The 2023/24 Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping, from the Poumanaaki Chief Archivist, Anahera Morehu, was presented to Parliament on the 14 April 2024 by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. Brooke van Velden.

The State of Government Recordkeeping 2023/24 details the work and initiatives that help enable effective government recordkeeping, including the maturity of information management practices.

“Our audit programme, now into the fifth year of operation, provides us with useful data about what is happening in the sector and what we need to do as a regulator to support improvement,” says Poumanaaki Chief Archivist Anahera Morehu.

Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand (Te Rua Mahara) assesses organisations’ IM maturity on a five-level scale: Beginning, Progressing, Managing, Maturing and Optimising.

“It is my expectation that all organisations perform at the ‘Managing’ level, which is the expected baseline”, Ms. Morehu says.

“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.

“The good news is that, already, we are seeing good commitment to post-audit action plans following our recommendations to organisations for improvement.”

During the year, Te Rua Mahara also continued work on the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and Faith-based Institutions.

“To ensure that existing records are protected for further response and redress work, I issued a Temporary Care records Protection Instruction under section 20 of the Public Records Act 2005 (the Act). The instruction protects care records while allowing most agencies to carry out their wider disposal responsibilities.”

The Act provides Te Rua Mahara and the Poumanaaki Chief Archivist with regulatory tools including the audit of central government bodies, the power to direct a public office to report to the Chief Archivist, the ability to inspect records and to set standards and issue guidance on how records must be managed.

Read the full Chief Archivist’s Annual Report 2023/24 here

© Scoop Media