Guidance on provision of documents

Material Providers should note the following standards for submitting evidence to the Inquiry:

a. all documents should be provided with an accompanying index listing them, along with their locations in any systems or folders;

b. all documents should be provided electronically where possible, with their original filenames and, where scanned, they should be named appropriately;

c. digital documents should be provided in their native format (e.g. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, email files (e.g. msg, eml) with their attachments), together with any underlying metadata;

d. documents should be submitted at document level, i.e. multiple documents should not be grouped into one large PDF. Similarly, a document should not be scanned as individual pages, but as a single PDF;

e. hard copy documents should be digitised to multipage PDF format;

f. scanning of paper documents should be undertaken at a standard of 300dpi;

g. scanned (PDF) images of paper should show all information on the paper, including all corners and both sides of the paper (where information is contained on two sides) and any annotations. No data should be cut off during the scanning process. If the paper that is being scanned has any attachment (e.g. a sticky paper note) or cover sheet, it should be scanned twice, both with and without the attached note; and

h. all documents should be provided in unredacted format, unless agreed with the Inquiry beforehand.

The Inquiry will be using Egress (cloud-sharing platform) to send and/or receive electronic material securely from various Material Providers. In advance of any material intended to be supplied to the Inquiry, yourself or your representatives should identify the individuals/organisations that will require access to your
designated secured Egress folder.

Upon the Inquiry receiving these email addresses, the Inquiry will share a link of your secured folder and issue instructions on how to upload material. All material should be uploaded in .zip/compressed files and each .zip/compressed folder should not exceed 2GB.

In so far as is possible, when compressing material for upload, please do keep any original folder/file structure/categorisation you have applied to the material as part of your records management. It will be helpful to the Inquiry if any work on categorisation of the material has already been applied.

As outlined in (a) above, each disclosure should also be made with an accompanying index (.csv/excel file). The following index should include any unique identification number that a Material Provider wishes to be applied to any documents supplied upon ingestion of such material onto the Inquiry’s document management system (“DMS”). The Inquiry will refer to the following unique reference as the ‘Control Number’. Please ensure you provide a .csv file/excel/index file that aligns exactly with the names of the files (including their formats), along with the Control Number, to those files which you have uploaded to Egress (please see example below).

[Insert pic of table here]

The Inquiry will also supply all ingested files on our DMS with a Unique Reference Number (“URN”) for all internal Inquiry purposes (including any reference within a final and/or interim report). If no Control Number is provided by the Material Provider, the Inquiry will apply the same reference as the URN.

In line with the request at (c) above, if a Material Provider stores material on a DMS, we request that material is supplied by way of formal production at the point of export from your system. Your document management system vendor supplier will be able to assist you in the following regard.

Finally, for all hard-copy material, the Inquiry will engage with you and/or your representative in the meeting scheduled. The Inquiry will set out separate hereto an approach for providing hard-copy material to the Inquiry.