31st Annual Meeting of the Section of International Organizations
International Council on Archives (ICA / SIO)
11 – 14 October 2005 International Monetary Fund, Washington, D .C., USA
Some 22 participants and observers (Annex 1) attended the 31st Session of the
Section of Archivists of International Organizations which was held in Washington D.C.
11-14 October 2005. The meeting was hosted by the International Monetary Fund.
Apologies were received from seven members as well as from Mrs. Mary-Ann
Grosset, Treasurer who were unable to attend the meeting.
Adoption of the agenda: the participants took note of the proposed agenda and changes
with the additional presentation submitted from WFP just before the meeting. Planned
workshop has to be cancelled due to budgetary constraints. (Annex 2).
Report by the Chair: Bridget Sisk reported on activities since last meeting 2004.
ICA new Statute, proposed changes of SIO new Statute and the latest financial
issues were among the main topics of the report.
ICA Financial situation is critical because of fluctuated exchange rate of USD and
EUR. While members’ contributions are in USD, all membership fees are converted into
EUR as the ICA’s bank account is registered in Paris. Weakening of the USD against
EUR in the last two years resulted in a shortage of funds, which forced ICA to restructure
funding and transfer of contributions to sections. Even the professional programs,
supported or funded in the past by ICA, will not be available any longer. In the absence
of the treasurer, it was concluded that the Section’s expenditure would be put on freeze
for the next 12 months, while the Section’s bank account will remain active with rather
limited funds of 8,000 USD available as an ICA transfer in the past. Consequently, the
planned workshop for this Session had to be cancelled as there are no funds available.
Tom Connors – of ARMA said that the “new constitution of ICA allows more
freedom to sections. ARMA hosted a dinner with ICA which was in a good spirit with a
fruitful discussion, but with a clear recognition of a low financial situation”.
There are number of proposed projects from sections that ICA Secretariat
reviewed. ICA endorsed 64 of them, but they are not approved for implementation as
there is a shortage of funds. ICA will review and discuss all proposed projects on an
annual basis and will make recommendations for the new funding scheme.
ICA / SIO Statute: The proposed changes were discussed among members (Annex 3).
Membership: Milovan Misic, SIO Secretary, emphasized difficulties of keeping
membership up to date since there are several sources of membership information. ICA is
suppose to update membership list based on the annual contributions, but ICA’s list is not
always consistent with SIO membership list. Hence, as membership contributions are not
even partially transferred to sections’ accounts, there is a lost link between membership
contribution to ICA and the actual membership list held by the Section. There are also
numerous and frequent organizational changes among SIO members and in some cases
there were even three or more changes of responsible representatives in certain members’
organizations within the last calendar year only. The SIO Secretary will put additional
efforts to update the membership list and keep contact details up to date. The membership
list will be updated on SIO web site on a regular basis.
Tour de Table: This item remains among the most interesting items for many members.
It provides not only an update of the latest activities in certain organizations, but it also
gives an immediate cross reference to major activities throughout the Sections’
membership.
In brief here are some main activities from the individual reports:
IAEA – Leszek Pudlowski - Live Link software is in use, combined with the
implementation of two years old information security policy;
EBRD – Anne Cretal - Policy of records management approved. Workshops and
outreach program in place followed by a strategy for Resident offices. Implementation of
LiveLink from OpenText. Policy on access to the Archives under development;
The World Bank – Elisa Liberatori Prati - Proposal for the revision of the
archives policy. Migration from MINISIS to TRIM. Use of ISAD will take about 6 years
to accomplish coverage of all archives holdings. Policies and standards are followed by
monitoring program that includes an audit of the Director General’s Office and audit of
HR. No budget for missions to field offices. WEB Archives under establishment, but no
budget yet;
UNHCR – Montserrat Canela Garayoa - New policy on e-mail. LiveLink
implementation. Paper applying retention schedules – about 1km paper to be destroyed;
WHO – Kimberly Brenner - Current projects on records preservation program.
1.6 km of paper removed from offices with a plan to remove even more paper from
offices. Live link implementation with about 300 users. Organized induction training in
records management for newcomers;
UNESCO – Dieter Schlenker - New records management program established
last year. UNESCO history project;
WFP – Giorgi Konda - With 85 offices and 6 regional bureaus it is challenging
opportunity to put records management and archives system in place. Attempt to
implement ISO 1542 standard as a global records management and classification system;
WIPO – Milovan Misic reported that imaging, FAX server implementation and
email archiving projects are in progress;
NATO – Anne-Marie Smith - Road Map established towards Information
management excellence. Registry, archives and document management moving towards
new document management software. ISAD-G used for the current program with a 30
years rule for access, conditional upon a review by member nations. There are specifics
such as Canada and UK that are having freedom of information legislative rules. One
person is working on the appraisal and disposal and will have progress report soon;
UN HQ NY – Bridget Sisk - large effort to plan the legacy of international
tribunals through the internal working groups. Development of a Policy relevant to all
UN programs with the Office of Legal Affairs asking a development of disclosure policy.
Freedom of information act would be a presumption of the disclosure. Peace keeping
missions retention schedules under the development. Toolkit for field offices available;
ECB – represented by Roman Schremser, the organization is more interested to
hear experiences from other organizations as they are in a preparation of running major
activities in Records management and Archives in the foreseeable future. ECB is
planning to implement institution-wide EDRMS with 5 extra people in the Records and
Archives area. It should be a semi-decentralized setup. The main initiative was to engage
the E-learning, UK based distant learning University, for the initial education of existing
staff on board. Their new role will be to actually establish fully operational records and
archives system;
UNOG Geneva - Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert stated that the Archival
management system is evolving into a WEB oriented environment with the main goal to
provide an on-line access and retrieval of files and certain documents and to expand the
system with a description of additional collections from the archives. UNOG is currently
exploring a project of digitizing the archives. There were also several historical
exhibitions prepared by the UNOG Archives;
IADB - Tom Converse reported that there are some modifications of the
disclosure policy and that external access to the intranet is available to all staff. All the
official records and related material that is published on the Internet will be initially
entered into the repository within records management system by Hummingbird. There is
also a review of a revised job description for the position of the Archivist;
OECD – Jan Anno Schuur was representing the organization in the absence of
Mary-Ann Grosett. There is a successful implementation of electronic records
management using iRIMS both for paper and electronic records. There is also a space
management module in place, that provides information on physical location of boxes
and manage space within the repository. OECD experienced a flooding of the archives
storage with a successful recovery of most of the holdings;
WMO – following the retirement of the archivist, the WMO is still without a
professional representative at SIO, but Caifang Wang, a senior official of WMO,
represented the organization. The electronic records management was established four
years ago and is functioning without problems. However, there is a need for an update,
specially in the area of Archives;
ICTY – Jingwen Yang explained immediate plans for the archives. Records
management and archives policies were recently developed, published and records
officers are fully trained. There are also new relevant procedures in places. Hard copy
records were re-packed and procedures for transfers and accession are under
development. The work on substantive records is still in progress. TRIM software was
implemented in the archives. It is currently in the roll-out phase to all offices. It is
expected that TRIM will provide adequate support in document management as well.
The archives material is digitized through scanning. There is a substantial work on legacy
documents as ICTY is destined to a closure in the foreseeable future. There are issues on
future access to the records after the closure of the Tribunal. There are also regional
requests for transfer of records to relevant countries after the closure of the Tribunal.
Records might be transferred to local courts. ICTY has a massive collection of over 47
thousand audio and video tapes;
IMF – Michelle Dolbec provided an insight of what was another interesting year
in the IMF, especially in the historical archives. The archives is currently processing
material that covers holdings related to the Executive board between 1946-1988. The
material consists of an 18 thousand linear feet of backlog. There is a substantial work on
finding aids and digitization of Board documents. The Archives was relocated to the
Headquarters building with the enhanced security. A disaster recovery plan was updated
and job descriptions for all archivists and records mangers were reviewed.
Jean Marqou provided an introduction to the IMF records management activities with a
work on the IMF thesaurus as a part of the organization-wide records management,
covering some 24 different departments. In addition, there is a paper records management
program and a well established Vital records program that handles about 25-30 thousand
boxes. Electronic records management system is in the proof of concept phase with
Humingbird software;
ARMA - Robert Tillman of ARMA, as an observer, expressed the opinion that
ARMA could valuably contribute to the SIO activities in the future.
Four years work program: There were opinions from Tom Converse of IADB that we
should focus on a support of records management and archives practices within member
countries, thus providing training, donate equipment and coordinate national archives
activities in member countries. Sometimes this support could be low-tech and cost
effective preparation of presentations. Those activities would require only a moderate
engagement of records management professionals.
Bridget Sisk, in her capacity of SIO Chair, supported the idea since “the UN mission is to
help and provide support to member countries” therefore this could be an idea for thought
by SIO members. She added that SIO members should come forward with own proposals
for actions that would be included in the four year action plan.
The working group on access and the working group on history projects should continue
their work through the relevant focus groups.
Outstanding issues: The initiative on harmonizing retention policies on personnel files is
an outstanding activity that should be completed.
The initiative on a Guide on Electronic Records Management in international
organizations, headed by Ineke Deserno and Mary-Ann Grosset did not make any
progress. This activity might refocus on other related issues. There was a decision that
Anne Cretal will lead a survey on records management technical solutions within SIO
members. George Konda offered to develop a questionnaire for the survey.
UNOMARS: - Milovan Misic, the first Chairman of the group, reported some successful
and expanding activities on collaboration among UN agencies based in Geneva in the
area of records management and archives. As an initial introduction to records
management and archives practices, there were numerous meetings and presentations of
individual activities, organized for all records management and archives staff members.
(Details are available under the enclosed presentation – UNOMARS Report).
Presentations: This SIO session was rich with individual presentations. The following
list represents the contents of all presentations that are available on the SIO website as
electronic attachments to this report. The final day of the 31st SIO Session was hosted by
NARA and there was an organized tour of the National Archives' original facility in
downtown Washington.
The World Bank
– Elisa Liberatori Prati - Archives, Records, and Governance
World Bank 2000-2005
– The World Bank Archives Group – Country Offices and other development
organizations in Kenya
The National Archives of Ghana - C. A. Azangweo, Chief Archivist of Ghana –
Archives - Records Management, and Governance Issues in Developing Countries
WFP – George Konda – Electronic Records Management Program
UNOMARS – Milovan Misic – UNOMARS Report
UNESCO – Dieter Schlenker – UNESCO Records Management
NARA – Finette Eaton – ERA, Electronic Records Archives
Nelson Mendela Centre of Memory Initiative - David Wallace – “Memory for Justice”
Next meeting: The next meeting will be held in Greece at the beginning of October
2006. The exact dates will be confirmed with CEDEFOP that will host the meeting.