ODI Fridays: Can technology help reinvent national archives for the 21st Century?

This talk reflects on a two year collaboration between the ODI, the University of Surrey and the National Archives in creating technology to improve trust in digital archives. National archives are not immune to a climate of distrust in institutions – and yet, being trusted to preserve the history of a country without tampering with it, is their raison d’être. Increasingly shifting to the preservation of easily manipulated digital records, sometimes kept in the dark for decades before release, their role is rapidly changing and their viability increasingly challenged. In this talk, ODI Head of Technology Olivier Thereaux will share highlights and learnings from the ARCHANGEL project, a collaboration with the University of Surrey and The National Archives, and will show that, sometimes, “use some machine learning and put it on a blockchain” actually may be the right answer. (ARCHANGEL is funded by EPSRC Grant Ref EP/P03151X/1) About the speaker As Head of Technology, Olivier leads the ODI’s work researching emerging tech, prototyping tools and services, and exploring the interplay of technology and policy. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, Olivier has worked as a technologist in France, Japan, Canada and the UK for nearly 20 years, focusing on the various facets of open technology: open standards, open source, open data and open innovation.