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Statement developed by ADRI and endorsed by the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authorities, August 2008.

The ADRI Digital Record Exchange Specification project was set up to simplify the transfer of custody of digital records from one system to another. This is achieved by specifying a standard representation for a record during the actual relocation of the records from one system to the other, and a simple process for performing this relocation.It only deals with the actual digital records from one records system to another. Aspects of transfer of custody not dealt with in this specification include, for example, the negotiation of the transfer, decisions about what to transfer and monitoring the quality of the transfer.

The scope of this specification is to define a transfer process and a Submission Information Package that may be used by all records systems in all organizations when transferring records between records systems. The systems may be located in the same organization or in different organizations. The specification is primarily intended for use when transferring records from a producer to an archive, but may be used for other types of transfer (e.g. from an agency to its successor, to and from secondary storage, and from one archive to another).

The production of this specification was undertaken by a group of experts of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) ISSS/eBES/EG13 group.

in coordination with the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) TBG 19; both groups dealing with eGovernment business processes. It was supported by the International Congress on Archives (ICA) and liased with ISO. ADRI undertook the role of project editor. The specification was heavily based on earlier work undertaken by ADRI. It is currently undergoing standardisation within CEN.

In 2005 the Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative agreed to work with the International Council on Archives (ICA) to co-sponsor a project under the ICA's Electronic Records and Automation Priority Area to produce globally harmonised principles, functional requirements and generic guidelines for software which is used to create and manage electronic records in office environments.

This project, which was led by the National Archives of Australia and which featured participation from twelve other archival institutions from around the world, has realised its aim with the publication of three separate but inter-related modules:

• Overview and Statement of Principles
• Guidelines and Functional Requirements for Electronic Records Management Systems
• Guidelines and Functional Requirements for Records in Business Systems.

ADRI and the ICA agreed to sponsor this project in recognition of the fact that, while many individual jurisdictions have developed statements of requirements for electronic records management software (ERMS) products, it is important for the international archives and records community to agree on a single generic set of requirements to foster cross-jurisdictional harmonization and to help ensure that we communicate consistent messages to the global software market.

In addition to harmonising existing requirements for ERMS software, this project has also taken the important step of developing guidelines and requirements for managing records in business systems. This recognises that for reasons of business efficiency many important records are only ever managed in line of business systems, rather than in dedicated ERMS systems. Increasingly, the developers and vendors of such business systems are recognising the importance of incorporating records functionality into their software applications.

The three key audiences for these modules are:

• Software developers and vendors
• Jurisdictional standards setters
• Organisations wishing to build or buy software products that will be used to capture and manage records in office environments.

This standard prescribes the physical representation of electronic records that are to be transferred to an archive. It specifies:

• The metadata that must be transferred with each record or file
• Optional metadata that may be transferred with each record or file
• The way the record (including both metadata and content) is physically represented as an XML document.

This plan has been developed in response to an ADRI project charter to produce: 'A list of the components, tasks and resources required for an archival authority to develop the capability for digital recordkeeping and archiving (including end to end processes for appraisal, transfer, documentation, preservation and access).'

The plan addresses the building of capability to implement both digital recordkeeping standards and guidance across a government sector and to develop and implement a digital archives repository with associated business rules and tools.