AI to review government records: new work to unlock historically significant digital records

This article presents ground-breaking new work on AI applied to the government records of the Cabinet Office, in order to automatically identify historically significant records to preserve and other records that can be deleted. The Cabinet Office is the UK central government department that supports the Prime Minister in the effective running of government. Its records are among the most important that are deposited in The National Archives, covering those of the Prime Minister, Cabinet proceedings, government efficiency and reform, and the formulation of legislation, among other areas. This article does not only describe a radically new methodology to appraise digital records, it also makes a significant theoretical contribution to academic disciplines that seldom talk to each other – including archival studies, digital humanities and computer/ data science. It proposes a new archival mindset that reflects the digital realities faced by records managers, archivists and users. This theoretical approach combines distant viewing (necessary to approach huge amounts of records) and close reading of a selection of records (to ensure the effectiveness of computational approaches). This combination of “distant” and “close” is an answer to the need to move away from paper minds, and embrace digital archival realities and methodologies. The conclusion explores where records management might go next in deploying Artificial Intelligence technologies and the benefits these may have in opening up archives for future historians. Recommendations are offered to facilitate the ethical application of AI to records and archives, in the government sector and beyond.