Read the CRS Report “Records in the Digital Environment” in conjunction with this recent report from the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia “A Failure to Archive: Recommendations to Modernize Government Information Management”. The report outlines the huge and growing problem that the BC government has on their hands. There was a policy change 10 years ago in which records responsibility was shifted to the Royal British Columbia Museum complete w an expensive fee schedule for transfer. This has resulted in 33,000 boxes of records accumulating in a warehouse rather than be deposited in the BC Archives.
Long and short of it is that governments at all levels around the world are not keeping up with their archival responsibilities to the detriment of the public’s right to know.
Archiving is a public good. Records about key actions and decisions of government must be preserved in a lasting historical record for future generations. Without a comprehensive public archive, access to information and the ‘right to know’ is significantly and severely impaired.
https://www.oipc.bc.ca/report/special-reports
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