Scotland strengthens digital record keeping

The Scottish parliament has passed a bill designed to improve the way digital and other public records are stored. It is expected to receive royal assent this spring. The Public Records (Scotland) Bill is aimed at providing more consistency in the standard of record keeping and ensuring that information about individuals in properly managed. Fiona Hyslop, the minister for culture and external affairs, said: "Nowadays records can be kept in a variety of formats, the range of which clearly could not be covered by previous legislation dating from 1937." She said the bill is about the good management of records, and that included identifying which are important and have long term value. The bill was brought forward by the Scottish government in response to one of the main recommendations of the Historical Abuse Systemic Review in 2007. It found that poor record keeping often created difficulties for former residents of residential schools and children's homes, when they tried to trace their records for identity, family or medical reasons. "It is my sincere hope that in future people who have been in care will never again experience the grief and frustration of discovering that records about their earlier lives are incomplete, inaccurate - or simply not there," Hyslop said. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.