asked Her Majesty's Government:

What key performance targets have been set for the National Archives executive agency for 2003–04.

The following list sets out the key performance targets I have set for the National Archives for 2003–04.

The National Archives

Key Performance Indicators 2003–04 ¹

Efficiency

KPI 1—Unit costs of key activities.

KPI 1A—Selecting and preserving the public records per metre: to ensure that the unit cost does not rise above £96.00.

KPI 1B—Giving access onsite: to ensure that the unit cost per information transaction with customers onsite does not exceed £9.90.

KPI 1C—Giving access online: to ensure that the unit cost per information transaction with customers online does not exceed £0.11.

KPI 2—Backlog of records in departments reported as being over 30 years old and awaiting review: to reduce the backlog, assessed in January 2003 as 2,165 metres, by 247 metres.

Quality of Service

KPI 3—The achievement of public service standards:

(A) to achieve the public service standard targets for the National Archives as follows:

(i) to make newly opened records and their catalogues available to users in accordance with specified time targets;

(ii) to answer 98.5 per cent of written correspondence within 10 working days;

(iii) to deliver 90 per cent of records requested by users for consultation in the reading rooms in accordance with specified time targets;

(iv) to supply 98.5 per cent of copy orders in accordance with the specified targets and standards;

(v) to answer 85 per cent of telephone calls within 20 seconds;

(vi) to keep 98.5 per cent of appointments which visitors have made with us within 10 minutes.

(B) to carry out three onsite satisfaction surveys and to achieve assessments of good or excellent from 90 per cent of those expressing a view; to carry out three online satisfaction surveys and to achieve assessments of good or excellent from 80 per cent of those expressing a view.

Income Generation

KPI 4—To increase revenue generated by commercial activity to £1,000,000.

Modernising Government

KPI 5—Electronic Records Management:

To support other government departments in achieving the government target for electronic records management by 2004 by:

(i) monitoring progress in departments against milestones and reporting to the Lord Chancellor, the e-Government sub-group and departments every six months and to others as appropriate to the level of action required;

(ii) targeting under-achieving departments and developing action plans to accelerate progress;

(iii) delivering a programme of workshops to support the action plans.

KPI 6—Electronic service delivery:

To develop digital access to popular records so that 60,000 digital record images are delivered to customers.

KPI 7—To raise an awareness of the NA's holdings among under-represented groups in our user profile by means of a rigorous social inclusion programme the chief components of which are:

(i) to make available 150,000 images online in four galleries as part of the Moving Here project;

(ii) to commence the first stage of the project to redesign PROCAT public interface screens in order to improve their usability, partly based on the finds of the usability evaluation exercise completed in 2002–03;

(iii) to broaden the ethnic, cultural and social mix of school groups visiting the National Archives by organising 10 workshops in partnership with the Tower of London and Cross River Partnership.

¹ More information on these and other key targets is published in the corporate and business plans.