Unresolved issues: recordkeeping recommendations arising from Australian commissions of inquiry into the welfare of children in out-of-home care, 1997–2012
Since the late 1990s, a significant number of commissions of inquiry have been conducted by the Commonwealth Government of Australia, individual states and territories in Australia, and internationally, into the treatment of children in out-of-home care. This paper traces the most significant of these inquiries and the recommendations arising regarding records, with the purpose of highlighting some of the recurring themes identified by each inquiry. An overview is also given of some of the positive changes to aspects of recordkeeping as a direct consequence of the landmark inquiries. Lastly, this overview hopes to raise some questions surrounding the role of the profession in promoting awareness of recordkeeping issues that have emerged through these inquiries.
Towards interoperable recordkeeping systems: A meta-model for recordkeeping metadata
Purpose 
 
 
 
 
The purpose of this paper is to introduce an infrastructural approach to metadata modelling and a generalised meta-model for recordkeeping metadata. This meta-model is an attempt to support interoperability between disparate systems, and particularly, between sets of ostensibly incommensurate record documentation. 
 
 
 
 
Design/methodology/approach 
 
 
 
 
The investigation used a reflective design-science investigation comprising interviews adaptive literature review, creation of conceptual models and the design and instantiation of a proof-of-concept system. 
 
 
 
 
Findings 
 
 
 
 
The investigation confirms that recordkeeping interoperability between disparate ontologies is achievable through a meta-model approach. In particular, the meta-model carefully defines relationships between entities with specific semantics that enable the development of interoperable domain schemas. 
 
 
 
 
Practical implications 
 
 
 
 
A meta-model for recordkeeping metadata facilitates the development of recordkeeping systems that possess interoperability-by-design. 
 
 
 
 
Social implications 
 
 
 
 
Recordkeeping systems that conform to the meta-model can, therefore, transcend the immediate transactional context and support participatory recordkeeping in terms of a plurality of stakeholder world views and agency in records. 
 
 
 
 
Originality/value 
 
 
 
 
This paper is one of the few reporting design-science approaches to recordkeeping informatics and one that has used a meta-model approach for recordkeeping metadata design. In contrast to most empirically determined metadata schemas, the top-down design approach has produced a schema from a wide variety of ontological sources.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1