Waiting for TRIM and training, concerns as child protection files get lost in transit

It’s often seen as one of the government’s thankless achievements, despite helping build civilisations. Records management, the tool helping drive so many services for the community, has taken another battering – on this occasion because widespread gaps have exposed the Victorian government to potential fraud, or worse crimes.

The Victorian Auditor General Andrew Greaves has published a new report into records management oversight from the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) and the practices at the departments of Education and Training (DET) and Health and Human Services (DHHS).

An estimated 16,800 files out of 7 million are recorded missing in its TRIM system, but a further 100 million electronic documents are flowing around its network drives and shadow systems. Nobody could tell how many recorded were in email systems.

Perhaps worryingly, 622 child protection files were among those known to be missing.

Read more: The Mandarin, 15 March 2017