Some government departments might be obligated to keep certain information under Recordkeeping legislation, and so they quite likely to have such a policy as part of their overall recordkeeping strategy but may or may not have somethign specifically for their public-facing website. An interesting example, though not meeting all of the things I’ve mentioned above, is the Australian government’s recommendations for decomissioning websites.

That’s a great example from the NLM! It’s something many web managers would be able to easily implement if they keep a content inventory, which would indicate the importance of each page.

“When planning a new website, dataset or service, in addition to deciding on purpose, standards and features, you could also include a statement about how you would -

* Distribute the data if you were no longer maintaining the site (using a LOCKSS principle, perhaps?)
* Migrate to future standards
* Ensure that your site is indexed in the Internet Archive (all pages and data, not just the index)
* Give people ownership of their data (if you’re running an online service where people store or save information) so they can get it out when they want, or own it if the site closes or the terms of service changes significantly (eg, in the instance of a buyout).”

I’d love to see some good examples, Fiona! Have you seen any of these statements posted publically?

I’ve seen indicators of age or permanence. For instance I’ve run across pages at the National Library of Australia which say something to the effect of “this is old content. we’re keeping it here so that others’ links don’t break.” (I can’t find an example at the moment.) And the (U.S.) National Library of Medicine marks pages with Permanence Levels as well as several dates: Last reviewed, Last updated, and First published.