In the year Victoria’s Public Records Act 1973 was enacted, flared pants, flower-power shirts with massive wing collars and monster sideburns were the order of the day.  However the average public sector worker’s desktop would have housed only a few unsexy peripherals perhaps not much more than an in-tray, a pen and notepad and an ashtray. A major review of the Management of Public Sector Records in the state completed by the Victorian Auditor-General has found that record-keeping practice has not kept pace with the vast change in the information management landscape since those times.

“Victoria’s information management environment is highly fragmented and disconnected - with multiple sets of policies and standards that can sometimes contradict each other,” it notes.

“These weaknesses - particularly the absence of system-wide compliance monitoring and reporting and outdated legislation - heighten the risk of key government records being lost, inaccessible, inappropriately accessed, unlawfully altered or destroyed.”