Next level for National Archives’ digitisation

Original press release published on February 14, 2022 at https://ministers.ag.gov.au/media-centre

Senator the Hon Amanda Stoker

14 February 2022

Media Release

Minister for International Development and the Pacific Senator the Hon Zed Seselja Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General Assistant Minister for Industrial Relations Assistant Minister for Women Senator for Queensland Senator the Hon Amanda Stoker

Next level for National Archives’ digitisation

Joint media release

The Morrison Government has delivered a major boost to the preservation of precious and at-risk government records, with the opening of an industrial-scale digitisation hub at the National Archives of Australia, in Canberra. The state-of-the-art facility will fast-track the digital preservation of at-risk records that are crucial to our nation’s story, making them available online for all Australians now and into the future. Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General, Assistant Minister for Industrial Relations and Assistant Minister for Women, Queensland LNP Senator Amanda Stoker said the new Digitisation Hub will vastly increase the National Archives’ digitisation capacity.

“The new hub will help safeguard our collection of records – the critical information infrastructure of our nation.” “The modern mass-digitisation hub is a key deliverable of the $67.7 million funding package the Morrison Government is providing to boost the critical functions of the National Archives.” “The pace and volume of digitization will now increase, providing all Australians with improved access to records in the National Archives’ collection, regardless of where they live.” The additional funding is part of the Government’s response to the Functional and Efficiency Review of the National Archives of Australia (Tune Review). It represents a substantial investment in the functions and activities of the National Archives, providing for:

• digitisation and preservation of the National Archives’ at-risk collection over an accelerated four-year timeframe;
• additional staffing and capability to address backlogs for ‘access applications’ for Commonwealth records and to provide improved digitise-on-demand services;
• improved guidance for agencies to assure better management of government information, data and records;
• investment in cybersecurity capacity and further development of the National Archives’ next generation digital archive to facilitate secure and timely transfer of records to the National Archives’ custody, as well as their preservation and digital access.

Minister for International Development and the Pacific, ACT Liberal Senator Zed Seselja welcomed the new Hub, which is in the Canberra suburb of Mitchel. “In Canberra we are proud to be home to so many of our national institutions, like the National Archives.” “In recent years, we’ve seen significant investments in our national institutions from the Morrison Government, including the $67.7 million package to deliver this new hub, our $500 million investment in the Australian War Memorial, as well as additional funding for the Museum of Australian Democracy, the National Gallery of Australia, and the establishment of a National Holocaust Museum and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Precinct,” Senator Seselja said. Establishment of the Digitisation Hub follows the Tune Review recommendation to implement centralised storage and preservation of the national archival collection. The industrial-scale digitisation hub forms part of this model, and will digitise collection material relocated from across the nation into storage facilities with significantly improved preservation and digitisation capacity. Commercial digitisation provider Micro Image will be undertaking the large-scale digitisation works from the Digitisation Hub located onsite at the National Archives’ repository.