The Government of Bermuda is working with an international decentralised storage network to upload and safeguard accessible public records for future generations.

A partnership between the Ministry for the Cabinet Office and Digital Innovation and Filecoin Foundation aims to enhance the “resilience, transparency and verifiability of critical public information”.

The Government said: “The initiative to upload government data to Filecoin is being carried out in collaboration with Internet Archive as part of the Democracy’s Library project — a free, open and online collection of government documents, research and publications from around the world.

“Filecoin Foundation and Internet Archive have previously partnered to safeguard a broad range of public data sets through Democracy’s Library.”

David Burt, the Premier and Minister of Finance, said: “Bermuda has long been committed to responsible innovation and forward-thinking governance.

“Partnering with Filecoin Foundation and Internet Archive strengthens the resilience of our public records and ensures that Bermuda’s citizens — and people around the world — can verify the integrity of our data.

“This initiative supports our broader vision for transparent public services built on trustworthy information.”

The move was designed to protect information by decentralising it, thus make it hard to steal in data breaches.

Filecoin has downloaded one petabyte of material — the equivalent of 2,000 years of MP3 music — since its inception.

Information scheduled to be uploaded includes employment and labour publications that record key trends in Bermuda’s labour market, with additional data sets planned.

A ministry spokeswoman said the records represented “critical components of Bermuda’s public archive” and would provide “a foundation for future digital governance initiatives”.

Filecoin is one of the world’s largest decentralised storage networks and distributes information across independent providers around the world rather than relying on a central provider.

Marta Belcher, the president and chairwoman of the Filecoin Foundation, explained that the modern day internet was centralised, with the majority of data being held by about three companies.

She said that created “single points of failure”.

Ms Belcher added: “On a decentralised version of the web, data remains accessible even if some devices fail, so that the availability of information isn’t dependent on any one server or company.

“This creates a more robust platform for humanity’s most important information.

“We’re thrilled to work with the Government of Bermuda to demonstrate how verifiable data can form the foundation for the next generation of digital public services.”

A government spokeswoman said that Filecoin replicated data across multiple providers and gave them “cryptographic content identifiers” that changed if data was altered.

She added that its work means files can be retrieved and independently verified, “confirming data integrity”.