Poor Scores For Govt Agencies On Record Keeping
Most government organisations are not meeting the Chief Archivist's expectations for good record keeping.
Anahera Morehu's 2023/24 Annual Report surveyed the state of government record keeping in 23 public entities.
Only seven - or 30 percent - rated at 'managing' or above in at least half of the 20 topics, while the rest sat on 'beginning' or 'progressing'.
The results were poor with regard to the five-level information security scale: beginning, progressing, managing, maturing and optimising.
"What I see in 2023/24 is that organisations mostly rate at 'Beginning' or 'Progressing' in their maturity, so more work is required with them to lift their information management levels to expected standards," Morehu said.
"The good news is that, already, we are seeing good commitment to post-audit action plans following our recommendations to organisations for improvement."
The report noted a few organisations were doing well, including Inland Revenue and The Reserve Bank, that rated at 'maturing' or 'optimising' on most of the topics.
"These successes indicate that improvement is possible," Morehu said.
Her report said progress on information management was "two steps forward and one step back", with dedicated oversight to information management increasing while there were staff reductions in the workforce.
Only 21 percent of organisations surveyed reported that all of their systems met the minimum requirements for information management, the report said.
The Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden received the Chief Archivist's report on 14 April.
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