Research Questions

• To what extent do policies, procedures and standards currently control records creation, maintenance, preservation and use in each focus area? Do these policies, procedures, and standards need to be modified or augmented?

• Can an intellectual framework or frameworks be developed to facilitate the translation of policies, procedures, and standards into different national environments, sectors and domains?

• How can enhanced control over and standardization of records creation, maintenance, preservation, access and use be balanced against cultural and juridical differences and perspectives on issues such as freedom of expression, moral rights, privacy and national security?

• What legal or moral obligations exist regarding the creation, maintenance, preservation and use of the records of artistic and scientific activities?

• What principles should guide the formulation of policies, strategies and standards related to the creation of reliable, accurate and authentic records in the digital environments under investigation? What principles should guide the formulation of policies, strategies and standards related to the appraisal of those records?

• What principles should guide the formulation of policies, strategies and standards related to the long-term preservation of those records?

• What should be the criteria for developing national policies, strategies and standards?

• What should be the criteria for developing organizational policies, strategies and standards?

Methodologies

The first tasks of the Policy Cross-domain were to research and analyze the existing policies, strategies, guidelines and standards in each of the focus areas in relation to each of the domains, examine how they may apply to the digital environments under investigation, compare them to recognized commonalties and differences, and identify gaps, especially in relation to the new issues arising from the accessibility, use, manipulability and fragility of the types of records being studied. Subsequently, it examined the results of the case studies and of the work carried out in the three domains. On the basis of this analysis, and other independently conducted research it articulated principles that should guide the development of policies, strategies and standards for the creation, maintenance, appraisal and preservation of the records in question and delivered them to the national and multinational teams for contextualization.

Outcomes

The Policy Cross-domain outlined and critically examined existing standards, scholarly works addressing the research questions, and guidelines for developing policies, strategies and standards at the international, national and organizational level.

To see the Policy Cross-domain’s Research Design Statement, please click here.

Documents

Public documents for the Policy Cross-domain are located here.