Archive
For time sensitive content which expires after a certain date (e.g. tender notifications, announcements for conference registrations, contest entries etc.), a policy on whether the content should be archived for future reference or removed altogether from the website should be decided by the concerned Department after careful consideration of their nature of content. However, ‘expired’ content MUST not be presented or flashed on the website. The Departments MUST have a clearly laid out Content Archival Policy (CAP) clarifying the rules set in this regard. Government websites generally are storehouses of a large number of documents and reports, which are of relevance and importance to specific audiences as well as citizens at large. Many times, these documents also have historical importance and are also referred extensively for academic and research purposes. These documents can be kept for online access only for a specific period of time and need to be moved to offline archives on the expiry of the pre-decided duration. This is important since these old documents sometimes need to be referred to for regulatory or legal purposes. The Departments MUST have a clear-cut Archival Policy with regard to such old documents stating for how long would they be kept online, when would they be moved to offline archives and if /when would they be permanently deleted or purged.