The National Archives

“Safeguarding the past for the present and future generations”

The Challenge
In April 2003 the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission merged to form The National Archives. This new organisation is entrusted with the ongoing collection, storage and dissemination of information captured in central government records and historical archives. These include written documents, moving images, sound recordings and electronic files that span more than 1000 years and fill over 177 kilometres of shelving.

One of The National Archives’ key goals is to promote the study of the past by making its resources available to government and the public onsite or online. It seeks to provide online access 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The National Archives needed to ensure that its technology infrastructure was reliable, resilient and secure enough to cope with the various demands on it.

They also realised that being one of the most popular and frequently accessed UK government websites made them a major player in terms of supplying content over the World Wide Web. It was clear that the infrastructure for support and presentation needed to match this high profile and user demand.


The Solution
The National Archives selected Parity to analyse their existing IT infrastructure and to recommend how their IT security and resilience could be improved.

Parity’s managing consultant Gerry Roff identified a number of areas that needed to be addressed and prioritised the tasks that needed to be undertaken. He went on to provide a series of options, costs and risks and recommended a way forward. The approach involved the enhancement and replacement of systems based on leading edge technologies from Microsoft and other vendors. The risks of choosing “bleeding edge” solutions were minimised in part through Parity’s product knowledge and relationships with suppliers, and the quality of the team which was assembled to undertake the project.

To help the team get a clear picture of the technology choices involved, Gerry arranged for Parity to deliver concepts training to The National Archives’ project manager Roger Hamilton. Subsequently, Parity bid for and was selected to provide key members of a specialist team, to help implement the changes and ensure that the migration was completed with minimal disruption to The National Archives’ operations. The strong working relationship between Parity and The National Archives also contributed to the success of the project, as the combined team continually shared their experiences and knowledge to reduce the risk of any potential problems.


The Benefits
The result of this collaborative and partnership based approach has been the implementation of a state of the art IT infrastructure that is highly secure, reliable and resilient. These features are especially critical because The National Archives has one of the most popular government websites and any disruption or interruption to the services offered would affect many users.

The project has also led to capacity and performance improvements as a by product of the more efficient technologies installed. One example is the additional 24 terabytes of resilient storage that has been added, along with the ability to completely restore services within 4 hours. Roger explained,

Another key benefit has been the ability for The National Archives to source a variety of their requirements through one partner, thus maintaining continuity and reducing any disruption to the project. This smooth transition was possible because Parity was able to provide the skills and people as required to meet their changing needs, from the initial business analysis through to the implementation and support of a new IT infrastructure.

Roger continues,

Rob Banathy, Parity’s Head of Public sector commented,