Series Number            

AWM331

Series Title

Department of Defence Control Registers – Defence Declassification Program

Series contents range

1988-1990

Extent

1m

Access Conditions

Subject to the Australian Archives Act (1983)

Agency controlling

Department of Defence

Custodial agency

Australian War Memorial

Function and provenance

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Department of Defence undertook a project to identify classified material and to check the sensitivity of the many codewords likely to be found in archival records held by AWM. As part of this project, they prepared these subject lists in order to help identify the classified files that they needed to examine. These lists were created between 1989 and approximately 1993. The series was registered and described on RecordSearch in December 2004.

Content

Department of Defence contractors used these lists during their declassification program of the sensitive material from various AWM series (see related series links). The lists mostly contain material classified confidential and above, and some unclassified material with caveats only. They are not full series item listings. Some of the lists have handwritten comments against particular items. The comments relate to access restrictions; whether the item has been declassified; what type of information could be found in an item; identification of codewords that may still be sensitive or whether an item needs to be referred to Department of Defence for access examination before being released to public researchers. There are also memos attached to some of the lists that relate to access restrictions. Some of the lists also give brief background information about the series of records they relate to. The records in this series were transferred from the Department of Defence Classified Archival Records Review Section (CARRS).

System of arrangement and control

Single imposed number [1] – [19]

Using the series                                                                                                                

The series comprises 19 registers each designated an item number [1] to [19].

Sources

Series dossier for AWM331,