Delighted to read of the legal opinion from the Arizona Supreme Court that ruled that ‘metadata attached to public records is itself public and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request’ (see news report here)  and full decision here (sourced from the fabulous Records and Archives in the News resource provided by Peter Kurilecz).  This reverses a scary previous decision from a lower court that ruled that metadata wasn’t part of the record.  And that earlier decision pushed towards the really undesirable outcome of documents merely being uncontextualised objects, rather than objects in context.

Having said this, the decision seems to be more about metadata embedded in documents, rather than that necessarily surrounding the document - the context stuff that I keep boring people with.

So, why is the context stuff so important?  Because it is the recordkeeping process metadata (by whatever name you will) that proves the provenance, integrity and authenticity of documents - that is the stuff that makes them records.

But great news and a terrific precedent.

barbara

The records management implications of the recent ‘Utegate’ affair keep coming up in conversation.

Instead of locating materials in TRIM, ‘ANAO investigators found themselves digging through filing cabinets and searching files and folders on individual Treasury officer’s local computers…’

Here is a link to the report as documented at idm.net.au