School-Parent communication to be logged for posterity

Messages sent between teachers and parents on the schools’ Aula intranet should be archived for posterity, according to the Danish National Archives, which has signed an executive order that will store communications on Aula, according to Ekstra Bladet. The decision has put Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt (M) into the red zone. The Danish National Archives is an independent institution under the Ministry of Culture, so the minister was unaware of the planned project and said he reacted with “disbelief” when Ekstra Bladet called. “It’s a major invasion of privacy. That communication is between parents and the school,” he says.
     Engel-Schmidt does not see any great historical value in storing all data from Aula. On the contrary, it looks like a very expensive project with little social value, he says. The Danish National Archives assures that privacy will be respected. Only the children and their parents have the right to information about themselves from Aula until the material is 75 years old. However, it is possible to access the material for research purposes, but in those cases personal data will be anonymised. /ritzau/