Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Archiving our Web Presence

In 2006, the Head of Digital Preservation at The National Archives published new guidance on implementing web archiving programmes.

Further requirements have also been introduced within Freedom of Information legislation, which places a requirement on the Highways Agency to fully understand how and where information is held, and to have in place a robust information management programme.

Applying a comprehensive retention policy for web generated content will inevitably introduce a change to working practices within the Agency, but the results of this will be in a cleaner, more effective Highways Agency website presence.

More importantly, the website  - and the Highways Agency - will be well placed to deal with the growing demand for accessible information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, Data Protection Act (DPA) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) raft of legislation.

The overall aim of Web Archive Policy Report is to explore and determine the archiving requirements for information published on the corporate website. It highlights how information is generated within different business areas and what happens to this information once published on the website. In particular, the report examines whether archiving principles are employed for retaining information, and how archived information can be retrieved where and when necessary.

Other Key areas explored within this report are: 

• Exploring the procedures currently employed to produce archive and retain information within internal business areas and stakeholders who supply information to the Agency; 
• Evaluation of the HA's current Web Content Management system (RedDot) to understand version control for web content generation, retention and retrieval;
• To raise awareness of the current web content management situation, issues and opportunities to business areas.

Download the Website Archive Policy Document (300KB PDF)