Integrity in Government through Records Management

Essays in Honour of Anne Thurston

James Lowry, Justus Wamukoya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317115113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

As a celebration of Anne Thurston's pioneering work on records and archives management as an essential basis for demonstrating integrity in government, this excellent volume brings together scholars and practicing archivists to discuss key issues around records as evidence for accountability, transparency and the protection of citizens' rights. Never before have authors from the developing and developed worlds come together to explore the intersection of records management, public administration and international development. The book covers Thurston's work, the importance of records management for effective governance and digital records management and preservation in developing countries. Case studies from across Africa enhance the theoretical and practical perspectives taken by the authors. This book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in records management and good governance around the world.

PART I
Thurston and the International Records Management Trust

1

Anne Thurston and Record-keeping Reform in Commonwealth Africa

Nathan Mnjama

Introduction

Anne Thurston has spent more than 30 years seeking and developing solutions to the many challenges that face archives in Africa. I have had the privilege of working closely with Thurston over this time, as a colleague at the Kenya National Archives in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as her student at the School of Library, Archives and Information Studies in London, and as a professional colleague involved in the training of archivists and records managers. Her efforts over this period have initiated a much needed change for the better in the way that records and archives are managed and preserved.

Thurston’s involvement with African archives dates back to 1977, when the Kenya National Archives purchased the Africana collection of Joseph Murumbi, the second Vice President of independent Kenya. Thurston was hired by the Kenyan government to assist in the transfer of the collection from Murumbi to the custody of the Kenyan National Archives. Recognising her talents, the Kenyan government engaged Thurston, in August 1978, to lead a team of young Kenyan archivists in a survey of Kenyan manuscripts held in the United Kingdom. Thurston also led a similar mission to the United Kingdom in late 1979. The Kenyan government then wished to copy the records located through these surveys. Thurston, therefore, sought financial support from private sources to continue with the research on Kenya’s manuscripts in the United Kingdom. Her efforts culminated in the publication of the Guide to Archives and Manuscripts Relating to Kenya and East Africa in the United Kingdom.

Backlog Accumulations and Archival Underdevelopment in Africa

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions that Thurston has made to the development of archival services in Africa has been in addressing the backlog accumulations of government records. Cook defines backlog accumulations as ‘groups of papers which have been allowed to rest forgotten or unused in closed storage (or in extreme cases are discovered where they were not known to be) until they were entirely dead from the point of view of current administration’.¹ He suggests that backlog accumulations, which may include uncatalogued materials that have come to the repository in large consignments, or material that has been processed and described inadequately or to obsolete standards in the past, is a problem endemic to all archival work.

In many archival institutions, backlog accumulations are a result of several factors. A UNESCO study conducted by Fakhfakh identified several factors that contributed to the breakdown of archival services in Tunisia, namely: lack of laws governing archives management; absence of structures and services for the management of records and archives in the majority of government departments; lack of appraisal, filing and transfers of archives to the national archives; lack of a corps of trained archivists; and lack of space in the archives.² These factors are not unique to Tunisia. They equally apply to Commonwealth Africa, where the development of archival institutions generally took place relatively late, towards the end of the colonial period and soon after independence. As Musembi rightly observed, ‘Before the 1950s the colonial government in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika and Zanzibar did not show any serious attempt to set up proper archives services. In all these countries, colonialism was satisfied with sending the most vital records to Britain for preservation, destroying others or letting them just rot.’³ Faced with this situation, many of the newly independent nations began to establish archival services. In their quest to collect as much documentary material as they could gather, many archivists brought into their newly established archives huge masses of records, some of which were ephemeral in nature or of no value at all. All records from the colonial period were considered to have archival value. Many of these records ended up being poorly processed or have remained unprocessed to date.

Backlog accumulations have remained a major challenge to archivists in Commonwealth Africa due to staff shortages. Many archival institutions in the region remain understaffed, in most cases due to the unattractive remuneration offered for archives work. In 1996, this situation was summed up by the director of the Namibia Library and Archives Service when she said ‘The National Archives of Namibia is currently recovering from a very difficult period in its history. Following the tragic death of Chief Archivist Brigitte Lau in 1996 and the exodus of almost all professional staff between the years 1994–1998, Chief Archivist Joachen Kutzner had been left as the only professional to run the archives during the extremely demanding move to the archives’ new purpose-built premises in 2000.’⁴ Mazikana also observed that ‘there is an increasing attrition rate of trained professionals and technocrats who are leaving for what is perceived to be greener pastures. As we enter the new millennium we are therefore doing so with a diminishing pool of skills and expertise.’⁵ Many institutions have no trained professional records managers and, as such, records are not filed systematically. This becomes a major problem when records become due for transfer to archival institutions, as each file then needs to be appraised individually to determine its value. This process is costly and slow, resulting in huge accumulations in ministries and departments. Similar problems were reported by Thurston when she led a team of professional colleagues in a series of visits to African archival institutions in the mid and late 1980s.

Inadequate funding has also contributed to the accumulation of vast quantities of records in the region. It has been impossible for many archival institutions, the majority of which are located in capital cities, to visit outlying stations to inspect, appraise and advise on record-keeping. Moreover, delays and cumbersome procedures for the disposal of valueless records often lead to backlog accumulations in archives. It cannot be overstated that public records cannot be disposed of without proper authorisation, even if they are of little or no value, but the delay in authorising the disposal of records has led to the accumulation of records in archival institutions. Finally, inadequate storage facilities or lack of space in national archives have been a major constraint in the collection of archives in the region. Many archives buildings have not experienced any expansion since their opening, while other archives have remained in temporary accommodation since independence.

Anne Thurston and the Study Tours to Africa

In 1986, Thurston and Kelvin Smith, from the then Public Records Office (now the National Archives of the United Kingdom), made extensive tours to nine of the national archives in eastern and southern Africa on behalf of the School of Library, Archives and Information Studies, University College London. The purpose of their visit was to assess current training needs in each region, in order to develop a syllabus that took full account of local needs.⁶ At the end of their mission, they came to the conclusion that:

Development in the region is very varied, from the long established and highly developed institution in Zimbabwe to those facing severe difficulties, notably the Uganda National Archives … In many cases the archives are operating with limited resources, which make effective development difficult, if not impossible. For the most part they are understaffed for their duties, and in some cases the salaries are so low commensurate with the responsibilities that it is difficult to retain staff. In some cases as in Tanzania, staff numbers have been cut back drastically due to inflation. Over half the archives are under-equipped. Tanzania, Zanzibar, Lesotho, Uganda and Zambia have no working microfilm equipment … Lesotho, Uganda and Botswana have no vehicles of their own, while Tanzania’s and Zambia’s vehicles are in serious state of disrepair. Almost none of Archives have working facilities for fumigating documents, and only Zimbabwe has a fully operative conservation unit.⁷

A similar study was also undertaken to the western African region in 1988.⁸ One of the results of the visits to West Africa was the organisation of the Ghanaian workshops, which are described below.

The Workshops and Archival Development in Commonwealth Africa

Faced with the problems outlined above, many of the African archival institutions were becoming ineffective and needed assistance. Thurston was one of the first to realise the challenges faced by archivists in Commonwealth Africa. Thurston realised that a new approach to the problem of backlog accumulations was needed as the large quantities of unprocessed records could not be addressed single-handedly by archival institutions operating with limited financial resources, understaffed and, in most cases, with inexperienced staff. She began to mobilise resources in order to bring working teams together to deal with these backlog accumulations. The workshop approach, as formulated by Thurston in the early 1980s, consisted of teams of professionally trained archivists, records managers and clerks drawn from the national archives and relevant ministries or departments, sorting, arranging, appraising and describing records held in the stores or deposited at the national archives. The sections that follow describe the manner in which some of these workshops were organised and the results that they achieved.

The Zanzibar Workshops

The first workshop was held in Zanzibar in 1984. The idea of organising workshops can be traced back to 1983, when Thurston, with Mr John Walford, Principal Assistant Keeper at the UK Public Record Office, and Miss Allyson McDermont, a professional paper conservator, visited Zanzibar. Since 1832, the island had served as the capital for Oman Arabs, and some Western powers, including America, had opened consulates there as early as 1844. Many valuable records were known to be held there. However, the storage conditions under which these records were held had become a concern for archivists and records managers in the region, as well as international organisations. The Royal Geographical Society, which had played a major role in the exploration of East Africa, was anxious to see that the records in Zanzibar were preserved for posterity. The Society, therefore, funded a fact-finding mission by the three specialists, who visited the island in 1983.⁹ Their report to the Society made it clear that urgent measures were required in order to salvage some of the oldest records in the East African region. This led to the decision to organise the first East African workshop in 1984. The workshop drew participants from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The records at the National Archives of Zanzibar were put in order, and the records of the Ministry of Education were also processed. An air-conditioning plant was obtained as a gift and installed, the records were cleaned, re-boxed, shelved and order was brought to records that were once very disorganised.¹⁰ A new beginning had been made in the preservation of records in East Africa. The Zanzibar government, encouraged by the results of the workshop, invited the team to organise another workshop, and Thurston raised the necessary money.

The second Zanzibar records and archives management workshop took place in 1985 and had a strong conservation element. Work on processing the records held in the national archives continued and the sultan’s manuscript library was catalogued. During the two workshops, McDermont’s paper conservation students joined the team and assisted in the repair of documents. The Zanzibar government was more determined than ever before to ensure that the gains that had been made were consolidated through staff recruitment, training and additional budgetary provisions. The Zanzibar workshop demonstrated that a regional approach was a highly effective way of addressing backlog accumulations, for results were easily noticed and made an immediate impression on the government. The approach developed for the Zanzibar workshop was to be given a new impetus during the West African regional workshops.

The West African Workshops

In January 1988, a team of three specialists visited five West African states, namely Senegal, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. The team included Thurston, who was by then the co-ordinator of the Masters programme in Overseas Archives and Records Management at University College London, Ms Anne Morddel, a records management consultant, and Mr Nicholas Cox, then Principal Assistant Keeper at the Public Record Office. While visiting these countries, the team held discussions with senior government officials and professionals.¹¹ Two things emerged as a result of their meetings. Firstly, there was a need to restructure the course at University College London in order to make it more meaningful and relevant for students from developing countries. Secondly, there was an urgent need to solve the many records management problems the study tour had identified. The East Africa workshops had shown that workshops could bear great results within a limited time. Thurston, therefore, sought to apply the workshop concept developed in Zanzibar in western Africa.

The Gambia Workshops

The first West African country to host a workshop on the management of current and semi-current records was the Gambia, in April 1989. The National Archives of the Gambia had been established in 1967 and a records centre was created in the 1970s. However, when the government needed the land occupied by the record centre, the files were removed and placed in a building far from the government complex. Due to a lack of security surrounding this building, vandals stole the glass from the windows and removed papers from the files, leaving the files scattered on the floor of the building. The building then fell further into disrepair.¹²

Participants in the first Gambian workshop included 12 Gambians drawn from the national archives and the registries of the participating ministries (namely Health, Environment, Planning, Agriculture and the Personnel Management Office), personnel from Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, staff and post-graduate students from University College London and a records centre expert from the United Kingdom; Thurston raised the money for the workshop. The team salvaged 50,000 files from the old building. The files were sorted and appraised and those of enduring value were listed and transferred to the national archives. The registries of the participating ministries were also cleared of all their semi-current records. These were processed and transferred to a records centre, which had been set up during the workshop. The Banjul Records Project, as it was then called, proved that the successes witnessed in Zanzibar could be repeated elsewhere in Africa. So encouraging were the achievements that the Gambian government decided that another workshop should be organised in order to process the records of the remaining ministries. The Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers (ACARM), which Thurston had helped to establish, accepted the challenge and decided to organise another workshop in the Gambia in March 1990. Again, Thurston raised the money.

Thurston, working with ACARM, invited participants from several Commonwealth countries, including staff and post-graduate students from University College London, the Department of Library and Archival Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, and professional archivists from Botswana, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. During the workshop, approximately 25,000 files ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: Integrity in Government through Records Management
• PART I THURSTON AND THE INTERNATIONAL RECORDS MANAGEMENT TRUST
• PART II COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL RECORD-KEEPING
• PART III RECORDS, GOVERNANCE AND TRANSPARENCY
• PART IV DIGITAL RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION
• PART V REFLECTIONS
• Tabula Gratulatoria
• Index