The Dutch Archives Act and the future of public video

On January 1, 2027, the new Dutch Archives Act (Archiefwet) will come into effect. Earlier this year, the Dutch Senate approved the legislation, marking an important shift in how government information must be managed and preserved in the digital age.

One of the most significant changes is the reduction of the transfer period for permanently preserved information from 20 years to 10 years. This means public information must become sustainably accessible much sooner.

What’s particularly interesting is that government information no longer exists only in documents, PDFs, or databases. Increasingly, it exists in video as well.

Video has become part of the public record

Government organizations increasingly communicate through video, including public meeting recordings, campaign videos, public service announcements, interviews, press moments, and many other forms of public communication that now fall within the scope of digital archiving.

As video becomes part of the digital public record, long-term accessibility and preservation become critical considerations. A video published today must still be understandable, exportable, and archivable years from now.

Publishing video is not the same as preserving it

Looking at the current video platform market, we see that many platforms are built for distribution and engagement, but not for long-term accessibility or digital preservation. That creates practical risks:

• Videos become dependent on proprietary platforms
• Metadata is difficult to retain or export
• Source assets are fragmented or inaccessible
• Hosting locations are unclear
• Tracking and advertising infrastructure become embedded in public communication
• Organizations lose control over how content can be archived or migrated

For public information, those risks carry long-term consequences.

Government organizations increasingly need to ensure that digital information remains accessible, transferable, transparent, and sustainably available over time. That includes video and everything connected to it.

Sustainable archiving requires more than storage

The new Archives Act is designed to reduce these risks by giving organizations more control over how public information is managed, preserved, and accessed over time.

That includes control over:

• Where information is stored
• How it remains accessible
• Which metadata is preserved
• How assets can be exported
• How information moves into existing archival workflows

For video, that means organizations need more than just a video player. They need access to the underlying structure of the content itself, including original video files, transcripts, subtitles, thumbnails, audio assets, and metadata connected to publication and accessibility.

Without those components, a video may still play, but important context can disappear over time.

How Mave supports digital archiving workflows

The responsibility for complying with the Dutch Archives Act and web archiving regulations always remains with the organization itself. Mave does not replace that responsibility.

What Mave does provide is the technical foundation to help organizations keep video content sustainably available and compatible with existing archiving processes.

Published videos remain available in their original quality throughout the lifetime of the account. Associated assets, including subtitles, thumbnails, transcripts, audio files, and other metadata, are also retained and accessible.

This helps preserve not only the video itself, but also the surrounding context and accessibility information that give public content long-term value.

Support for harvesting and export

Mave also allows published video files and related assets to be harvested and exported.

This enables organizations to include video content within:

• Existing web archiving workflows
• E-depot systems
• Internal archival environments
• Long-term digital preservation processes

The result for public organizations is greater independence from video ecosystems, while keeping information portable and manageable regardless of which platform was originally used to publish it.

The future of public video is about durability

The new Archives Act is not simply about storing information longer, but about ensuring that public information remains accessible, understandable, transferable, verifiable, and durable over time.

For video, that requires infrastructure designed for long-term control, portability, and preservation. That is exactly why Mave is built around open access to video assets, exportability, and European control over data and infrastructure.

As public communication becomes increasingly digital, the way governments manage and preserve video will become a critical part of modern information governance.

More information about available video assets and export capabilities: https://www.mave.io/docs/sources/