National Archives preserves Labour government websites The National Archives has published online historical copies of key government websites, including responses to emergencies like swine flu. For the first time since the archives started preserving websites in 2003, online government information published in the weeks before and immediately after the general election has been " …
Unfortunately, in the rush to archive 'Old' Labour webby thingys, the useful non-partisan stuff is no longer available. Discussion forums, advice sites and generally good stuff can no longer be accessed. As the National Archives site states, links and the search facility may no longer work!
Not a good start to the bright new coalition future, when the left hand can't get on with the right hand.
Grumpy Old Sod!!!
Might be an idea to remind HMG that their obligations under the Public Records Acts and Freedom of Information Act *requires* them to make these pages available for all time, not to delete them when it becomes politically expedient to do so.
Therefore, the National Archive exercise in preserving those pages is not just an interesting sideline activity, it's instead an essential function of Government acting in accordance with the law of the land.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Records_Act_1958
Black helos, because the Right Wing's back in No 10, and if you thought New Labour eroded your civil rights, then just wai-
Not everything that is written gets preserved. It is part of the governance process (a topic for debate, in itself, of course) of the originating department whether the material should form part of the departmental archive.
The national archivists then review the departmental files (after, from memory, 7 years) to decide what needs to be part of the national record.
Noe of this is new, as we can from it being the 1958 Act,
And we have *never* been at war with Eastasia!
Not so much Big Brother this time, but lots of Little Brothers trying to make themselves look good to the incoming administration by saying "What, support that repressive totalitarian legislation? Not us!"
My comments are
Firstly: Does anyone give a shit about the lies and propaganda the govt publish on their websites anyway ? (beyond it's comedy value)
Secondly: Couldn't we save the taxpayer millions by letting the WayBack Machine do the job for free as it will probably do anyway. Then, maybe, I dunno, save the relevent pages as an mht or print them out and file them somewhere if we felt the wbm might not make the grade ?
The articles are trawled every 3 months. So they're really honouring their legal obligation to record the information.
So an important piece of information that's published on a website for 2 months? !
All they're doing is taking a snapshot in time at 3 monthly intervals. What guarantees are there important information won't be lost?
But I have to agree with the points made by Kevin Biswas; it's mostly propaganda..well, it was under NuLabour.
The useful, interesting material are the emails, the paper memos, the meeting minutes passed between civil servants and among politicians that don't make it on to the website.
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