At the end of August, LAC (Library and Archives Canada) shared its plan for evaluating its programs from 2025 to 2030.
In 2025-26, LAC will review how well it gives people access to historical documents. That hasn’t been done in 10 years. The review will look at 15% of LAC’s access services to assess whether they work well and meet their goals.
I was curious about how LAC compared to similar organizations around the world. That’s not something I’ve noticed LAC doing, so I asked Google Gemini to do a comparison. Gemini’s analysis (not mine) shows both strengths and weaknesses compared to similar organizations internationally.
Strengths:
- LAC is making good progress fixing operational problems. For example, they used AI technology to reduce manual work on their backlog of access to information requests by 22%.
- LAC is building a unique, high-profile facility called Ādisōke in partnership with the Ottawa Public Library.
Weaknesses:
- LAC’s digital search system is basic and doesn’t match the advanced search features of organizations like NARA (National Archives and Records Administration in the US) and NLA (National Library of Australia).
- LAC’s policies for collecting materials don’t properly include Indigenous people’s rights over their own data and cultural materials. Countries like Australia and New Zealand have set higher standards for Indigenous Data Sovereignty that LAC hasn’t yet met.
The full AI analysis is summarized below using a SWOT framework:
| Category | Finding | Contextual Comparison with Peers |
| Strengths | LAC’s relative advantages and internal capabilities | |
| Operational Efficiency (ATIP) |
Proven success in leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to reduce manual work in Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) processing, leading to an average 22% reduction in manual “touch time” for acting cases in the backlog.1 |
LAC has a measured, quantifiable success in implementing AI for statutory access efficiency, positioning it alongside NARA (USA), which is also prioritizing AI automation for its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) workflows.3 |
| Infrastructure Innovation |
Launch of the Ādisōke joint facility (with the Ottawa Public Library) as a transformational social infrastructure project.5 This maximizes centralized public access, community engagement, and partnership working.5 |
This is a highly unique model focused on centralized social infrastructure, contrasting with the purely logistical or digital repository focus of most peers (NARA, TNA).7 |
| Weaknesses | Areas where LAC lags behind international best practices | |
| Digital Discovery Functionality |
The Collection Search platform relies on basic search methods and standard Boolean options.8 |
Lags significantly behind NARA (USA), which uses OpenSearch and extracted text indexing for enhanced discoverability 9, and the National Library of Australia (NLA), which employs Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) to increase searchability across its digital collection and catalogue.10 |
| Indigenous Policy Maturity |
While LAC is committed to reconciliation 11, policy instruments require revision, notably lacking specific instruments and governance procedures to address Indigenous data sovereignty and consultation in acquisitions.12 |
Behind the rights-based frameworks implemented in Australia and New Zealand, where the National Archives of Australia (NAA) has formalized protocols that define Indigenous authority over records, and the Te Mana Raraunga network (NZ) insists on Māori governance of data.13 |
| Remote Access Logistics |
The strategic focus on the central Ādisōke site may mask the complex logistical challenge of managing the majority of the collection stored offsite.16 |
Contrasts with The National Archives (TNA) in the UK, which recognizes that archive services must manage 80–90% of their collection in secure, remote ‘split-site’ services, and provides extensive logistical guidance via the MAPLE network.16 |
| Opportunities | External trends and forces LAC can capitalize on | |
| Scaling AI for Workflow |
The established 22% efficiency gain from AI in ATIP processing can be aggressively scaled, with further investment, to tackle other resource-intensive administrative bottlenecks, such as the review of finding aids.18 |
The wider trend of AI adoption across the Government of Canada (GC) 19 and in NARA’s FOIA processing 3 provides clear pathways and capital justification for expanding these successful initial automation pilots. |
| International Benchmarking & Exchange |
LAC can leverage peer networks like the UK’s Major Archive Projects Learning Exchange (MAPLE) to acquire and implement best practices for capital development, logistics planning, and managing its split-site service risks.20 |
Allows LAC to mitigate the high operational risk of complex capital projects (like Ādisōke and Gatineau storage logistics) by adopting proven, internationally peer-reviewed methodologies.16 |
| Digital Capital Investment |
The high-profile, high-budget digital transformation targets set by peers (e.g., NARA aiming for 500 million digitized pages 9 and NLA’s HTR development 10) set a strong global precedent for requesting specific capital funding to close LAC’s existing digital discovery utility gap. |
This provides leverage to move beyond basic digitization to invest in sophisticated search architecture—the essential step needed to make LAC’s massive, growing digital collection intellectually accessible. |
| Threats | External risks and constraints that could jeopardize LAC’s mandate | |
| Indigenous Rights and Policy Lag |
Failure to rapidly implement the necessary rights-based Indigenous governance protocols risks reputational harm and legal challenges, as the global Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) movement advances, making LAC’s current policies structurally compromised by colonial concepts.12 |
The high policy maturity of Australia and New Zealand in this area 13 dictates that anything less than formal authority and co-governance protocols represents a high-risk policy deficit for LAC.22 |
| Digital Obsolescence |
The continuous evolution of peer discovery systems means LAC’s current search tools risk becoming functionally obsolete. This would make the national digital collection effectively inaccessible to modern researchers who rely on advanced, semantic search functionalities.9 |
The lack of investment in modern search architecture (a Weakness) is directly threatened by the pace of technological development among peers, accelerating the risk of intellectual isolation for LAC’s holdings. |
| Statutory Access Volume |
The volume of incoming government records—especially digital ones—continues to accelerate 23, posing a continuous threat to overwhelm LAC’s ATIP and processing capacity despite the use of AI.1 |
Requires continuous, massive, non-discretionary capital and human resource allocation simply to keep pace with the demand for records and manage the persistent backlog crisis, which is a global issue (e.g., Australia’s “slow and byzantine” FOI system).24 |
Remember, Gemini can make mistakes.
Can we look forward to reading LAC’s own evaluation soon after the end of this fiscal year?