Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview II. Working Group on E-government Author(s) Mitja Decman University of Ljubljana Ljubljana Slovenia Title E-government readiness for long-term preservation: The progress of Slovenia File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The ease of information technology use and its widespread presence cause a huge amount of digital data to be created in public and private sector. The widespread of e-government and increased use of digital communication add even more to it. These digital data presents not only the proof for processes, steps and decisions taken by public administration but also a source of information for generations to come and their research of the past. Not only that these digital data has to be available, it has to be searchable, retrievable and presentable as well as reliable, authentic and trustworthy. These elements and functions have been developed and widely accepted for paper data but the question is how suitable are they for electronic data? Are there any special issues that have to be considered when thinking of digital preservation in e-government? Are the processes and environments of e-governments adequate or not and how do they have to be implemented to satisfy this demand? What kind of legal background is needed? This paper discusses the topics of the long-term digital preservation with a special focus on long-term digital preservation in public administration. It also focuses on Slovenia as one of the EU countries that developed its e-government during the last decade very well. Its progress in eEurope benchmarking is one of the proofs. It analyses the situation in Slovenian through legal, organisational and other changes that appeared through the last few years. To describe the current state considering the digital preservation in Slovenian public administration the results of empirical research made in 2007 are used. The paper uses theoretical background from digital preservation field and the empirical results to show the important link between e-business and digital preservation. It shows that since Slovenian public administration has strictly specified business processes the task of implementation of digital preservation is much easier. The results prove that with accepted legislation Slovenian public administration can achieve an accomplishable goal of being able to guarantee that its digital data will remain accessible and trustworthy for years to come.
