News item | 12-05-2026 | 2:30 PM
A new Archives Act focused on the digital age will come into effect on January 1, 2027. The Senate approved the law on May 12, 2026. From now on, governments will have ten instead of twenty years to transfer important information to an archive service. This makes the government more transparent, protects cultural heritage better and gives researchers and journalists faster access to crucial information.
Minister Rianne Letschert (OCW): “With the new archives law, we ensure that digital government information is well preserved and accessible to everyone. Because only if government information remains findable, reliable and readable, citizens, politicians, journalists and researchers can follow and question the government. This strengthens confidence in the government and the democratic constitutional state.”
Findable and accessible
The Archives Act prescribes that government information must be preserved, findable and accessible. The law applies to the entire government: from ministries and High Councils of State to provinces, municipalities and water boards.
The current law from 1995 is outdated because it was written before a time when governments still worked mainly with paper documents. The new Archives Act is better suited to today’s digital reality.
For example, the law obliges governments to properly manage digital information from creation onwards. This means, for example, that e-mails, chat messages, video images and websites must be stored in a sustainable and accessible manner immediately from their creation, so that they are not lost due to system changes or obsolescence of technology. This is also necessary, because information develops so quickly and in such quantities that organizing it afterwards does not work. The law also strengthens supervision of information management in the government, including a reporting obligation and fines.
Well managed government information
The new law is better aligned with the practice of information management: concepts have been translated into the digital environment, responsibilities are more clearly assigned, the diploma requirement for archivists is modernized and there is more emphasis on professionalization through better training offerings. The Archives Act thus lays a solid foundation for good management of digital government information.
