Alexa, Is This a Historical Record?

Abstract

Digital transformation in government has brought an increase in the scale, variety, and complexity of records and greater levels of disorganised data. Current practices for selecting records for transfer to The National Archives (TNA) were developed to deal with paper records and are struggling to deal with this shift. This article examines the background to the problem and outlines a project that TNA undertook to research the feasibility of using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to aid selection. The project AI for Selection evaluated a range of commercial solutions varying from off-the-shelf products to cloud-hosted machine learning platforms, as well as a benchmarking tool developed in-house. Suitability of tools depended on several factors, including requirements and skills of transferring bodies as well as the tools’ usability and configurability. This article also explores questions around trust and explainability of decisions made when using AI for sensitive tasks such as selection.