again thank you all for your attendance uh have a good rest of your Friday and we look forward to continuing

uh this discussion and communication about transport plans with you throughout the year thank you all so

much byebye