VPRS 16490 Case Management System - Main Collection

The ‘Case Management System – Main Collection’ contained the bulk of the external documents received by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission in relation to its investigations. It was used to support the Commission’s inquiry and included all documents received in response to summons as well as key internal documents. Documents in the main collection were analysed and assessed by legal terms for their relevance to the Commission’s investigation and hearings. Documents identified as supporting the investigations and hearings were copied to the Commission’s Hearing Book, from where they could be tendered as evidence in the hearings (see VPRS 16489). The main collection was one of several collections that the Commission maintained within its case management system. The others were: Public Submissions (VPRS 16493) Fire Related Deaths Inquiry records (VPRS 16491) Research material developed by the Commission (VPRS 16492) Information was recorded against each document as part of the analysis and assessment process. Information was broadly of two types: object and subjective. Object metadata included such things as the document date, author, number of pages, and so forth. Subjective metadata was added by the Commission’s legal teams following analysis and assessment. It included such things as the document’s relevance in terms of a predefined set of issues and categories, of which there were 213 and 62, respectively. Examples of issues included Causes & Circumstances of the Fires (issue 01); Warnings (issue 04); Stay or go Policy (issue 05); Fire Preparedness (issue 06); and Planning/Local Government (issue 07). Main headings were further delineated: For example, issue 07 Planning/Local Government included 7.1 Regulations and Standards and 7.3 other planning/local government related issues. Examples of categories included Submission, Confidential, and Defamatory. A full list of the issues and categories was not available to PROV at time of transfer. Other key information recorded against documents included: Producing party. Title, document date, document identifier, document type, category/folder/issue, Source, Author Organisation and registration date.