Of course, the closure of the design department and disposal of the costume collection have been major issues. But the larger tasks of safeguarding historic artifacts and building and maintaining the program archives are ongoing. In fact, they are huge and will require considerable strategic thinking if a satisfactory resolution is to be found.
In most of the developed world, responsibility for broadcast heritage is shared between private and public institutions. For the information of the committee, we have deposited with the clerk a summary of the processes used in a number of countries, which you may find to be of interest for your review. We'll just mention a few here.
Last December, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision opened a new building to house its broadcast museum and three extensive program archives to preserve and make accessible some 700,000 hours of its culturally significant programming. This operation is a joint venture of the Dutch government with national broadcasters and private corporations. In 2005-06, Australia's National Film and Sound Archive, a Commonwealth government organization with a budget of $52.1 million annually and hundreds of staff dedicated to preserving Australia's electronic media, in addition to the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, maintained a program archive for its own use but worked in conjunction with NFSA in building the national collection.