Archives New Zealand is the repository for our public records, the institutional collective memory of the nation. All sorts of people use it: genealogists, historians, policy wonks. I've used it, when digging into the history of sedition, or of the Official Information Act. But the Department of Internal Affairs has just decided to make using the archives much harder: they've introduced a new search engine to replace the old (but quite effective) Archway. This will allow access to some recent digital records online, which is great. But if you want to view older records, either by visiting and looking at them on paper, or by getting the staff to digitise them, you'll need to get a RealMe account:
To book a viewing in one of our reading rooms or to pay for an archive to be digitised you’ll need to login using RealMe.Why is this a problem? Well, apart from the conceptual problems of an agency which is supposed to be all about enabling public access sticking a privacywall on our history, people absolutely hate RealMe, making it effectively a barrier to access. When people say things like "I hate RealMe with a visceral loathing" about a digital identity system, you probably want to avoid it (which is why NZ businesses generally do).
But it also seems entirely unnecessary. Why do you need a digitally verified identity to visit what is essentially a library? What was wrong with the old system of physically signing up and signing in? Does the government really need to be able to link what you request in the archives with your medical, welfare, and travel records? Or is the real problem here that nobody was using RealMe if they could possibly avoid it, so DIA (which runs the digital ID system as well as the archives) decided to try and forcibly impose it on more people?
