As the NSW Government rapidly transforms to digital business operations, the challenge for public offices is to manage the legacy of paper and physical records until these older paper records are time-expired, and can be destroyed or transferred as State archives.

The State Records Act 1998 requires each public office to ‘ensure the safe custody and proper preservation of the State records that it has control of’ (section 11). To assist public offices in understanding and implementing this obligation, the revised Standard on the physical storage of State records (issued 2019) sets out the minimum compliance requirements for the storage of those State records which have a physical format. The standard applies to records created and maintained by contractors and service providers on behalf of public offices in the course of outsourced government business.

Importantly, the requirements of the standard are applicable to all storage areas and facilities which are controlled and managed by the public office. Public offices engaging commercial storage services should ensure that the storage area/facility and services to be provided under a contractual arrangement meet the requirements of the standard.

This guidance is designed to assist public offices implement the requirements of the Standard and to guide public offices in decisions and actions for storing State records to ensure that:

• storage is cost-effective and efficient
• all records are secure, protected and accessible for as long as they are required, to meet business and accountability needs, and that
• all records identified as required as State archives are stored in the best conditions possible.

1.1 Scope of guidelines

These guidelines cover semi-active records in the custody of a public office which have a physical format, including:

• paper files and documents
• volumes and registers
• maps, plans, charts and drawings
• photographic media such as photographic prints and negatives, film, microforms and x-rays
• magnetic media such as digital tape, video and audio cassettes
• optical media such as CDs and DVDs, and
• digital records stored on tapes, disks or portable hard drives.

These guidelines do not cover:

• active records, as these are likely to be created on a digital format and stored in network servers or data centres, or the cloud
• storage of digital records on network servers, in data centres, or in the cloud, or the
• storage of State archives

NSW State Archives and Records does not recommend the use of USB memory sticks for the short or long term storage of records.

Records identified as required as State archives in retention and disposal authorities are to be stored in the best conditions practically possible while the records are still under the control of the public office. This includes records that are subject to still in use determinations under section 28 of the State Records Act. At the very minimum, records required as State archives, should be kept according to the requirements in the Standard on the physical storage of State records. The storage of State archives in the custody of a public office or other body under a distributed management agreement, made under section 30 of the Act, is governed by the terms of the agreement rather than the standard.

The standard and this guidance refer to storage requirements based on the retention period of the records. The main categories are:

• short term storage of records (records required to be retained for up to 10 years);
• medium term storage of records (records required to be retained for 10-30 years); and
• long term storage of records (records which have long retention periods of more than 30 years) and those that potentially may be required as State archives.

Short and medium term records, i.e. records that are only to be retained for 30 years or less, should be stored in good storage conditions until they are authorised for destruction. Conditions for short term records are not as exacting as the conditions for long term records/archival storage. See Table A - Storage environment conditions and housing requirements for short and medium term temporary records.* 

Long term records, i.e. records that are retained for 30 years or longer or those records required to be transferred as State archives, should be stored in the best environmental conditions possible. See Table B - Storage environment conditions and housing requirements for long term temporary records and State archives.*

* These requirements are based on temperature and humidity controls defined in international or Australian standards.

1.2 Structure of guidelines

As the guidelines are intended to support the Standard on the physical storage of State records, they are roughly structured according to its principles. There is also a section on planning records storage to assist public offices to meet aspects of the principles.

1.3 Acknowledgements

NSW State Archives and Records acknowledges the use of the National Archives of Australia and the Public Record Office Victoria storage standards, specifications and guidelines in the development of these guidelines.

These guidelines also include a bibliography of further references.