THE NEW STANDARD IN RECORDKEEPING TITLE OF PRESENTATION

What I’ll be covering History and Development of AGLS AGLS & Dublin Core Implementation & whole-of-Government context

Origins of AGLS Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource, Information Management Steering Committee (IMSC), August 1997 - Report to the (then) Office of Government Information Technology (OGIT) The Information Management Steering Committee was an interdepartmental committee set up by the Office of Government Information Technology in 1996, at the request of the Chief Government Information Officer. The IMSC had two objectives: to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government via improved information management; and 2. to improve public access to all authorised government information and government personnel. The Committee was chaired by the Deputy National Librarian and its report was released in August 1997. The report proposed frameworks for government information policy and the deployment of associated technology into the 21st century. The development of an Australian Government information locator service was one of the three technical access architecture recommendations in the report. The other two recommendations dealt with search engine architecture and a single entry point for the Commonwealth Government.

IMSC Recommendation Commonwealth Government should establish a Government Information Locator System (GILS) - tentatively called AusGILS Recommendation 6 of the IMSC report states: “In order to achieve increased visibility of government information holdings, approve in principle the establishment of the Australian Government Locator System (AusGILS) and request the Australian Archives to develop an implementation plan”. It was evident that the report envisaged an Australian government system as being modelled on the US Government Information Locator System (GILS).

Prime Minister’s Online Commitment “All appropriate government services will be delivered over the Internet by 2001” Investing for Growth, PM’s Industry Statement, December 1997 Development of AGLS was further underpinned by the Prime Minister’s 1997 industry policy statement. In this statement the PM identified government as a leading edge user of technology and set down a number of initiatives to “get Australia online”. Probably the most important of these initiatives was the promise (apparently a core promise) that “all appropriate government services will be delivered over the Internet by 2001”. Other initiatives dealt with the development of a single point of access for Commonwealth government information and services, and establishing ecommerce as the normal way to do business with Government by 2000. The Office of Government Information Technology (OGIT) was the agency responsible for implementing the strategies set out in the Investing for Growth statement. Since the National Archives was lead agency for AGLS and worked closely with OGIT and metadata was a key enabler for meeting this prime ministerial commitment thus became a key player in the whole area of online delivery of government services and information

Objectives of AGLS visibility identification description recordkeeping Development of AGLS was guided by four primary objectives: To assist in making government information more visible and accessible to users in an Internet environment To identify publicly releasable information resources at all levels of government, in all media, wherever located To describe information resources to assist discovery and retrieval To serve as a tool to assist record and archival processes

AGLS Development AusGILS Workshop, December 1997, devised AGLS Standard based on Dublin Core not on GILS Although the IMSC report might have envisaged an Australian version of US GILS by the time the Archives made its first progress report to the Govt. Technology and Telecommunications Committee in early October 1997 it had already been decided to base what was still being called AusGILS on the Dublin Core metadata set. GILS was abandoned as a model because of its complexity (75 elements about 30 mandatory) and the widespread implementation difficulties experienced by US government agencies. The AusGILS working group was established by OGIT with NAA involvement in October 1997. Representatives were invited from major Commonwealth Govt. agencies such as Health, Tax, Aust Bureau of Statistics, Customs, Transport, etc. as well as agencies of the Commonwealth govt. with involvement in information management such as the the National Library, the (then) Australian Govt Publishing Service (now AusInfo) and other interested parties like the Federal Libraries Information Network. A metadata workshop which included non-Commonwealth experts was held in early December 1997 to actually develop the standard itself over a two day period. Non-govt. reps were Sue McKemmish and Barbara Reed from Monash University, and Nigel Ward and Renato Ianella from DSTC.

AGLS and Dublin Core (DC) Dublin Core is relatively simple to implement Dublin Core is the emerging international standard for Web-based resource description Importance of interoperability between AGLS and Dublin Core Dublin Core is designed to be extensible AGLS is an extension of Dublin Core As I said the AusGILS working group abandoned GILS at an early stage because it was overly complex and consequently difficult to implement. Why did they choose Dublin Core? DC was developed under the auspices of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in Dublin, Ohio, purely as a resource discovery metadata standard, with the aim of allowing simplicity of metadata creation and deployment. Secondly, even in 1997 DC was becoming a de facto international standard and it was seen as being essential that AGLS be compliant with the most widely deployed resource discovery metadata standard. The DC standard is what it says it is, a “core” and it was always envisaged by the DC community that specific sector metadata requirements would be met by extending the DC set. Because AGLS is based on DC it also fits well with the Warwick Framework, a container architecture that facilitates interoperability between different sector-specific metadata sets.

4 Additional AGLS Elements Function: describes the function/s of government to which the resource relates Availability: provides information on how the resource may be obtained (i.e. to go beyond discovery into retrieval) Audience: describes the target audience of the resource Mandate: describes the mandate (act, regulation, case law) for resource creation AGLS added 4 elements to the basic 15 DC elements: function, availability, audience and mandate. The first two were added in version 1.0 of the standard - July 1998 Function added because AGLS is a government resource discovery metadata standard and function was seen as a relevant way of accessing govt. resources. Availability because AGLS is for resource retrieval and access and not ever limited to online resources only. So it needed some way of telling people how to get access to resources that are not on-line. Two more were added in version 1.2 of the standard Aug 1999 Audience because it was seen as another way of helping searchers decide if a resource was relevant to their enquiry. Finally Mandate added because many government resources start out as records created by Commonwealth agencies to meet particular legislative mandate. This was seen as being a way of accessing Govt resources that could be useful for certain search requests.

Six Mandatory Elements • Creator • Publisher • Title • Date • Subject OR Function (both preferable) • Identifier OR Availability There are no mandatory elements in the Dc standard which means that a Web resource containing no metadata is DC-compliant. To avoid this rather ludicrous situation some AGLS elements are required for compliance. Although AGLS consists of 19 metadata elements not all of the elements have to be used. An AGLS compliant metadata record only needs a minimum of 6 of the 19 elements. Nor are qualifiers mandatory, although the National Archives does recommend the sue of a small number to enhance resource visibility.The mandatory elements are Creator, Publisher, Title, Subject, Identifier, and date. The National Archives recommends that agencies use function rather than subject, although we encourage use of both. Function should be seen as the preferred way of categorising resources with subject used to enrich the metadata record. We recommend function over subject because it allows for much greater consistency in describing government resources. This because there is a finite number of functions performed by the Commonwealth but the range of subjects is huge. The same applies to thesauri - large number of subject thesauri but only one high-level functions thesaurus for government - AGIFT Often confusion about the difference between a function-based and a subject-based approach to classification. Its not so difficult if you remember that functional classification describes WHY a resource exists, subject classification describes what a resource is about. Important to note that Web Systems that dynamically generate resources with a different URL each time cannot support the creation of AGLS metadata, since resources must have a stable URL associated with them to be discoverable and retrievable.

AGLS Implementation Pilot testing of AGLS in early 1998 Endorsed by Online Council Ministers in November 1998 Haphazard deployment across jurisdictions until quite recently AusInfo website (www.fed.gov.au) indexes approx. 410,100 web pages, of which about 57,100 contain DC/AGLS metadata (about 13.9%) The completed AGLS standard was taken to the Online Ministers Council by the Government Technology and Telecommunications Committee in late 1998. The Online Council endorsed AGLS, in Canberra in November 1998, as the resource discovery metadata standard for all levels of government in Australia “where appropriate”. Until quite recently deployment was quite haphazard. Its difficult for us to find out what, if anything, is happening at local government level, and there are no mechanisms which might help us to find out. However I can give you some statistics for Commonwealth government as they were at 25 August A year ago the proportion was about 9.5%..

Government Online Strategy Aims to encourage and assist agencies to meet the PM’s commitment Approved by Cabinet in March Publicly released on 6 April Identifies 8 strategic priorities Office for Government Online (OGO) to co-ordinate The strategy was developed by the Office for Government Online with input from around 25 other Commonwealth agencies. The whole aim of the strategy, which began life as a Cabinet Submission, is to assist agencies to fully meet the Prime Minister’s 1997 commitment. The strategy was approved by Federal Cabinet on 30 March and launched by Senator Ian Campbell (parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Senator Alston responsible for Information Technology) on 6 April this year (2000). The strategy contains 8 priorities which are coordinated by the Office for Government Online. The priorities are: 1. Agencies to take full advantage of the opportunities the Internet provides 2. Ensure the enablers are in place 3. Enhance Government Online services in regional Australia 4. Enhance IT industry involvement in Government Online initiatives 5. Government business operations to go online 6. Monitor best practice and progress 7. Facilitate cross-agency services 8. Communicate with stakeholders

Strategic Priority 2 Ensure the enablers are in place Authentication Privacy Security Metadata standards and obligations Publishing and recordkeeping guidelines Accessibility The second strategic priority is the most important in terms of AGLS implementation. This strategy deals with the enablers for meeting the online obligations which are set out in strategic priority 1. Strategic Priority 1 sets out the resources which agencies are required to make available online, SP 2, among other things, requires Commonwealth agencies to describe certain online resources with AGLS metadata and lists the online resources for which agencies have to create AGLS metadata. This strategic priority also deals with recordkeeping and requires Commonwealth agencies to follow NAA guidelines for both archiving websites and electronic recordkeeping.

Crucial Dates From 1 June 2000 New web content to be AGLS compliant By 1 December 2000 All existing website content to be AGLS compliant The online strategy also sets a number of deadlines for agencies to meet their metadata obligations’ From 1 June 2000 all new web content has to meet the metadata obligations and by 1 December all existing content also must comply with the obligations.

Key URLs http://www.govonline.gov.au/ http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/summary.html http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/summary.html