News item | 07-07-2023 | 11:32
The current Archives Act is outdated. Adjustment is necessary to ensure that government organizations also properly store, manage and keep digital information accessible. That is why the cabinet submitted a proposal for a new Archives Act in November 2021.
The questions posed by the House of Representatives on this subject led to amendments to the bill. Recent reports on the archiving of chat messages have also been incorporated into the improved version of the new Archives Act. The proposed changes and the answers to the parliamentary questions were discussed and approved by the cabinet on Friday 30 June 2023 and then sent to the House of Representatives.
Legislative proposal for the Archives Act 2021: to store digital information in a sustainable way and to archive it earlier
Due to digitization, digital information ends up in rapid succession on various systems that quickly become outdated. The danger is that information will become difficult or impossible to consult in the future. The government is therefore modernizing the Archives Act, which dates from 1995 and was mainly aimed at creating paper archives. The aim is for digital information to be preserved, findable and accessible for current and future generations. The new bill states, among other things, that governments must transfer important information after 10 years to the National Archives or a local or regional archive service. Now that is after 20 years. As a result, archives become public sooner for citizens, journalists, scientific researchers and the government.
Adjustments
In April 2022, the House of Representatives asked questions about the 2021 Archives Act bill.
These questions have now been answered in the Memorandum following the Report.
The questions prompted amendments to the bill. The main adjustments include:
- the Home Secretary is added as a co-signatory to the bill;
- it is clearly stated that government bodies cannot themselves determine that documents fall outside the law;
- a further explanation is included about the demarcation of the document concept. That was an advice from the Government Information and Heritage Inspectorate. The document concept is and remains technology-neutral, the relationship with the public task remains leading;
- the management rules that government bodies must draw up will be tightened up. It must be described what the government body actually does to bring and keep its documents in a permanently accessible state;
- the ground for restriction ‘disproportionate advantage or disadvantage’ lapses;
- it is announced that we will include criteria for permanent preservation in the archives decision. This gives archive creators and society more clarity about which categories of documents must in any case be kept forever.
The complete overview of amendments can be found in the Memorandum of Amendment to the Archives Act 2021.
More information
More information is available on the website of the House of Representatives repeal of the Archives Act 1995 and replacement by the Archives Act 2021.