Summary of Mandatory Standards Consultation Sessions

Recently, we hosted our second round of consultation with key stakeholders, including public authorities, to gather feedback on:

• Mandatory Standard 1 – Make and Keep
• Guideline for Mandatory Standard 1 – Make and Keep
• Mandatory Standard 2 – Disposal
• Guideline for Mandatory Standard 2 – Disposal

Consultation closed on 16 May 2025.

We want to extend our appreciation to the 142 attendees representing 74 public authorities across various government sectors who attended and provided valuable feedback at the online sessions. During these sessions we used AHA platform to get live feedback and we gathered a total of 1838 interactive responses, including 1407 votes and 431 free-text responses.  This included feedback on example compliance indicators in the supporting Guidelines.

Importantly, public authorities provided feedback on the draft Mandatory Standards through our written survey, with 116 responses received. The feedback gathered throughout the consultation sessions and the survey is critical in helping shape Standards and Guidelines that are flexible, practical clear and achievable for Queensland public authorities.

Key Takeaways from consultation round # 2

While the data from the consultation sessions and feedback survey is still currently being analysed, we can share some preliminary findings.

• Support for Requirements and Sub Requirements

Early analysis shows that most public authorities support all the requirements and sub requirements in the draft Mandatory Standards.

Some comments were provided on:

• Mandatory Standard 1: Make and Keep for Requirement 3: Make accurate metadata about a public record 
• Mandatory Standard 2: Disposal in Requirement 3: Disposal is managed and accountable.

See Graph 1 below showing the level of support based on responses to our online survey.

Graph 1: Level of support for each requirement in Mandatory Standard 1 and 2 based on the responses to written survey by records and information management practitioners.

We are analysing the feedback and considering the need for any changes.

• Support for example compliance indicators

There was support for the concept of example compliance indicators in the supporting Guidelines. Example compliance indicators provide information about potential ways a sub-requirement or part of a sub-requirement may be met. However, example compliance indicators are not mandatory and there may be other ways in which a sub-requirement or part of a sub-requirement can be met.

• Support for the draft QSA Minimum Metadata Set

Public authorities supported the draft QSA Minimum Metadata Set proposed for inclusion in Mandatory Standard 1: Make and Keep (see Graph 2 below). This Metadata Set is one option public authorities can use to help meet Requirement 3: Make accurate metadata about a public record.

We’ll delve deeper into this feedback to determine whether we need to make any changes to the proposed QSA Minimum Metadata Set.

Graph 2: Feedback on whether specific elements should be included in QSA Minimum Metadata Set (included in the Guideline for Mandatory Standard 1 – Make and Keep) based on responses to the written survey by records and information management practitioners.

• Start date for Mandatory Standards

We asked your views about the proposed 1 April 2026 start date for the Standards and received many comments. We’re now considering that feedback to determine the start date.

• Training

The majority of public authorities have indicated a strong need for training to help prepare for the implementation of the Mandatory Standards.   

What’s Next? – Key Milestones

QSA is considering this feedback to refine the Standards and supporting Guidelines and help determine how to best support public authorities to implement the Standards. 

Our next expected key milestones are:      

📌September 2025: Further refining draft Mandatory Standards based on feedback

📌November 2025: Start regulation-making process for the Mandatory Standards

Stay Engaged!

If you missed out on attending a session, we have a recording of the draft Mandatory Standards consultation session available to watch on our News and events | For government | Queensland Government page. We encourage you to stay engaged and informed to prepare your public authority to implement the new Mandatory Standards. The best way to do this is to keep up with our correspondence, including mailouts and newsletters, as they provide current information and the latest updates as they occur.

It’s also important to ensure that your public authorities’ contact information is up to date with QSA. This ensures we can send correspondence to the appropriate Records and Information Practitioners within your public authority.

If you have any recent staffing changes or did not receive correspondence when you should have, please use our Senior Officer contact details and Contact details for official correspondence to submit contact information. These forms can be accessed at any time by anyone to submit updated contact details.