Department of Accounting and General Services

Hawai‘i State Archives has been awarded a $72,500 Electronic Records Grant by the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) for the development of the Hawai‘i State Digital Archives. For the past few years, Hawai‘i State Archives has been trying to find ways to meet its responsibility to acquire, process, preserve and make available for research records of enduring value in any format. While the Archives can preserve paper records for over hundreds of years, it does not currently have the means for long-term preservation of electronic records of enduring value.

The NHPRC grant is a two year project. The core team consisting of staff from Hawai‘i State Archives, Department of the Attorney General and Information and Communications Systems Division will be meeting soon to plan for the launch of the project. Hawai‘i State Archives will be seeking through the procurement process, a consultant who has experience with archives, electronic records management and building a viable digital archives. Later this year a larger meeting with IT Governance Group and key government officials will launch the project. The consultant will be introduced and will talk about the value of preserving electronic records of enduring value and will hold workshops regarding digital archiving.

Data gathering will commence to find out how agencies create, use and store electronic records so that the digital archives can be designed to work with or enhance current business processes. The consultant will assist with the data gathering instrument, analyze the resulting data, and design the digital archives architecture using the Reference Model for Open Archival Information System and DOD 5015.2 (latest version) and information gathered from state agencies. Laws relating to government records will be examined for possible changes to enable/enhance digital archiving and electronic records management.

At the end of the grant, Hawai‘i State Archives will have a plan of action for the development of the digital archives, possible partners for pilot projects, and more knowledge about and management support for the preservation of electronic records of enduring value.