Weapons of affect : The imperative for transdisciplinary information systems design
- Authors: Rolan, Gregory , Evans, Joanne , Bone, Jane , Lewis, Antonina , Golding, Frank , Wilson, Jacqueline , McKemmish, Sue , Mendes, Philip , Reeves, Keir
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2018), p. 420-429
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- Description: Much has been written about ethical and human-centred Information Systems (IS) design, most recently regarding the deleterious outcomes and negative affect of some machine learning applications that embed and perpetuate unethical or even inhumane automation. Terms such as ‘harm’, ‘damage’, and surprisingly, ‘weapon’ have entered the language of this discourse. However, these characteristics are not unique to applications of data science but have long manifested in IS that can also can exhibit opacity and establish tight vicious cycles. These, when coupled with a lack of governance feedback, can perpetuate injustice that has community or sector-wide reach. In this paper, we explore how IS design that sets out with the best of intentions or at least, conceived as a ‘neutral’ system for managing transactional information, can emerge as ‘tools that punish’. We argue that there are crucial principles to be taken from Recordkeeping Informatics, concerned as it is with the entanglement of information and people across space and through time on multi-generational timescales. In particular we discuss how transdisciplinary and critical approaches are necessary to cover more of the design space and surface issues, rights, stakeholders, and, most importantly, values that may be otherwise hidden from a here-and-now, transactional viewpoint.
Decolonizing recordkeeping and archival praxis in childhood out-of-home care and indigenous archival collections
- Authors: McKemmish, Sue , Bone, Jane , Evans, Joanne , Golding, Frank , Lewis, Antonia , Rolan, Gregory , Thorpe, Kirsten , Wilson, Jacqueline
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Archival Science Vol. 20, no. 1 (Mar 2020), p. 21-49
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- Description: This paper presents the aims and findings of two research projects-Rights in Records by Design and Indigenous Archiving and Cultural Safety-making particular reference to the ways in which Australia's current child welfare systems and their recordkeeping and archival praxis have been indelibly shaped by colonization and its legacies, which persist into the twenty-first century. We posit that the classist, heteropatriarchal, sexist and racist colonial constructs of child welfare, the neglected and criminal child, and Indigeneity persist to this day and continue to be embodied in the form and content of records and archives, as well as in the principles and values embedded in recordkeeping and archival systems. The paper begins with discussion of framing concepts drawn from records continuum theory and critical theory, followed by an overview of both projects. We then explore in-depth findings of the Rights Charter, Historical Justice, and Educational components of Rights in Records by Design and Indigenous Archiving and Cultural Safety with particular attention to colonial values and negative constructs of childhood and Indigeneity, respectively, and their impacts from colonial times to the present. Importantly, we discuss the intersection of constructs of childhood and Indigeneity with colonial values and constructs embedded in recordkeeping and archiving systems. We note that the primary purpose of recordkeeping in colonial times was to provide critical infrastructure that enabled imperial control and exploitation. Consequently, we point to the need for childhood recordkeeping and archiving itself to be decolonized, to embody constructs of the child as having agency and rights, and, in turn, to play its part in decolonizing childhood. Finally, we discuss the contributions that each project is making to decolonizing recordkeeping and archiving theory and practice, and the potential for decolonized recordkeeping and archiving to play their part in decolonizing childhood for children in out-of-home Care and Indigenous Australian children caught up in the Indigenous child welfare system, respectively.
Rights in records : a charter of lifelong rights in childhood recordkeeping in out-of-home care for Australian and Indigenous Australian children and care leavers
- Authors: Golding, Frank , Lewis, Antonina , McKemmish, Sue , Rolan, Gregory , Thorpe, Kirsten
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Human Rights Vol. 25, no. 9 (2021), p. 1625-1657
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- Description: This paper introduces the Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care, centred on the critical, lifelong and diverse information and recordkeeping needs of Australian and Indigenous Australian children and adults who are experiencing, or have experienced Out-of-Home Care. The Charter is underpinned by the findings of two community-centred research projects, the Australian Research Council-funded Rights in Records by Design, 2017–2020 (applying a Rights by Design approach and co-design methodologies to rights-based recordkeeping systems in Out-of-Home Care), and the Indigenous Archiving and Cultural Safety: Examining the role of decolonisation and self-determination in libraries and archives doctoral project, 2018–2020 (focusing on Indigenous self-determination and cultural safety in the context of archives and libraries). It also draws on foundational research on the recordkeeping rights of Indigenous Australians undertaken in the Australian Research Council-funded Trust and Technology project, 2006–2010. The principles and values underpinning the Charter relate to child wellbeing and safety, self-determination, linked to archival autonomy and agency, and Indigenous Sovereignty and cultural safety. The development of the Charter is core to a National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care, a major outcome of the 2017 National Summit on Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Towards transformative practice in out of home care : chartering rights in recordkeeping
- Authors: Golding, Frank , McKemmish, Sue , Reed, Barbara
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Archives and Manuscripts Vol. 49, no. 3 (2021), p. 186-207
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- Description: The CLAN Rights Charter asserts rights in records for Care leavers who were taken from their homes and families and communities, and placed in orphanages, children’s Homes, foster Care and other forms of institutions. The Australian Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out of Home Care is a response to the critical, largely unmet recordkeeping and archival needs of both children and young people in Care today, and Care leavers, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and their families, and Stolen Generations. It focuses on their lifelong and diverse recordkeeping needs. The recordkeeping rights specified in both Charters are essential enablers for the exercise of human rights, including participatory, identity, memory and accountability rights. They provide a rights-based foundation for addressing the continuing recordkeeping failures, the major gaps in the archival record, and the weaponisation of data and records that plague the Care sector. In the paper, we discuss the research and advocacy contexts of the two interrelated Charters, and our mapping of the Charters aimed at cross-validation and identification of gaps. We then explore the challenge of translating the Charters into transformative practice, advocating for their adoption and developing guidelines for their implementation. © 2021 Frank Golding, Sue McKemmish and Barbara Reed.