Without trustworthy public records, people cannot prove their citizenship, their property rights, or their very identities, rendering them stateless, homeless, and helpless. While the loss of accessible public records that can be proven to be reliable, accurate, and authentic is typically associated with enormous societal or natural disruptions, we cannot overlook the threats due to sociotechnical changes that have left our public institutions staggering under an overwhelming abundance, complexity, and lack of control of digital records. Governments have been looking at ad hoc solutions for authentication, such as blockchain, and for storage and management, such as cloud services, each of which presents serious issues. Managing the volume and diversity of digital records correctly requires automated means of processing if we do not want to run the risk of losing both control on them and the trust of the public in government records. This paper will discuss how digitalization (i.e. the process of automating tasks and processes; in contrast to digitization, the process of changing record form from physical to digital) can be supported by AI tools that are developed on the basis of records and archives principles, concepts and methods, but only if such development is the result of interdisciplinary collaboration on cooperative projects and ultimately on policy and planning.
Digital Transformation in Government Conference (DTiG) 2022
ISACA Ottawa Valley Chapter Annual Conference