Past Sir Rupert Hamer Award winners

This project integrated their EDRMS with their digital preservation repository system to provide long-term preservation and access given their responsibilities as a Class A Place of Deposit. The team delivered an important and innovative digital preservation project which has the potential for many ongoing positive recordkeeping benefits when dealing with live intranet sites. To ensure success, the project clearly recognised the importance of a collaborative work program, involving a distributed workforce across a large organisation. 

This project integrated their EDRMS with their digital preservation repository system to provide long-term preservation and access given their responsibilities as a Class A Place of Deposit. The project captured large volumes of records within a new customised records management system. The system made it much easier for staff to work in ways that support records management compliance. The project highlighted the value of working collaboratively to enable a best practice approach to the use of SharePoint across a vast organisation. It also achieved additional benefits with accessible training and user engagement.

The comprehensive and effective decommissioning project undertaken in a very tight timeframe with a major challenge appearing to have been very well addressed. A comprehensive and achievable approach was undertaken to ensure success, that again recognised the value of collaboration. 

Commendation. Cardinia Shire Council took a bold leap into M365, when other councils had not. The result was a whole environment that built in records governance and compliance throughout the records lifecycle.

Commendation: The judges recognised that this project resulted in the collection and digitisation of records and a new website where such records are made available, as well as a clear picture of the history of education. The project successfully combined celebrating an anniversary milestone with practical improvements to recordkeeping and archiving. The broad reaching project is commended for increasing the support for school records across the state, and the establishment of a high-quality in-house digitisation team.

Commendation: The project turned the organisation around in its approach to records management, with the implementation of a full business classification system creating a clear structure, with automated sentencing according to appropriate records disposal authorities.

Most valuable transfer - In response to PROV advice, Monash Health committed skilled archival resources to complete the transfer work promptly in accordance with PROV requirements. The records are now available for public access. The Hospital was established in 1896 by eleven female doctors to provide medical services to women and children and for decades was a significant institution in support of community health. Its records are an important addition to the PROV collection, supplementing existing holdings of 19th to mid 20th century medical records, including from the Royal Children’s and Royal Women’s hospitals. 

Cardinia Shire Council investigated and then successfully implemented an automated mail processing system, utilising artificial intelligence to reduce costs and improve service, while still remaining compliant with PROV standards.

Ruth Edge, Roger Buhlert, Derek Madden and Katy Friend from Cardinia Shire Council with Tim Newbegin, Justine Heazlewood and the Hon. Gavin Jennings at the Sir Rupert Hamer Records Management Awards, 3 May 2018

The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) initiated a project to transform into a ‘digital by default’ office, proving that auditors can audit and transact successfully and compliantly using electronic means. By replacing ‘wet’ signatures with digital versions they eliminated significant costs, reduced likelihood of error and saved 70kms of paper being used!

Demonstrating an innovative approach to improving user engagement and service standards, this project focused on enhancing and making better use of existing technology rather than deploying new tools. This approach achieved significant improvements within a narrow budget.

Philip Lee, Mark Skilton, Fiona Park, Rebecca Burns and Benjamin Cox from Manningham City Council with Justine Heazlewood and the Hon. Gavin Jennings at the Sir Rupert Hamer Records Management Awards, 3 May 2018

An early adoption of the revised “VERS 3” Standard, this project involved combining existing permanent born digital records with previously digitised records and a collaboration with PROV to test and develop processes, tools and guidance material, which would in turn assist all agencies with future transfers.

Victoria Police, MFB, Ambulance Victoria, Country Fire Authority, DELWP and SES shared resources, knowledge and responsibility between agencies to deliver a common records management goal.

Ross Elford and team with Justine Heazlewood and the Hon. Gavin Jennings at the Sir Rupert Hamer Records Management Awards, 3 May 2018

The Royal Commission into Family Violence records transfer included the key records documenting the work of the Commission. The transfer is almost entirely digital, and involved:

• analysis of complex systems and work processes;
• mapping of those systems;
• transformation of the digital records from various systems into PROV VERS Encapsulated Objects; and
• first conversion of 180,000 emails into VEOs.

Mark Sells from the Department of Premier and Cabinet with Justine Heazlewood and the Hon. Gavin Jennings at the Sir Rupert Hamer Records Management Awards, 3 May 2018

Summary of project: This project involved the digitisation of 21,000 large format hardcopy plans into an electronic document and records management system. By replacing hardcopy with digital records, and linking these digitised records to a document management system, management databases and CAD system, the project delivered significantly improved management, increased accessibility on and off-site, allowed version control, drawing annotation and increased workflow management.

Summary of project: According to the judges this project was described as an ‘innovative, integrated approach which capitalised on existing technology but took a fresh approach.’ The Department introduced a flagship program to make best practice and compliance easy for all staff by creating one platform for document management and collaboration, resulting in a faster, easier to use document and records management system.

Summary of project: Agriculture Victoria holds many thousands of critical records in many forms including documents, images and videos. Agriculture Victoria has previously tried a number of ways of managing this information with varying degrees of success. Recognising the limitations of these previous approaches, Agriculture Victoria contracted two companies to design, develop and implement a metadata driven product (The Knowledge Curation Tool).  This approach allowed a single point of access for all digital /physical assets and records across the organisation. This approach resulted in a quick and efficient way to connect and search all of its databases, regardless of their function, design or location.

Summary of transfer projects: 

Two valuable archival collections were transferred to Public Record Office Victoria in the last year. These transfers from the Royal Women’s Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital together ensured that a large number of significant historical health records were able to be preserved for the future and accessible to all Victorians.

The records of the Royal Women’s Hospital are considered highly significant internationally, being an intact collection of 19^th and 20^th century women’s medical records. Over 50 records series were transferred from the Royal Women’s Hospital, comprising 93 metres or 746 boxes. The records of the Royal Children’s Hospital are equally significant, being an intact collection of 19^th and 20^th century children’s medical records. Over 80 records series were transferred from the Royal Children’s Hospital, comprising 48 metres or 501 boxes.

The hospitals established a productive work program to complete the required archival description, access documentation and physical preparation of the respective collections which comprise traditional files, volumes, and photographs.

Summary of projects: The DHHS received a commendation for a combination of three projects which made an outstanding contribution to records management. For the last three years this Department has undertaken a considerable amount of work to improve their records management focusing on:

• improving the management of their very large archive of important records holding personal information about many Victorians,
• setting up a regime to enable digitising of important records, and
• establishing better recordkeeping outcomes in non-government organisations that provide services on behalf of the Department.

Summary of project: In 2014 the Records Manager at this agency identified that improvement to records management would require a non-traditional approach. The Records Manager together with the Records Team created a change program that included a lighthearted internal “infomercial”, with the tag-line “rough enough is good enough”.  The “infomercial” created awareness among staff and caused them to review their recordkeeping habits and practices, and seek assistance from the Records Team.