Minutes of Teleconference: Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools

Transcription

1 Minutes of Teleconference: Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools Date: Thursday, December 1, 2011 Location: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) Boardroom at 360 Main Street, Winnipeg, MB and teleconference Start time: 1:00 pm CST End Time: 2:25 pm CST Chairperson: Ry Moran-TRC Director of Statement Gathering, National Research Centre Lead A. Opening and Welcoming Remarks Ry opened teleconference by welcoming everyone to the first of two teleconferences pertaining to the Call for Submissions to host the National Research Centre (NRC). Round table introductions of all participants. B. Discussion of the NRC Call for Submissions Process Discussion and intent of the TRC, the hope is for NRC to continue the legacy of Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the largest class action settlement in Canadian History. The establishment of the NRC is an important aspect of TRC s work, it will continue to maintain and preserve Indian Residential School s oral and written documented history. The purpose of today s teleconference is twofold; 1) To increase visibility of the NRC process: how to request information from the TRC; how the TRC will be sharing information; what the TRC is looking for in its submissions and sharing with all interested applicants. 2) Give an opportunity for interested applicants to ask questions and share relevant information. 1

2 Ry begins the meeting by explaining that he will be going over the eleven criteria on what the TRC wants in a successful submission. Each of the eleven points of the submission is challenging but needs to be addressed. Ry completed the process of going over the eleven criteria on the Call for Submissions and discussion ensued. TRC emphasized that this call is NOT a procurement and is a NOT a solicitation. The TRC is not offering any money to fund the NRC. TRC would like applicants to demonstrate how they will fund the NRC operations over the long term. TRC has a broad ambitious mandate and the NRC is a large initiative. Ry asked all applicants to carefully review the complete Call for Submissions as the successful applicant will be the long term host. The successful applicant will permanently host the NRC, applicants must have a vision on how the NRC will be successful and continue as a centre of excellence. TRC is required to gather all documents from Churches and Government of Canada pertaining to Indian Residential Schools System and is undertaking this immense project with the assistance of Bronson Consulting. Bronson Consulting was the successful contractor on a competitive tender through PWGSC for the gathering of historical records related to the Indian Residential School System.. In this Call for Submissions, the TRC reserves the right to suggest collaborations and to propose arrangements between organizations during the review process. The TRC feels the NRC will benefit from collaboration, not competition. The TRC is posing questions in its Call for Submissions, applicants should consider those questions when submitting its proposals. The TRC mandate outlines the requirements for the NRC to continue accepting statements once the TRC has completed its work. What is your plan on how to do this? How will you handle the privacy issues? TRC envisions many end users for the NRC. The TRC currently has two core manners of collecting statements; public and private statements. The public statements usually involving sharing with one or 2

3 all the Commissionaires in attendance in a public setting. The private statement gathering sessions are more confidential and for those people who are more comfortable telling their stories in a private setting. There are significant privacy concerns bidders need to be aware of. In statement gathering efforts, the TRC is speaking with survivors in both public and private settings. Survivor have different wants in keeping there statement either private or public Ry described the two main areas of gathering information that the NRC will be responsible for maintaining; 1) The TRC s Document Collection Project involves digital scans of archival materials including photographs, documents, hand-written letters, books, glass-plate negatives, slides, microfilm and other materials. These records are being collected from both Church and Government of Canada Record Collections. There are privacy and access concerns surrounding these collections. 2) The TRC s statement gathering processes have TRC personnel conducting interviews with those people affected by the Residential School experience, ie survivors, families, workers. The TRC listens and documents their stories and the role the Indian Residential School experience has played in their lives. All questions can be forwarded to Laver Simard through NRC@trc.ca, a TRC team will then review and answers will be posted online at trc.ca, this is your main source of information. Please keep tuned in to the trc.ca website for updates. Sonja Matthies will coordinate the next conference call on January 11, 2012 at 1 pm. CST, all are welcome to join, she can be contacted at sonja.matthies@trc.ca. The closing date for submissions is February 16 th, 2012, all documents must be post marked by that date. If you would like to look at the standard consent forms that TRC has, please send your request to NRC@trc.ca at TRC. There is no standard template for submissions. If you would like a copy of the minutes please request them at NRC@trc.ca. Since its public posting of call for submissions, TRC received six questions and provided the questions and answers on our TRC website December 1st, Ry read over the questions and discussed answers. 3

4 Ry turned the floor over to the audience and asked if they had questions and/or clarifications around what was discussed today or on the call for submission application process (questions and answers listed below in Section D.) C. Closing Remarks Conclusion of meeting Ry asked anyone if there was any further questions, if not we will close today s teleconference. We asked attendees that asked questions to please submit to the nrc@trc.ca website to ensure we have proper context of question to ensure TRC can give the most appropriate answer. Estimate we will have questions and answers posted within a week to ten days as once questions are answered we have to translate prior to posting on TRC website. Thank you all for your attendance. Meeting closed at 2:25 pm CST 4

5 D. Questions and Answers Q1: Will TRC operational records, as well as records of the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), Common Experience Payment (CEP), litigation and Dispute Resolution processes be transferred to the NRC? A1: Inclusion of whether the operational records of the TRC will be passed to the NRC will be the decision of the Commissioners. This decision has not yet been finalized. The TRC is in discussion with the Government of Canada over CEP and IAP records. It is anticipated litigation records will be part of the NRC collection. The TRC has already collected a relatively large amount of litigation files. Q2: Has your mandate been extended to 2014? What date will the TRC close down? A2: The Commissioners appointments expire July 1, Events are being planned into Q3: When are you expecting to get the bulk of Government of Canada records? What percentage of those records do you expect to have by the time your mandate ends? A3: TRC aims to collect all of Government of Canada records by the completion of the mandate. The TRC has made formal request for all Government Indian Residential School Records including active, semi-active and archival holdings. To date, the Government of Canada is still unclear over the full extent of their holdings. Q4: Same question as above for church records. A4: TRC aims to collect all of church records by the completion of mandate. The TRC is actively collecting records from church archives. Q5: Is the NRC expected to continue negotiating with the Federal Government and Churches to get the remaining records? A5: If this plan is envisioned by applicants, it should be included as part of your submission. The legal mandate of the TRC will not transfer directly to the NRC Q6: What is the total size in terrabytes of material collected to date? Of material you expect to collect by end of mandate? Of material you expect will not yet have been collected by the end of your mandate? A6: Projections forecast as much as 200 terrabytes of master file digital information by the end of the mandate. At present the Commission currently holds approximately 30 TB of data. The TRC aims to collect all relevant information by the end of TRC. 5

6 Q7: Are you currently getting, or expecting to have transferred, records from sources other than TRC operations, the Federal Government and the Churches? For example, community records? Other sources? A7: The TRC holds physical documents and donations given to the TRC. This is a voluntary process and thus the actual collection will depend on the extent of voluntary donation to the Commission. The Commission does hold a variety of physical items eg. the Bentwood box that will be part of the collection. Q8: Will the records be open for public circulation when transferred from TRC? For example, will they be compliant with federal ATI and privacy regulatory regime? A8: We do not expect the records to be "open". We expect to transfer unredacted records. To do this, the NRC must have clear experience and capacity to redact records subject to an access to information and privacy statute. We also need to have discussions with the National Archivist. We do not currently have any plan to redact records at the TRC. Q9: Did permissions granted by survivors for their oral statements include permission for that material to be used in research or do researchers need to track down survivors to request permission? A9: Researchers may see and use material collected but it is discretionary. We expect provisions of the applicable freedom of information and privacy statute will apply; eg: consent; clauses such as 8(2)(j) of the federal Privacy Act. The TRC has consent forms on file. These consent forms indicate whether the provider chose to give a public or private statement. Q10: Will there be redacted records included in the TRC archives? A10: We do not currently have any plan to redact records at the TRC. Q11: What proportion of oral testimony does the TRC expect to transcribe by the end of its mandate? A11: The TRC aims to transcribe all public oral testimony by the end of TRC mandate. This will be contingent on actual use requirements of the TRC as the mandate progresses. Q12: What is the process for judging the applications to house the archives? For example, what is the role of the Elders advisory committee? How long will the current Survivors Committee last? 6

7 A12: The TRC survivor committee will be consulted on NRC submissions. The TRC Commissioners will provide final approval on the successful proposal.the Survivors Committee s mandate will expire at the end of the Commission. Q13: The TRC has called this both an expression of interest and a call for proposals. How fully developed does the TRC expect proposals to be? A13: The TRC expects full detailed proposals. This is NOT envisioned to be a two part process. The TRC reserves the right to request additional information from submissions, should the need arise upon receipt of the proposals. Q14: How long will the TRC take to make a decision on which proposal is accepted or which proposal is short-listed? A14: The TRC will do our best to keep everyone informed. It is in everyone s best interest to reach a decision in a timely manner. Q15: Will the NRC own the information? A15: In the various different privacy acts, there is generally no question of ownership; it is more appropriately phrased as a question of who has control of the records. As for intellectual property, the person who has given the statement has full rights over their own statements. There is a 60/40 ratio of public and private statements. The NRC will be in control of the records. Q16: Commemoration: Are you envisioning a permanent memorial? A16: TRC would like your organization to address this in your submission. Your proposal should naturally consider your vision and financial resources. Proposals must be realistic and actionable. Q17: What would the Governance of the NRC look like? A17: Throughout the solicitation, the TRC references aboriginal communities and governance on numerous occasions. Inclusion of aboriginal people in the NRC is important to the TRC. Details of the NRC governance structure should be carefully outlined in your proposals. The NRC should consider structures such as a survivors committee, elders committee or other structures. Ultimately, the TRC will not be able to monitor the NRC; the TRC will disappear at the end of the Commission s mandate. NRC proposals must ensure the governance structure is sufficiently robust to manage future requirements. 7

8 Q18. Has there been an indexing system used? A18: We have an extensive indexing system in place. A unique number is assigned to each file. Metadata records where each record comes from, and captures identifying information including name, date and additional information. Technical metadata is embedded directly into the database record. The TRC is currently hosting all derivative (read on-line) records in a Minisis database The TRC is carefully documenting both the historical continuity and integrity of the material alongside preserving record of the format, structure and nature of the originating archive. Q19: What kind of work is TRC doing in the archives? A19: For church records, the TRC is identifying records, digitizing records and metadata tagging individual records. The Government of Canada is supplying the TRC with digital records accompanied by metadata. Q20: Will computers be given to the NRC? A20: The TRC cannot conclusively answer this at this particular point in time. Q21: Early on in the submission, you mentioned that TRC reserves the right to support collaboration. What do you mean by that? A21: The TRC anticipates that a wide variety of expertise will be required to fully maximize the potential of the NRC. The TRC suggests applicants consider collaboration as a way to maximize the potential of the NRC. The TRC reserves the right to suggest collaborations and to propose arrangements between organizations during the review process. The TRC feels the NRC will benefit from collaboration, not competition. Q22: Can you explain what the weighing factor is on each criteria? Can you speak to the judging process? A22: The strength of submissions will be assessed on their overall quality. Q23: In reference to criteria #3, how much of a role does Aboriginal Support play? Expand. A23: Aboriginal people and the inclusion of aboriginal people is woven throughout the document. Proposals should address the level of support and collaboration if any as outlined in the Call for Submissions. 8

9 Q24: Who will be on the evaluation team? A24: TRC staff will play a fulsome role in the evaluation of these proposals. Q25: Do you anticipate the criteria in the Call for Submission expanding? A25: No, we will not be expanding on current criteria. Q26: What percentage of the records turned over by the TRC to the NRC will be electronic? A26 The vast majority of records the TRC will turn over to the NRC will be in electronic format. Q27: How will the electronic records be turned over to the NRC (ie. hard drives or DVD S)? A27: The TRC will provide access to the TRC databases at a time appropriate to both the NRC and the TRC. The NRC will need to determine the best solution to extract or otherwise transfer the information to the NRC. The NRC must be prepared to manage a large amount of information. DVD s will not be feasible. Q28: During the teleconference, Ry referred to 200 TB as an outside estimate of the likely size of the TRC holdings by the end of its mandate. Did this outside estimate include both the preservation master copies and the derivative copies created for access? A28: This estimate is for the master copies only. Derivative copies are likely to amount to TBs of information. Q29: How many survivor statements do you currently hold (not in terms of TB, in terms of numbers by count)? How many do you expect to hold by the end of your mandate? A29: The TRC currently holds approximately 2500 statements. The TRC aims to fully meet demand to provide statements. END OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 9

10 E. The following questions have been received at TRC: Answers will be posted on next website update. Questions relating to current TRC holdings Q30: Please list all of the media of your current holdings, digital and analog. A30: Pending Q31: What is the extent of each type/media of your analog holdings? A31: Pending Q32: Specifically, how many meters/boxes of analog textual records do you expect to transfer to the NRC? A32: Pending Q33: Please list all of the digital formats represented in your holdings. Please identify them based on content types (e.g. video, audio, still images, textual, structured data, etc.). A33: Pending Q34: Please list the extent of each digital format, both in terms of numbers of digital objects and in bytes A34: Pending Q35: What system is being used for accessioning these materials? A35: Pending Q36: What system is being used to manage the digital holdings? A36: Pending Q37: What system is being used to manage the metadata? A37: Pending 10

11 Q38: What metadata schemas and standards are being used for the following types of metadata. If you have created your own schemas, could you please share them with us. a) Structural metadata b) Descriptive metadata c) Technical/preservation metadata d) Rights metadata A38: Pending Q39: Can the metadata be expressed in XML for transfer? If not, in what form will it be expressed? A39: Pending Questions related to GC records transfers and church records transfers; Please answer these questions twice, once for Government of Canada records, and once for church records. Q40: What is the extent of your current holdings in these records? What is your expected total extent? When do you expect the transfer of these records to be complete? A40: (Canada): Pending A40: (Church): Pending Q41. What system is being used to scan these records? A41: (Canada): Pending A41: (Church): Pending Q42: What are the formats being used? Please identify the extent of each format, by numbers of digital objects as well as by bytes. A42: (Canada): Pending A42: (Church): Pending Q43 What system is managing the scans? A43: (Canada): Pending A43: (Church): Pending 11

12 Q44 What system is used to manage the metadata? A44: (Canada): Pending A44: (Church): Pending Q45 What metadata schemas and standards are being used for the following types of metadata. If you have created your own schemas, could you please share them with us. a) Structural metadata b) Descriptive metadata c) Technical/preservation metadata d) Rights metadata e) ATIP metadata A45: (Canada): Pending A45: (Church): Pending 12