The National Archives is at a pivotal moment in it's history.

We've been a physical archive for 180 years and we're becoming a digital archive.

Now many of the kinds of challenges, questions that we're running into are things that we don't yet know how to do.

They're research questions, new ways in which we need to figure out how to preserve records, how to make them available.

Almost everything that we're doing as a digital archive gives rise to a research question.

Whether its how we preserve novel or more complex forms of digital object, particularly in the age of machine learning.

How do we use machine learning technologies? How do we preserve large-scale neural networks?

We're continually confronted by questions that mean we need to research our practice and our approach to delivering our work as an archive.

So to deliver our research programme, The National Archives needs to work with our established partners.

People particularly looking at things around digital humanities and how we make use of our digital collection.

But also reach out to people who archives perhaps haven't worked with so closely in the past.

People who are in computer science, but also in disciplines like mathematics.

Especially when we're looking to explore questions like uncertainty, how we manage probability in our data.

The maybes that are suddenly informing our world as a digital archive.

One of my great privileges as a civil servant was to have the opportunity to be the principal investigator for the Big Data for Law project.

And we were exploring really for the first time how we might apply large-scale data analytics techniques

To understanding how our system of law, the statute book as a whole operates and is evolving.

It gave us real insight, both in that particular sphere but also more generally about how we can apply big data approaches to a part of our collection.

We were very fortunate to win funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for that project.

And it really gave us the opportunity to do something that otherwise we wouldn't have had the chance to do.

The Traces through Time project was the first opportunity that we've had in the archive to explore the concept of probability.

And we were looking to try and identify the connections between people named in our catalogue.

But rather than be sure that this person is that person, we're just trying to get a likelihood. What's the percentage chance?

Now probability is one of our big research areas for the future and Traces through Time was a leg up into that world.

And has given us some really vital lessons. It's also allowed us to improve the service that we deliver to the public.

Through our Discovery service on our website, where if you find a record that lists a name you can go and find other records that relate to that person

Based on how likely it is that the name in the first record is the name listed in some of the other descriptions.

The ARCHANGEL research project is really breaking new ground for The National Archives.

We're looking at a very hot technology, blockchain, distributed ledger technology and how we might use it in the context of the digital archive.

We're working with people that we don't normally work with and exploring the cutting edge of digital archiving practice.

It's exactly the kind of research that we want to do more of in the years ahead and that we're going to need to if we're going to be successful as a digital archive.

ARCHANGEL is lead by the University of Surrey and its being funded by EPSRC, and its the first time we've been involved in a project that's been funded by EPSRC.

And we're really pleased to be working with academics who are specialising at the forefront of computer science.

And also looking at some of the economic questions, the sustainability of digital archiving, as part of that research project.

Research is really key to our work as a digital archive. Our Digital Strategy sets out the ambition for us to be a disruptive digital archive.

That means developing new ways of preserving, contextualising and presenting the digital record of government.

Research is absolutely crucial to our work as a digital archive, as we're breaking new ground and building our capability for now and the future.