Bringing our archives to the people: Stephen Clarke on Archives New Zealand's changing role

Thursday, 24 December 2020

Stephen Clarke, the new chief archivist at Archives New Zealand.

Stephen Clarke remembers being fascinated by medieval handwriting and ancient documents when he was studying history and social anthropology at university.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the former engineer went on to take up a career in archives and records management in the 1990s.

Leaving the National Museum of Wales in 2006 to move to New Zealand, where he’s held a variety of public sector roles – including most recently chief data officer for Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency – Clarke has just been appointed the new chief archivist at Archives New Zealand.

He said the authority’s first and most important role is to manage the record of government.

Clarke, from Scotland, has taken over from Richard Foy.

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While there has been paper records for years, digital records – databases, analytics, text messages, video, social media – have also been part of the record-keeping authority’s core business for the last three decades.

To have good record-keeping outcomes, the authority must develop consistent standards across changing mediums, Clarke said.

Archives New Zealand has hundreds of kilometres worth of records. Pictured, its storage basements in Wellington.

While standards have been said to stifle innovation, Clarke used the example of the Internet – a “ruthlessly standardised” concept – which has created “huge opportunities” for innovation.

“We’re the conscience of government, the third-party repository. Ultimately the government doesn’t own any of that information – it’s held by the Crown on behalf of the public. We’re merely stewards.”

He used Te Tiriti o Waitangi being “nibbled away by rodents” as an example of poor historical record management.

With its current role, Archives also needed to focus on “digital nibbling”, Clarke said – issues like bit rot (data degradation), digital obsolescence (where things are no longer readable due to archaic digital format) and keeping up with fast-changing iterations of both platforms and technology.

Clarke says the idea that paper record-keeping is on its way out is a myth.

The government was also coming to grips with its new responsibilities around metadata, Clarke said.

Because of the wide variety of devices government now uses – Skype, Zoom, social media, instant messaging – in many ways, Archives does not know what future record-keeping might look like.

Many digital records can be held in the cloud, which brings its own challenges of third-party involvement.

Digital record-keeping also means dealing with issues of transitory records – messages, texts and photos can be deleted, removed or even tampered with.

“It might not be there for us to collect in three, five or 25 years … Milliseconds, minutes … stuff is really transitory.”

While more record-keeping was happening digitally, Clarke said it was a myth that paper records – of which Archives holds hundreds of kilometres in storage warehouses and basements – were going away.

Clarke said the authority is keeping one foot in the past, and one in the future.

Possibly the biggest challenge Archives faced over the next decade was dealing with big datasets as more of government moved through platforms and migrated to the cloud.

The biggest positive flow-on effect of the digitisation of records has been opening up access, as people no longer have to physically come to Archives to view the information it holds, Clarke said. “We can bring archives to the people.”

That, in turn, has helped assist communities to be better at their own grassroots record-keeping initiatives. “We’re enabling the citizen archivist.”

Clarke replaced Richard Foy, who was seconded into the role in August 2017.