policyarchiving

Policy archiving is the systematic preservation of policy documents, enacted regulations, decisions, and related records to ensure long-term accessibility, accountability, and historical record. It serves governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations by documenting how policies were created, implemented, and revised over time. The term policyarchiving is sometimes used to describe this practice.

The scope typically includes policy statements, legislative texts, implementation guidelines, decision rationales, amendments, consultation records, and correspondence with stakeholders. Metadata is essential and commonly covers policy identifiers, titles, authors, dates, versions, status, retention periods, access restrictions, and provenance. Archives may hold both digital-born files and scanned paper materials, stored in formats conducive to long-term preservation, such as PDF/A or archival-friendly XML, with mechanisms for integrity checks and format migration.

Practices rely on recognized standards and procedures. Metadata standards like Dublin Core, PREMIS for preservation metadata, and METS schemas support consistent description and packaging. Records management guidance, including ISO 15489, informs retention schedules, access controls, redaction, and disposal. Archives may operate within trusted digital repositories following OAIS concepts, ensuring fixity, authenticity, and auditability across migrations and backups.

Governance involves roles such as archivists, records managers, policy owners, and IT staff, coordinating capture at creation, ongoing appraisal, periodic review, and lawful disposal. Key challenges include resource constraints, privacy and confidentiality concerns, legal holds, format obsolescence, and sustaining funding. When well managed, policy archiving enhances transparency, accountability, and the ability to study policy development and impact over time.