Comparisons and advocacy

You certainly can store them on the disks for that amount of time. Being able to read them 30 years later may be a challenge however. See the following links

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/dvd-authoring/57995-shelf-life-burned-pressed-dvds.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13367398

But none of that information is Moodle related it is all about archiving technology which is a discipline in its own right.

Firstly, thank you so much for response Colin.

"Jeremy, you understand how ludicrous that requirement is don't you. Apart from the obvious space requirements, how many RTOs are going to be able to survive that long?  Agghhh another argument I lost... damnit."

Yep, but that's what we have to work with...! The main driving force for us to go electronic is purely because of the physical space requirements of paper records (we already have a room full of stacked filing cabinets and realisticly at the rate we are going we will need to hire new premises just for archiving).

"yes, Moodle backups can be stored on discs for the required time. Whether the technology will be available to read them is a completely different question."

Currently we don't have plans to burn data to disk. At this stage our intention is to maintain the data in multiple data backups: 2 onsite using HDD & 2 offsite.

"Are RTOs required to maintain the old technologies just to be able to read them or will the RTOs be constantly upgrading their archives to new technology standards to make sure that compatibility issues do not prevent access to that material to meet that expectation?"

My understanding is that there is a requirement to take 'reasonable steps' to make sure that the data is maintained, available and accessable for the 30 year period. So I guess that is still open to some degree of interpretation. That is one of my main reasons for wanting to use open source technologies. At least there would be possibility of hiring someone to extract the relevant data.

[re versioning of materials] "So I suggest that yes, Moodle does that and more."

Cool! But sounds like I'll need to have a play around and more in depth read of the documentation because I haven't been able to find any details about the specifics of that (eg how to output a diff).

[re VetTrak integration] "So the key from VetTrak's view is "if you want it, pay for it and we will give it to you"."

Yep, that's what I was afraid of... VetTrak seems like ok software but being an open source enthusiast it seems like everytime you want to do just one more little thing it costs you another $x upfront and ongoing extra $y per year. I have no issue paying for one or the other, but it seems rude to me to have to pay for both... Although I will admit that their support is fantastic.

"BTW, anyone thinking that there is too much regulation here in overseeing the training sector, please realize that where there is money to be made, the sharks will gather and corruption will grow. The introduction of a lot of this regulation wiped out the serious sharks pretty quickly and we can say that training in this country is getting better because of it. Qualifications actually mean something and not just in Oz."

Well put! You are absolutely right. There is a lot of money to be made and with the level of competition emerging it is clear that some providers would cut corners were there not the level of accountability required. And like you say, the quals are actually worth something and isn't that the point of training!?

Thanks again for your relevant and helpful input.