Frequently asked questions on digitisation

If the originals are eligible for destruction under the general retention and disposal authority: Original or source records that have been copied (GA45), and they meet all conditions, they may be destroyed.

You should check the documentation related to the digitisation process and quality control measures to ensure the digital records are authentic, complete, and accessible.

If adequate documentation is not available, it may be prudent to retain the originals.

Certain records are excluded from GA45 and cannot be destroyed after digitisation. These include:

• State archives created prior to 1980.
• Audiovisual records required as State archives.
• Records of high personal value to individuals, such as care leavers’ records.
• Records subject to legal or policy requirements, like letters patent signed by the Governor of New South Wales.
• Records with intrinsic value, such as those with cultural, iconic, heritage, or aesthetic importance.

Original paper records should be retained for a period to allow for quality control checks on the digitised images. Your organisation should assess factors such as:

• Assurance that the digitised record is accurate and complete
• Assurance that the digital image is managed properly in a recordkeeping system
• Robustness of the digitisation process
• Authenticity of the digital record
• Need for access to the original records for legal purposes

Note that it is rare that original records are required for legal purposes. As long as you can demonstrate that your processes result in true and exact copies, this is sufficient for most legal purposes.

Day boxing, a practice in business process digitisation, involves scanning records as they are received and placing the originals in a 'day box' or batch. You may destroy these records if they are covered by the retention and disposal authorities.

However, day boxing should not be used if the originals are to be retained. After digitisation, original records should be kept for a period of time for quality control before they can be destroyed. This period should be chosen and applied consistently across the organisation.

If your digitisation meets the conditions outlined in GA45, you can destroy original records even without a sophisticated recordkeeping system.

The key is to ensure the digital records are authentic, complete, and accessible, and that all other requirements (such as retaining originals for quality control) are met.

If you cannot meet these requirements, you are not authorised to destroy any original records.

In most cases there is no barrier to organisations tendering digital images of records as evidence. They can be considered suitable to submit in legal proceedings in response to Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act) applications and for other evidentiary purposes.

However, the value or credibility of the digital image as evidence can still be questioned.

The authenticity of a presented record may be challenged or a judge may be given some other reason to doubt the reliability of a digital image.

In these cases, your documentation regarding how the digitisation was conducted and the digital images created and kept may help to demonstrate that the digital image is an authentic and credible representation of the original.

See legal admissibility of digital records in the relevant guideline for more information. 

Optical character recognition software extracts text from scanned documents, enabling it to be saved as a text file or word processor document. OCR recognises text within images and often includes search and export features. Additionally, OCR can automate metadata capture by identifying document definitions.

Whether to use OCR depends on the objectives of your digitisation project or program and the nature of the records. Consider whether OCR aligns with your organisation's needs, as well as the cost of the software compared to your budget. Note that some documents may not be suitable for OCR processing.

The level of quality control required depends on the risks associated with your digitisation program or project. Refer to benchmarks and quality assurance for more details.

Yes, all enhancements should be reviewed. These adjustments may improve the image but can unintentionally remove critical details if applied too strongly. For example, if the tolerances are set too high the dots above the letter ‘i' may be removed.

Quality assurance should ensure that:

• no information is lost during adjustments
• changes align with documented standards to protect authenticity

Documenting these processes helps maintain the integrity of the digital records.

Yes, optical character recognition often needs manual checks to ensure accuracy. Factors such as handwriting, damaged pages, or unusual fonts can reduce reliability.

Quality faults fall into three categories:

• implementation faults
  • dirty originals
  • incorrect file sizes or formats
  • inappropriate compression
• process faults
  • incomplete specifications
  • incorrect colour management systems
  • faulty hardware or software
  • low-quality originals or metadata
• operator faults
  • incorrect file names or metadata including incorrect use of controlled vocabulary
  • uncalibrated equipment
  • File optimisation faults such as image orientation, exposure, focus, colour, contract of the image during processing
  • cropping errors
  • placing digital images into incorrect folders, files or classification structures

Prevent faults with regular equipment checks, proper training, and clear procedures.

Your organisation should consider whether it is necessary to add page numbers to a file or volume prior to digitisation if not numbered already. It does require additional effort and potentially cost if digitisation is outsourced, but this should be balanced with your organisation’s need to have evidence of the exact order of the original papers on the file. A risk assessment should be conducted when planning the project. If records are high risk or long term/archival and/or tend to be requested in court, your organisation may well decide that the additional effort is justified.

Pagination can assist you with quality assurance checking. Where original paper records are to be retained after digitisation, it will also assist you to reconstruct the original paper records.

If page numbers are to be added your organisation’s procedures for digitisation should indicate acceptable ways this must be done. Pagination of archives is generally done in soft pencil so that it can be removed if necessary. Stamping is not generally recommended for archives as the stamps alter the original, and may obscure text or negatively impact on pictures or images. In some cases you may be able to add page numbers to the metadata of digital images.

If your organisation decides not to paginate, you should (at least) determine the amount of pages digitised and compare these to the number of papers in the original records (this can be sampled where relevant). If pages are removed to be digitised in separate batches, for example, non-standard materials that require a different scanner, flags should be added to ensure pages are returned to the correct order.