Summary of activities

Meetings

The Council met four times during the year:

29 August 2003	Sydney
21 November 2003	Canberra
20 February 2004	Brisbane
21 May 2004	Melbourne

Statements required under the Act

The Archives Act requires the Minister and the Archives to place before the Council certain materials that specifically relate to disposal practices and special access matters.

National Archives’ records disposal practices

The Council received no statutory reports under subsection 25(1) of the Act.

The Council continued to take an active interest in the records disposal practices of the National Archives, and received regular briefings.

During the year, the Council was briefed on the number and range of Australian Government agencies working with the Archives on Designing and Implementing Recordkeeping Systems (DIRKS) projects and the number of disposal authorities issued by the Archives.

The Council also followed the development of a framework for community consultation on appraisal with great interest.

Special access to official records

Under subsection 56(2) of the Archives Act 1983, access may be granted to official records under the 30-year age threshold. Application is made directly to agencies responsible for controlling the relevant records. Deciding whether to grant access is the responsibility of the agency. Special arrangements have been in place since 1988 to assist agencies in this decision-making.

At each Council meeting, members noted reports prepared by the Archives on requests for, and decisions relating to, access requested under subsection 56(2) of the Act.

Nine applications for access to records under subsection 56(2) of the Archives Act were received in the reporting period. Of these, six were granted access by the agencies concerned and three requests were still under consideration at the end of the reporting period.