Project Abacá:Technically Assisted Sensitivity Review

of Digital Records.Tim Gollins, Michael Moss, Craig Macdonald, Iadh Ounis,

Norman Gray, Graham Mcdonald, James Girdwood, John Thompson(FCO)

20th June 2014

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Public Records Transfer &Sensitivity Review

TransferPermanent

Preservation Presentation

on-lineSelection

& AppraisalSensitivity

Review

Government Department The National Archives

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Full Project Concept & Outputs● Concept

– Assumption: No new resources– Risk Management not Risk Avoidance– Need to understand Risks and Costs explicitly

● Outputs– New method for review

● Manage risk & mange resource– New decision support tool (tech. demonstrator)

● Prioritise review & measure risks

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Proof of Concept – Success (1)● Test Collection

– Initial Corpus Built – More to do● Engagement With Reviewers (FCO)

– Confirmed Assumptions

– Inspired Tool Development (document Features)– Insights into nature of sensitivity and review – Workshop In July – do you want to come ?

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Proof of Concept – Success (2)● Sensitivity Classifier Tool

– Uses latest IR techniques (Learning to Rank etc.)– Uses a variety of document features – Proved that subject matter alone insufficient– Work on Twitter reputation management has

pointed the way to other features– Work with FCO also inspires new features

Classification Results

FOIA Section 27 FOIA Section 40

Features Balanced Accuracy Features Balanced Accuracy

Text Classification 0.633 Text Classification 0.634

+ Country Count 0.645 + Country Count 0.641

+ Source 0.637 +DOB 0.639

+ All Verbs Count 0.635 +POB 0.638

+Media 0.635 +Media 0.637

Questions ?

Come to the workshop – 17th 18th July

Email - timothy.gollins@glasgow.ac.uk

Invitation Only