It is rarely useful to make detailed predictions about technology. The direction of public records, however, has been steady for long enough that several observations can be made about where they are going, with reasonable confidence.

Public records will become more numerous. More transactions will leave a trace; more relationships will be reflected in some filing; more administrative interactions will create some entry that did not previously exist. The trend has been continuous for decades, and there is no apparent force that would reverse it.

Public records will become more easily joined. The work of connecting a record in one system to a record in another, which has been the labour of investigative journalism and commercial intelligence for years, is being automated. A name appearing in two places will increasingly be recognised as the same name automatically. A face in two photographs will be matched without anyone asking it to be.

Public records will become more deeply understood by software. The interpretation of what a record means, what it implies about its subject, and how it relates to other records about the same person, is now a function of capable models rather than human readers. The reading of the record is now done by machines, and machines read patiently and exhaustively.

Public records will not become less public. The pressures that have led to greater disclosure, in regulation, in litigation, in tax administration, in corporate governance, continue. The exceptions are narrow. The general direction is towards more record, more accessible, more cross-referable.

The implication for a person whose situation requires consideration is that the work cannot be a single exercise. The exposure of today is not the exposure of next year, and the exposure of next year is rarely smaller. The deliberate maintenance of a settled position is the only model that survives this trajectory.