28th June 13:40 – 14:00
Speaker: David Canning & Dr Kelcey Swain
Abstract: Faced with an historically poor records management regime and corrupted metadata, the Cabinet Office needed to find a way to apply retention and destruction decisions to a backlog of digital records of many millions. The department also needed to find a way to routinely carry out disposition of digital records, which are more complex, less well organised and around one thousand times more voluminous than paper records ever were. Their system had to be transparent, repeatable and reliable. In this presentation David Canning will explain how these aims were achieved, and the significant efficiency benefits that were able to be banked as a result.
Bio: David is the Head of Digital Knowledge & Information Management in the UK Cabinet Office, a role he has held since 2015. Prior to this David acted as secretary to a ministerial committee, and led projects to modernise the UK electoral system, improving the quality of and standardising addressing data in the electoral register, and developing the policy for individual electoral registration. He has worked in the Civil Service since 1989, starting his career as a court clerk. David is also a tutor in records management at the University of Dundee.
Kelcey did his PhD in digital signal processing and audio programming at Durham University before lecturing at Keele, and Bristol Universities. He founded a digital humanities and creative technologies research company working with archival materials, catalogues, historic data, and has several patents for newly developed technologies. Kelcey started at the Cabinet Office earlier this year where he develops and advises the next generations of the archival processes and technologies.