RWC: RecordWeb Concept - Atomic, versioned, and networked Records as the foundation of provable institutional information.

Public administrations have managed information for decades in systems built for filing — not for traceability. The result is well known: incomplete dossiers, lost version histories, system boundaries that fragment information, and an institutional memory that promises more than it delivers. RecordWeb postulates a paradigm shift. Not a better filing principle, not a smarter dossier structure — but a different foundational decision about what information is: an autonomous, permanently identifiable, versioned, and cryptographically secured object. The Record is the smallest meaningful unit of information. It knows its origin. It proves its state. It exists independently of the systems in which it is stored. RecordWeb takes up the networking idea of the World Wide Web — not for documents, but for Records — and combines it with the conceptual openness of the Records Continuum, the cryptographic integrity of modern versioning systems, and the institutional accountability of classical Records Management. The result is an architecture in which information no longer migrates through system changes but traverses states. In which completeness is not trusted but proven. In which accountability is not a claim but a structural property. This concept paper lays out the conceptual foundations of RecordWeb, distinguishes it from related approaches, and describes the path from idea to specification. It is addressed to professionals in Records Management, archival science, and public administration, as well as to anyone interested in the question of how institutional information can exist in a digital world in a way that allows it not merely to be stored but permanently proven.