Archives New Zealand, Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga has released the results of its fourth annual survey (2023/2024), which monitors how the public sector manages its information and mitigates related risks.

Archives New Zealand is the regulator under the Public Records Act 2005, making sure that public sector information is well-managed, to ensure effective, trusted government information for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

“We all have a responsibility to manage and protect our information properly. This report describes the challenges the public faces, by looking at performance over time. This helps us identify the emerging trends, challenges, risks, and opportunities so we can manage and protect our information, knowledge and records more effectively,” says Poumanaaki Chief Archivist Anahera Morehu.

The report used five key indicators to determine whether public sector information management (IM) is improving, deteriorating or remaining stable. They are:

• Implementing governance groups for information management
• Overall number of IM staff employed by public sector organisations
• Identifying high-value and/or high-risk information
• Building IM requirements into new business systems
• Active, authorised destruction of information.

Indicator 1: This year’s survey exceeded the results of 2022’s survey with 85% of survey respondents reporting their Executive Sponsors are part of a governance group that is either dedicated to IM or has IM as part of its mandate.

Indicator 2: Since 2020, the overall number of IM staff in the public sector had been slowly increasing, but this year, those surveyed reported employing fewer IM staff.

Indicator 3: 59% of surveyed organisations are in progress or have partially identified high value/high risk information.

Indicator 4: Only 21% reported all their systems meet minimum requirements.

Indicator 5: The percentage of organisations that have reported carrying out authorised destruction of physical information has gone up since the last survey (51% in 2022 to 68% in 2024).

This survey shows there is more work to be done when it comes to building information management requirements into new business information systems, having sufficient staff resources in this specialist area, and improving communication across business groups. 

“The findings confirm the key indicators published recently in the Annual Report on the State of Government Recordkeeping. Both reports indicate that there is room for improvement.”

“Archives will be engaging further with public sector organisations to build awareness and communicate our expectations, especially with regards to managing high risk information, that, if mismanaged, can have real world impacts on the lives of New Zealanders.” says Anahera Morehu.

The survey was sent to 224 public sector organisations between 8 and 29 July last year, including 147 public offices that were required to respond. Overall, there was a 78 percent response rate. 35 public offices did not respond to the survey, and they have been named in the appendices to the report.

Archives will be engaging further with public sector organisations on the recent publications, to build awareness and communicate expectations.

The findings report can be viewed here: https://www.archives.govt.nz/about-us/publications/survey-of-public-sector-information-management/survey-of-public-sector-information-management-2024

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