The Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) addresses the need for a cost-effective, long-term approach to the preservation of digital records.

The structure and technical requirements of VERS are formally specified in the Standard for the Management of Electronic Records (PROS 99/007) and its five Specifications. The relationship between the VERS Standard, the Specifications that support this Standard, and the Introduction and Advices that explain VERS is shown below.

Please refer to the Standards and Policy page for an outline of PROV’s document categories, and their purposes.

The Standard, Specifications, and Advices

• VERS Standard 99/007: Management of Electronic Records pdf (768 KB)
• Advice 9: Introduction to VERS pdf (930 KB)
• Specification 1: System Requirements for Preserving Electronic Records pdf (606 KB)
• Specification 2: VERS Metadata Scheme pdf (821 KB)
• Specification 3: VERS Standard Electronic Record Format pdf (621 KB)
• Specification 4: VERS Long Term Preservation Formats pdf (362 KB)
• Specification 5: Export of Electronic Records to PROV pdf (375 KB)
• Advice 10 on Specification 1 (System Requirements for Preserving Electronic Records) pdf (901 KB)
• Advice 11 on Specification 2 (VERS Metadata Scheme) pdf (978 KB)
• Advice 12 on Specification 3 (VERS Standard Electronic Record Format) pdf (1057 KB)
• Advice 13 on Specification 4 (VERS Long Term Preservation Formats) pdf (361 KB)
• Advice 14 on Specification 5 (Export of Electronic Records to PROV) pdf (792 KB)
• Errata to the VERS Standard Version 2 pdf (520 KB)
  This document contains minor changes and clarifications to all sections of the VERS Standard Version 2 including the Specifications and the Advice.

Technical Support

• Fact Sheet 1: Notes on obtaining a Digital Certificate for use with VERS Specification 3 PDF (620 KB)
  This document describes the certificates to be used when transferring VEOs to PROV.
• VERS Toolkit (version 2.0) (705KB zip file)
  The toolkit has been developed to assist developers in adding VERS capabilities to their products. It consists of two parts. The first constructs version 2 VEOs, including the digital signatures, and the second generates manifests. The toolkit can be incorporated in your product, or used as model code for the development of your own code. It is written in Java 1.4.
  The toolkit is available at no cost, ‘as is,’ with no warranties. The license is available here.
  Any comments or questions should be directed to Andrew Waugh (andrew.waugh@prov.vic.gov.au)
• VERS Document Type Definition (within ManifestZip.zip file)
• Manifest
• Manifest Schema (Example manifest) (within ManifestZip.zip file)
• Example XSLT transformation to generate a Manifest from VEOs (within ManifestZip.zip file)
• Example ‘end of set’ trigger file (Note that this file contains no content.) (within ManifestZip.zip file)
• Sample VEOs
• Example Record VEO (Minimal Metadata) (Typical) (within SampleVEOs.zip)
• Example File VEO (Minimal Metadata) (Typical) (within SampleVEOs.zip)
• Example Modified VEO (Typical) (within SampleVEOs.zip)