Ross Gibbs

Director-General, National Archives of Australia

An introduction to the session, setting the context for why a National Archivist has invited an Auditor-General, an Ombudsman and a Public Service Commissioner to address the International Congress on Archives.

We are all aware that most government archives perform two roles – they are heritage institutions and they are enablers of good public administration. They fulfil the second of these roles by supporting sound public recordkeeping. This is achieved by providing expert advice and assistance on records creation and management and by regulating aspects of records disposal and access.

In addition to their better-known heritage role, government archives perform a vitally important role in supporting the integrity, accountability and the efficiency of public offices.

Operating on their own, archivists often find it difficult to achieve serious ‘buy-in’ for their good recordkeeping messages from busy public officials. These messages are often given a low priority by those officials in comparison with their other issues and responsibilities – budgets, personnel, policy development – that demand their attention.

Archives are not the only institutions of state that exist to support public sector integrity and accountability. Other, and often more high profile institutions, such as Auditors-General, fully understand the vital importance of good recordkeeping as an enabler of good governance. The aim of this session is to hear from these other accountability and integrity institutions – these natural allies of archives. We’ll hear about how they think archives can work together with them to help further the causes of good public recordkeeping and a more accountable and efficient public administration.

Before handing over to my first speaker, though, I would like to provide some context about my institution, the National Archives of Australia, and how we have been working to strengthen our alliances with these allies.

In 2005 my fellow speaker, Des Pearson, and I gave presentations at the International Conference of the Round Table on Archives (CITRA) meeting in Abu Dhabi about how archivists and auditors can work together for mutual benefit. It is probably fair to say that some of the audience found this message to be very new and different, even bewildering – the ‘shock of the new’ almost. At that time the National Archives of Australia had worked closely with the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) in conducting two separate audits of recordkeeping in selected Australian Government agencies. Des Pearson, for his part, had experience of working with the Western Australian State Records Office as Auditor-General and as Chairman of the State Records Commission.

Since then Des Pearson has moved to Victoria, another Australian state, and has recently conducted an Auditor-General’s investigation into recordkeeping in the Victorian Government – and you will hear more about that from Des in a few minutes. In my jurisdiction, the National Archives has worked closely with the Australian National Audit Office on a third recordkeeping audit of the Australian Government. Unlike the first two ANAO audits, this latest one also made recommendations to the National Archives about how my organisation could improve the utility and effectiveness of its recordkeeping advice and assistance to government agencies – recommendations that we have given the highest priority to implementing.

Perhaps the most significant development in my jurisdiction, however, has been the recent machinery of government changes which have shifted the National Archives from the arts and culture portfolio and into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. This move has been made specifically so that the National Archives could be co-located with other integrity and accountability agencies that come under the umbrella of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. These agencies include the Australian Public Service Commission, the Australian National Audit Office, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner. Also located within the same portfolio department is responsibility for reforming and administering freedom of information.

These are truly exciting times for the National Archives of Australia. I have recently attended my first meeting with the other heads of these ‘integrity agencies’ and look forward to strengthening our cooperation in the months and years ahead. As a signifier of the new regime in which we find ourselves, I can do no better than quote our new Minister, Cabinet Secretary and Special Minister of State, Senator John Faulkner, who recently said the following in the Senate:

I could…put a strong case that the National Archives of Australia are the ultimate accountability function and agency of government.

In addition to our cooperation with the Audit Office, I have a similar close relationship with our Government Ombudsman and with our Public Service Commissioner. For instance, we cooperate closely with the Public Service Commission’s annual 'State of the Service' survey which, for a number of years now, has included a series of questions addressing the state of recordkeeping in the Australian Government. The fact that this high profile annual survey of the public sector gives prominence to recordkeeping is not only a vital reinforcement of our messages, but the annual data that is gathered from the survey provides us with invaluable information about trends in records management across government.

Recently, in reviewing some highly-publicised difficulties in our Immigration Department, the Australian Government Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, issued a statement of the ten most important lessons learnt from the Immigration Department’s experience. The number one lesson on Ombudsman Professor McMillan’s list was the need to make and keep good records of government decisions and activities!

Finally, I cannot finish without saying a few words about our efforts in recent years to extend the paradigm of alliances and cooperation with our natural allies to Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific. Over the past three years we have worked closely with the Pacific Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (PARBICA) and with other partners, particularly the Australian Public Service Commission, to spread the ‘recordkeeping for good governance’ message across the island nations of the Pacific. We have been fortunate in these efforts to have received support from Australia’s foreign aid agency, AusAID.

During 2006-07, one of our experienced staff, Dani Wickman, spent 13 months in the Solomon Islands working to improve the state of records management and archives in that government.

AusAID has also funded the National Archives to work with PARBICA to develop and deploy the Recordkeeping for Good Governance Toolkit for the Pacific. Phase one of this toolkit was launched at the PARBICA conference in New Caledonia last October, and work has recently commenced on developing Phase 2 of the toolkit. I am also pleased to say that our friends, Archives New Zealand, have recently succeeded in securing funding from the New Zealand Government to develop Phase 3 of the PARBICA toolkit. The PARBICA toolkit has been very well received internationally and has now been translated into French by the Association des Archivistes Français.

One of the aims of the PARBICA Toolkit is to promote the good recordkeeping message to senior government officials. In the Pacific Islands – as elsewhere – archivists sometimes find it difficult to attract the attention of these officials. I was delighted therefore to take advantage of an opportunity last year to speak about the Toolkit to a Conference of Pacific Public Service Commissioners in Samoa. This presentation generated considerable interest among this important group of officials and led directly to four of them attending the PARBICA Conference and Toolkit workshop in Noumea. In running workshops across the islands on the Toolkit, the need to constantly engage the support of senior government allies, such as Public Service Commissioners, has been regularly reinforced. Indeed, they have rarely been successful without them.

I look forward to continuing to cooperate with the Australian Public Service Commission in its good governance assistance efforts across the Pacific region.