AARL

Australian government publications:
the challenge of discovery in the digital age

Roxanne Missingham

Access to government information, particularly government publications, has offered great challenges in Australia. From the beginning of formalised government publishing there were difficulties. Publishing in Australia commenced with white settlement. A printing press was brought out on the First Fleet, with the first publication being the first official government publication, The Sydney Gazette, commencing on 5 March 1803. Paper shortages led to limits on publishing in the early years of the colony. The remoteness of Australia from Great Britain meant long delays in receiving publications and information from Britain. Access to government information was complex because of geographic location.

As other colonies in Australia became established government printing developed across the country. Government publishing services emerged as Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland became colonies. The Victorian Government Printing Office was established in January 1851, after its separation from New South Wales.[1] Commonwealth government publishing was established with federation in 1901, with the Victorian Government Printer publishing on behalf of the Commonwealth until the establishment of the Commonwealth Government Printer in 1932.

Over the period of Commonwealth government publishing from 1901 there have been many changes. Descriptions of Commonwealth publishing have been written,[2] giving an overview of the changes. Two major evolutionary steps stand out in the history of Commonwealth government publishing - the centralisation and development of co-ordinated Commonwealth government publishing in the 1960s and the adoption of electronic publishing and devolution in the 1990s.

The first revolution occurred with the implementation of the recommendations of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Select Committee on Parliamentary and Government Publications report of 1964. In the report, referred to as the Erwin report after its chairman, concern was expressed at the difficulties in obtaining government publications and the lack of co-ordination in Commonwealth publishing. The Erwin Committee recommendations led to two significant innovations, the establishment of the Australian Government Publishing Service as a central publishing service and the development of a centralised register of publications. This would rectify the problems caused by fragmentation of publishing responsibility and the lack of a national distribution mechanism. While there had been a range of bibliographic tools listing Commonwealth government publications, most notably the separate government section in the National Library's Annual Catalogue of Publications (1936-1960) and Australian Government Publications (printed in various monthly, quarterly and annual series from 1952 to 1987, and on microfiche from 1988 to 1998). This new register was intended to provide information in a widely distributed, comprehensive listing.

The second revolution has had a number of drivers. During the 1990s the Australian Government Publishing Service's role and operations changed with the corporatisation and commercialisation of the Department of Administrative Services. In moving to a more commercial service the printing office was contracted out in line with the government's aim of achieving efficiency through the outsourcing of non-core business. At the same time as this move to commercialisation, publishing was once again decentralised, becoming the responsibility of individual agencies. In addition to these changes in the nature of the Commonwealth government publishing agency a new channel of communication developed, the Internet. The emergence of this new publishing opportunity with low entry cost and easy set up, combined with a cessation of centralised publishing has led to a new approach to publication, with a significant increase in the amount of government information available online. Individual agencies have taken up electronic publishing, without continuing the tradition of central reporting or control. This creates a unique challenge for access to publications for librarians and other information seekers.

This paper focuses on the nature and impact of change in Commonwealth government publishing resulting from the second revolution. Publishing in the electronic environment is reviewed to develop an understanding of the purpose of current government information flow and the degree to which electronic publishing succeeds in meeting the aims of government.

To review the current state of access to Australian Commonwealth government publications three critical issues are assessed:

1. What is the role of government publishing in the digital era? Has a new information paradigm replaced the concept of publication?
2. To what extent have agencies moved to digital publications for information delivery? Have they adopted either electronic publishing as the primary communication method or publishing in parallel print and electronic streams?
3. How successful is the Commonwealth in providing access to government publications/information, describing and storing these resources?

The adoption of electronic publishing has presented many challenges in the storage of information, including archiving and preservation; the description of the electronic resources and resource discovery; and the complexities of access. In considering these issues the current new philosophy of government publishing can be reviewed to understand which aspects of traditional publishing continue, and the evolution of strategies and tools required for success in electronic publishing.

Categories of 'Government Information'

Central to the understanding of the role of Commonwealth government publications is an understanding of how it fits within the framework of information, whether print or electronic in form. Commonwealth records at the broadest level can be seen as falling into three major categories, each with different implications for access, preservation and distribution. Official records of government constitute a major group of government 'information'. These records of government fall within the archive responsibility of agencies and are managed within record keeping and archiving principles. The publication 'Improving Electronic Document Management: Guidelines for Australian Government Agencies',[3] provides an early statement of principles for management in the electronic environment. The report covers documents and records, defined as:

• Documents are recorded communication with recognisable structure, on any medium, intelligible without further processing except for presentation on screen or on the printed page. Not all documents, however, are records in the archival or legal sense.
• Recordsare recorded evidence of agency or individual functions, activities and transactions. To be evidence a record must have content, context and structure, and be a part of a record-keeping system.[4]

The National Archives of Australia have articulated strategies to improve the management of records for long-term access.[5] The nature of material in this category as records of ongoing government business includes correspondence, e-mails, internal reports and material not generally available to the public.

A second type of government information consists of material produced, whether in electronic or print form, for long term use. In the print environment these were generally termed 'publications'. Their production involved an editing and design process, and a high level or approval within an agency. These document were generally catalogued by libraries, listed by AusInfo (or its predecessor, AGPS) and circulated to major libraries throughout the country for their collections via the library deposit scheme. The material was thus made available for immediate and long-term access. In the electronic environment this category of information is often listed on the website under the heading 'publications' promoted as information of long-term significance, and advertised through press release or e-mail notice. They are generally substantial documents and may contain statements of government policy, reviews, be 'white papers' or 'green papers' and sometimes be published in print and electronic form.

The final category of government information consists of material produced for temporary use. These brochures, web pages or pamphlets provide information on a service or issue of immediate importance, and are not intended as long-term reference documents. The electronic equivalent has been referred to as 'brochure websites'.[6]

The analysis undertaken in this paper is of government information which falls into the second category of what, in the print environment, are considered 'publications' and in the electronic environment are significant or substantial electronic documents. They are available to the public, therefore are not 'records' of government in the sense of government archives. For simplicity's sake they are referred to as publications in this paper.

Role of Government Publications

In reviewing the nature of government publishing in the new century an important step is to understand the purpose of this government activity. The role of government publishing in a democracy is to provide transparency between government and citizens. To deconstruct the roles of government publishing in the print environment two aspects are significant - that of the needs of the audience and the communication desires of government. Citizens are the general audience for information. They have the twin roles of critical eye (accountability) and also as an historical interpreter.

One of the major roles of government publishing is to communicate to citizens; another is to provide an information tool, the latter being the most commonly described role. In the information role, publications provide a documentary record of decisions of government and Parliament. An example of this approach can be seen in the review of the Parliamentary Paper series, which contains the most significant Commonwealth government publications each year.

Professor L F Crisp in a submission to the Joint Committee on Publications 1971 inquiry into Parliamentary Papers said the role of government publishing and the Parliamentary Paper series was:

...first, to inform members of Parliament by disseminating among them material essential to the functioning of Parliament; second, to enable the general public to understand the transactions and discussions, and concerns of Parliament and its committees; and third, to assist the rising generation of Australians to understand the nature and purposes of Parliament, its transactions and discussions, and the issues it is confronting and dealing with.[7]

The Joint Committee on Publications in its 1997 report, which considered publishing in a print and electronic environment, identified the key benefits of the Parliamentary Paper series as:

• government information is available to all citizens
• material is easily located in a single, numbered collection
• an important resource is provided for libraries
• libraries receive all important reports
• numerical sequence simplifies cataloguing and retrieval procedures
• government and parliamentary information is made available to academic and other researchers, and
• sessional indexes are provided.[8]

The public accountability aspect of government publishing is also a significant role. The Commonwealth Management Advisory Board/ Management Improvement Advisory Committee report on accountability[9] describes seven levels of authority and responsibility - from Client to Service Deliverer, Team Leader Program/Regional Manager, Secretary, Cabinet/ Minister, Parliament and Electorate. At many of these levels publications such as annual reports, budget papers and government reports are identified as part of the accountability mechanisms. Other accountability mechanisms noted in the report are official records, formal evaluations and corporate management.

In order for government publications to be available to fulfil their role, information about government publications must be available. The Erwin Committee proposed that government publications should be listed comprehensively and the list be widely accessible. Facilitating access to information through lists was highly recommended:

It is essential that these lists record all available Commonwealth publications, whether those documents are classified as 'for sale' or entirely for free distribution and irrespective of how small they might be. For example, free folders of various social service and repatriation benefits should be listed.[10]

Lists of Commonwealth government publications have progressed from the printed lists of the Government Printer to an online service, the Australian Government Index of Publications (http://www.dofa.gov.au/agip/). Finding Commonwealth government publications is a much more difficult task with decentralisation and electronic publishing. It is discussed in detail later in this paper.

Differences emerged in views on the role of Commonwealth government publishing in the 1990s with a new government information model that described the nature of government communication in the digital age. This new approach to government information was first expressed in the report Networking Australia's Future, of the Broadband Services Expert Group (BSEG). The group focused on the need to develop an innovative communications based country, with a national information infrastructure for government and the private sector. They proposed a strategy that:

...would include the government becoming a leading-edge user of networks and the private sector and communities also taking up the opportunities offered... The elements of the strategy include:
links to schools, libraries, medical and community centres...[11]

Following this report a review of the use of IT within the Commonwealth public service, Clients First, identified a need for Commonwealth government agencies to move to more electronic publishing and better information management. Operating within a focus on efficiency the report proposed major streamlining of Commonwealth government use of IT including electronic publishing to produce significant savings, develop a compatible infrastructure or architecture and develop better information management strategies. Clients First recommended:

...a service vision that puts clients first should be developed and articulated by the Government in order to provide a blueprint for service delivery; the architecture of information technology adopted by the Commonwealth needs to define a platform that through commonality and interoperability enables maximum flexibility...[12]

Both the BSEG and Clients First reports recommended the establishment of a body to review information management. The Information Management Steering Committee (IMSC) was then established and given the task of better defining the government information management issues including publication of government information. This committee, chaired by Eric Wainwright, then Deputy Director General of the National Library of Australia, developed an extensive and influential statement of a paradigm of communication of government information. The IMSC report, published in 1997 as Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource begins by stating:

Our goal is better government - better government through grasping the opportunities presented by new technologies, and more effective, less costly government through improved information management policies and practices.[13]

The underlying drivers were to increase efficiency and produce cost savings, a desire for improvements in internal record keeping practices improvement (Parer[14]), and a desire for better communication practices using new technology. A new grid mapping communication by government to clients, providers, the public and peer organisations combined concepts of information management and delivery, embodying a view that information should be made transparent.

The IMSC report defined government information as internal and external information including full text publications, file lists and directories. Such an overriding definition encompasses both an information paradigm and a publication paradigm. So what are the characteristics of each paradigm? The print publication model has the following characteristics:

• content is defined by the communication and publishing strategies
• audience reach is related to distribution mechanism and charging strategy
• access is via libraries and bookshops, or mail distribution through mailing lists.

The characteristics of the information model are:

• content can include material of a general and specialist nature, for example lists of files
• audience reach is uniform for all publications (for those with Internet access)
• access is via all networked PCs, including libraries.

The four major roles of government publishing - accountability, communication to citizens, a documentary record of government and a service delivery mechanism, apply equally in the electronic age and the print era. The concept of communication through print publications has a rival model, that of strategic information delivery in electronic form. Both models are critical to the development of information and communication services. The move to electronic publishing sees a new concept of distributed access, with continuing reasons for publishing. While the IMSC premise was that the print model would be superseded by the information model publication, patterns in Commonwealth agencies in 2000 indicate that this is not the case, as a detailed study of publishing finds below.

Current commonwealth government publishing patterns

To answer the question 'How far has the information model replaced the print model in government publishing?' a qualitative and quantitative study is required. All Commonwealth agencies and departments have websites. They range from the 'brochure' type site with basic information about the agency, its role and services, through to detailed sites offering access to complex databases and full text information, such as that of the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (http://www.dewrsb.gov.au). In advanced sites there is the facility for electronic commerce, including ordering materials and lodging electronic requests, such as the quick tax rulings from the Australian Taxation Office (http://www.ato.gov.au).

Fundamental to an electronic publishing service is the principle of communicating key information relating to the objectives of each agency. While the Internet offers the potential for virtually limitless publishing the requirements for approval to ensure accuracy and quality of information content continue to be a basis for government electronic information on the web. This has led to adoption of a process similar to that in the print environment, notwithstanding the inclusions of material not traditionally printed such as lists of files and contact lists.

The language used by government websites also gives an insight into the communication model being used. Home pages provide short lists of materials available and all departments have an entry for 'publications' from the main page, leading sometimes to lists by year of publications, other times to lists by division or specific policy areas within departments. A good example is the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources web page (http://www.disr.gov.au), which lists publications as the fifth item in the menu, linking to extensive publication lists that can be searched by keyword or by year. The Attorney-Generals website (http://www.ag.gov.au) links to a list of publications of portfolio agencies as well as the department.

In practice Commonwealth agencies are providing extensive access to information through their Web services. The concept of 'publications' from the print world underpins the delivery of large documents, partly taking forward the original vision of the Information Management Steering Committee for increased public dissemination of government information.[15] The vision is supplemented by additional information, much of which was formerly available in other ways, such as through the Commonwealth Government Directory. The two concepts then exist in parallel, with the principles of accountability, responsible government and customer service influencing the electronic publication of government information.

In 1997 in a submission to the Joint Committee on Publications, the Federal Libraries Information Network estimated there were 3000 to 4000 Commonwealth and state government publications each year. The figures were drawn from the Australian National Bibliography. For the financial year 1997/98 it was estimated that less than 15% of these were available in electronic form but since then there has been a major shift to electronic publishing.

A recent statistical analysis of Commonwealth government publications reveals a strong shift to electronic publishing of documents. First, a listing was produced of recent (ie published within the past two years) Commonwealth government publications catalogued by the National Library of Australia between January and March 2000. Note that regular serial titles were excluded. From this list titles were checked to see if the publications were also produced in electronic form. The results indicated that approximately 82% of Commonwealth government publications are produced in print and electronically, with only 18% in print form only. Publications available in print only were published by a range of agencies including CSIRO Marine Research, Department of Defence and the Australian Institute of Criminology (a commissioned paper). Interestingly CSIRO Publishing and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have developed strong electronic publishing strategies working in a commercial basis.

Recent commonwealth government publications
received in print at the National Library January - March 2000

Lists of recent publications from a number of Commonwealth agencies were searched to see if the listed publications, all available in electronic form, were available in print. Titles selected were substantial monographic works; annual reports and regular serials were not included.

Guidelines for electronic publishing[16] were developed by AusInfo in 1999, covering publication style and metadata. While they have been widely disseminated the devolution of publishing to agencies has led to inconsistent adoption. The implementation of the guidelines is not monitored and studies indicate that the guidelines are not extensively implemented.[17]

All Commonwealth government agencies were required to produce an 'Online action plan' by September 2000,[18] reporting on progress towards moving government services online, and how agencies are addressing document management standards for web documents including the use of Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata, archiving[19] and electronic publishing guidelines. A survey conducted by the Office of Government Online in 2000, published in September[20] reveals a strong electronic publishing commitment, with more than 90% of Commonwealth government agencies producing a website. The 'enablers' or actions required for the websites to be effective (addressing storage, description and retrieval) are not so well advanced. Only 53% of agencies had analysed their website for compliance with National Archives of Australia guidelines, 59% of agencies had addressed issues of accessibility in new contracts and 40.5% had identified an AGLS manager and developed internal guidelines for web publishing.

Recent Commonwealth Government Publications
available electronically on agency websites - March 2000

The standards for e-permanence for government electronic records are, however, well developed, as is discussion on the Australian Government Locator Service. The challenge remains for agencies to have a clear understanding of what best practice is for electronic publications and to adopt this in aspects including description and management (archiving, review amongst other areas).

With developments in information technology and telecommunications the Commonwealth government's publishing has moved quickly to incorporate electronic delivery. The new stream of communication is based explicitly on the concept of 'publication'. While 82% of print publications have an electronic equivalent, only 38% of electronic publications have a print equivalent.

There is a continuing increase in Commonwealth government publishing, both in print and electronically. This suggests that issues relating to resource discovery, including issues for storage, description and access to these materials, are increasingly important for a high quality service.

Access to government publications/information

With the advent of electronic publishing, the challenge to discover information and publications has become more complex. The regular listing of Commonwealth publications in print and online through the National Bibliographic Database provided a convenient and clear solution in the print environment. In the electronic environment, however, a much greater number of access points exist, each providing limited and at times frustrating assistance to information seekers.

Successful access to government publications depends upon action in three main areas - discovery tools, or the mechanisms that exist to enable searchers to find the publications or information; description, through metadata or catalogue records to ensure appropriate information is recorded, including subject descriptors, so that discovery can take place successfully; and storage to ensure that documents continue to be available. While libraries have performed these roles successful in the print world, the new electronic environment has seen publication, IT, records management and policy areas undertake these tasks. Library staff have developed expertise in the print world in managing and describing resources which could be better utilised for efficiencies in information management. There are challenges in ensuring that the combination of IT, library and information skills required for the electronic environment incorporate or takes advantage of existing skills sets.

Resource Discovery

At present at least five access mechanisms exist for Commonwealth government publications, not including the many web search engines. They are the Commonwealth government gateway (fed.gov.au), Australian Government Index to Publications (an AusInfo service), the National Bibliographic Database, library catalogues and agency websites with search engines.

The coverage of these access services is:

As this chart indicates access is fragmented for users. There is not yet a one-stop shop in practice for Commonwealth government information and publications, let alone state publications. The issue of access, however, has been discussed in depth over the past five years. Perhaps the first cohesive model for access to Australian government publications was that proposed by the Information Management Steering Committee. That report identified the role of government information as a national strategic asset for government, business and the community. In seeking to meet the underlying goals of cost efficiency and decentralisation the IMSC proposed:

• Recommendation 5. Create a single official Internet-accessible Commonwealth Government Entry Point, provided under a service level agreement with CGIO, to have the Internet address http://www.fed.gov.au.
• Recommendation 6. In order to achieve increased visibility of government information holdings, approve in principle the establishment of an Australian Government Information Locator System (AusGILS) and request the Australian Archives to develop an implementation plan.[21]

In fed.gov.au the service has been developed for access to electronic information only, limited by the distributed architecture underpinning the model as well as the patchy commitment from Commonwealth government agencies to provide high quality metadata (using AGLS). Many publications are not accessible through fed.gov.au including commissioned papers, which may sit on the website of a non-profit or commercial body. State government publications are also accessible through the fed.gov.au from the home page.

For the National Alternative Dispute Resolution agency searching located the following:

• Fed.gov.au: agency was 56th item on the result list from a search on the first page of this service
• AGIP: 1 item was listed
• National Bibliographic Database: 8 items were listed
• National Library of Australia catalogue: 7 items listed
• Agency website: 10 publications available in electronic form

ACT mediation paper

• Fed.gov.au: not listed, does not cover state and territory publications
• AGIP: not listed, does not cover state and territory publications
• National Bibliographic Database: print version listed
• National Library of Australia catalogue: print version listed
• Agency website: cannot be found through ACT government or ACT Law pages searches, but is on the publications list and available at http://www.dpa.act.gov.au/ag/Reports/Other/Rep2/Rep2ind.html

Searching undertaken March - June 2000

New initiatives announced in 2000 include a government network - Governet initiative[22] - and a proposal for government portals.[23] The fundamental principles proposed by the IMSC are reflected in the approach, but the new focus is on encouraging agencies to take up technology for better service delivery and access.[24]

In practice the service is also not easy to use and searching for smaller agencies is difficult. Searching on other government web services can also be difficult as the following examples show.

The above examples show the difficulties in searching for any government report or publication, electronic or in print. Both the NADRAC papers and ACT mediation papers are invaluable resources, frequently asked for in the National Library by students undertaking tertiary legal studies at ANU. Neither the lecturer nor the students considered that these resources would be available electronically, and given the difficulties of finding the materials listing the URL is essential for easy access. For access to government information, however, it is a poor solution.

Description of resources

The architecture adopted for Commonwealth government publication discovery in fed.gov.au and in the IMSC proposal has at its heart a 'straw model'[25] of a co-operative metadata register. The metadata would be created and harvested from individual agency websites. The service rests on assumptions that the information provided to the central service (fed.gov.au) is adequate, reliable, consistent and sufficient for high quality searching. In reality this has not been delivered. The Office of Government Online survey[26] demonstrated a low commitment to consistent quality data. Searching fed.gov.au will reveal significant sets of items with the title 'no title', particularly PDF documents, a selection of 'Insert title here' documents and a lack of quality subject headings. A study of Tasmanian government web pages[27] has found significant discrepancies between the titles and authors of documents and the titles and authors which appear in the metadata.

While there is an increase in the number of agencies putting some metadata into their documents these data are not yet sufficient to enable quality subject or title searching. The problems are not entirely due to the many different agencies involved in the government's electronic service delivery agenda. A lack of application of standards and quality subject information, due to a range of factors from insufficient staff resources to lack of adoption of good information practices and devolved authorship and responsibility, contribute to this problem.

Storage of resources

For print publications libraries have filled the role of storers and longer term managers of resources. In the electronic environment the fed.gov.au model presumes agencies will take responsibility for their storage and 'archiving' of electronic publications. These assumptions can only be useful if they are underpinned by best practice. With electronic publications falling between the responsibilities of libraries and records management in many agencies long term storage is an issue often left to IT on the basis that the issue is part of the agencies' overall data warehousing or data control activities.

An example of how individual agency storage can affect access by many agencies is the Information Management Steering Committee report referred to in this paper. A very important document, until approximately April 2000 it was available on the website of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. The report became unavailable without taking account of its importance or the information needs of users. It was restored to the department's website in November 2001. While it was not available, references from many websites, including the Office of Government Online, fed.gov.au, the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts itself, National Library of Australia and NOIE continue to point to the previous location, leaving users with only an error message. The issue of persistent naming is important in managing long term access to electronic publications. A whole of government strategy for permanent naming or discovery has yet to be developed.[28]

The issue of managing for persistence and archiving has been the subject of considerable discussion and policy development. The guidelines[29] from the National Library of Australia and National Archives of Australia[30] give information on a range of issues, however, most agencies have not yet adopted preservation or archiving strategies. A small number of Commonwealth government publications have been archived on the National Library's PANDORA service, a select archive of Australian Internet publishing.[31]

One component of the straw model that has been successful is special gateways. These gateways provide access points to electronic resources within subject areas, some 'published' by the agency and others from authoritative websites. The Department of Health and Aged Care's Healthinsight service (www.healthinsite.gov.au/) provide excellent quality information and has excellent subject indexing to support it. The Attorney-General Departments Window on the Law (http://www.ag.gov.au/wotl.html) similarly features high quality subject access. A central search facility has the ability to draw upon these sites, but when large quantities of less well described and stored information are added search results are not able to provide a valuable service for users.

Conclusions

Australians are becoming increasingly connected to the Internet, particularly the younger generation, with an ABS survey[32] finding that 'By May 2000 over half (54%) of the households in Australia, or 3.8 million households, had access to a computer at home... 6.4 million adults, or 46% of all adults in Australia, accessed the Internet' and 77% of 18-24 year olds had access to the Internet. Commonwealth government departments are increasingly adopting electronic publishing and print runs for paper editions are becoming smaller. Finding these resources is a great challenge in a world where resource discovery tools are patchy, data for the central harvest database fed.gov.au are inconsistent or not of high quality and a national responsibility to store documents for present and future access has not been adopted.

There are many agencies currently involved in producing resource discovery tools, often complementing each other. In other cases the records are duplicated and effort could be more productively channelled to provide a 'one stop shop' with seamless access to print and electronic information for all Australians. Discrimination between substantial information (publications) and more ephemeral material, well developed within publication management in the print environment, has temporarily been lost in the electronic environment. This has a detrimental effect in searching using automatically generated electronic indexes.

In 1994 Alan Law, General Manager of AGPS, identified the challenge for AGPS to facilitate effective access to Australian government information. He noted that the framework of government, business and the expectations of the community had changed and said, 'There must be a completed central register or catalogue of all Commonwealth published information. This register must be widely available'.[33] These principles hold true in the electronic environment, and apply to all documents which fall within the concept of Commonwealth government publications. AGIP was implemented to meet this requirement but in reality the vision of it as a one-stop shop has been left behind, with fed.gov.au and other tools providing inadequate access for the community. The division between print and electronic access systems provides an impediment to information access, and needs to be considered in light of the common purposes and nature of Commonwealth government publications.

Creation of a knowledge-based economy requires a strong national information infrastructure. Access to Commonwealth government publications is an essential component of this infrastructure. It can also provide a model of best practice for the implementation of large scale distributed information services and e-commerce capabilities. The research reported in this paper suggests that at a policy level and in practice many steps need to be taken by all Commonwealth government agencies involved in electronic and print publications to create a successful information service.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Tara Cordina for research support.

Notes

1. Serials Section State Library of Victoria An Outline of Victorian Government Publications, Government Publications in Australia; Papers on their Use and Understanding Sydney Library of the Parliament 1972 pp173-175

2. For example M Harrington The Guide to Government Publications in Australia Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service 1990

3. Improving Electronic Document Management: Guidelines for Australian Government Agencies
http://www.defence.gov.au/imsc/edmsc/iedmtc.htm

4. Ibid p6

5. See http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/default.html for more details

6. S Boaden 'The Impact of Change of Information Access on Society' paper presented to the ALIA 2000 conference Canberra gives examples of the results of research on brochure and substantial government websites

7. Joint Committee on Publications Future of the Parliamentary Paper Series Report by the Joint Committee on Publications Canberra Joint Committee on Publications 1997 p6

8. Ibid pp6-7

9. Management Advisory Board/Management Improvement Advisory Committee Accountability in the Commonwealth Public Sector: A Joint Publication of MAB/MIAC Canberra AGPS 1993 especially pp24-25

10. Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary and Government Publications Report Canberra Govt Printer 1964 p167

11. Broadband Services Expert Group Networking Australia's Future: Final Report of the Broadband Services Expert Group Canberra AGPS 1995

12. Information Technology Review Group Clients First, the Challenge for Government Information Technology Canberra Department of Finance 1995p iv

13. Information Management Steering Committee Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource: Report of the Commonwealth Government Canberra Office of Government Information Technology 1997 p xvii

14. D Parer Access to Government Information via the Internet: Work of the Information Management Steering Committee Online and Ondisk 97 proceedings 1997 pp519-541

15. Information Management Steering Committee op cit p xxxviii

16. AusInfo Guidelines for Commonwealth Information Published in Electronic Formats Canberra AusInfo 1999
http://purl.nla.gov.au/nla/pandora/guidelines

17. L Sokvitne 'An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Dublin Core Metadata for Retrieval of Web Resources' paper delivered at VALA 2000
http://www.vala.org.au/vala2000/2000pdf/Sokvitne.PDF

18. See http://www.ogo.gov.au/projects/strategy/actionplans.htm for more information

19. National Archives of Australia 'Archiving Websites: A National Archives Policy' 2000
http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/

20. Office of Government Online Government Online, Round One Survey Results Canberra Office of Government Online 2000

21. Information Management Steering Committee Report op cit p15 Chapter 6

22. Metadata based search engine, for more details see http://www.govonline.gov.au/projects/services&innovation/governet.htm

23. There are 17 subject and customer based proposals; see http://www.govonline.gov.au/projects/services&innovation/governet.htm

24. The Government Online Strategy has 8 priorities - see http://www.govonline.gov.au/projects/strategy/StrategicPriorities.htm

25. Information Management Steering Committee Report op cit p80

26. Office of Government Online op cit

27. L Sokvitne op cit

28. See National Library of Australia 'Persistent Uniform Resource Locator' http://purl.nla.gov.au/

29. National Library of Australia Safeguarding Australia's Web Resources: Guidelines for Creators And Publishers 2001 http://www.nla.gov.au/new/2001/jan2001.html

30. 'Archiving Web Resources: Guidelines for Keeping Records of Web-based Activity in the Commonwealth Government'
http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/er/web_records/intro.html

31. The PANDORA archive can be seen at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/; material published in parallel print and electronic version is not currently eligible for archiving in this service.

32. ABS 8147.0 Use of the Internet by Householders, Australia: Summary of Findings
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/NT0000B252

33. A Law 'A Future where all have Easy and Affordable Access to Australian Government Information' Canberra The Author 1994 pp4-5

Roxanne Missingham, assistant direcor-general, Resource Sharing Division, National Library of Australia, Parkes ACT 2600. E-mail: rmissingham@nla.gov.au.nospam (please remove the '.nospam' from the address).