• National Archives Director General Dr. Nadeera Rupesinghe on the new National Policy on Archives and Records Management

Today (9) is International Archives Day, which marks the beginning of International Archives Week (9-13 June). This year’s theme ‘#ArchivesAreAccessible’ is especially relevant to Sri Lanka for two key reasons. Firstly, there is a misconception that the archives at the National Archives are not accessible to the public. Secondly, the National Policy on Archives and Records Management, recently passed by the Cabinet of Ministers, stresses the principle of accessibility.

To better understand the functions of the National Archives, the importance of accessibility, and the need for capacity building, The Daily Morning spoke to National Archives Director General Dr. Nadeera Rupesinghe.

Following are excerpts from the interview: 

Let’s begin with what the National Archives does. Can you tell us about its main functions?

The National Archives is in charge of archives and records management (ARM) in Sri Lanka. We also manage the legal deposit of all publications. Usually, a National Archives only deals with ARM and does not deal with the legal deposit of publications. But this is a historical legacy we have inherited, which we are now trying to transfer to the National Library, which should be handling it. The laws are in the process of being revised, so that we can concentrate fully on ARM.

You can divide our functions into two main areas: Preservation and access. They are interconnected, because it is only when you ensure that a record is preserved that you can give access to it. Fundamentally, a record must also be created in the first place and maintained. We preserve with the sole purpose of providing access, because people need access to the information in those records, which are of continuing or enduring value. So, preservation and accessibility are key functions of the National Archives.

In the National Policy on Archives and Records Management, recently passed by the Cabinet of Ministers, you will see certain other principles as well, such as transparency, accountability, and integrity – these are vital for the proper functioning of a National Archives.

The policy deals with archives and records management in general and is not focused primarily on the National Archives. We encourage not only the public sector, which will mandatorily have to follow the policy, but also the private sector to follow the policy.

In a nutshell this is what we do, but what does it mean for the people? It is about protecting the right to information of the people already guaranteed by the constitution. This is why the National Archives of a country is fully sponsored by the State. And the costs are tremendous. They cost a lot of public money – that is the taxpayers’ money.

But that information is vital to protect accountability and the identity and memory of the people. That is our vision. We try to achieve it by protecting private and public records and archives for their evidential and information value.

What is considered a record or an archive?

Records are created in the course of carrying out your duties in an institution or as a private person. You record actions, decisions, and transactions. You as an individual create your personal records, which, if taken in by an archival institution one day, can become archives.

The criteria to maintain an archival repository or archives at a certain level is usually demarcated in certain ways. Not everybody can have an archive – you may not necessarily be able to call your collection at home an archive, because it can be argued that there are certain criteria like preservation standards and trained personnel.

And it’s not necessarily true that it’s only the National Archives that can maintain archives. There can be private archives and there are private archives in Sri Lanka. They have organised themselves in such a way that you can quite plausibly say that they are maintaining archives, but we would like them to come under the umbrella of the national policy and follow our guidelines. 

Keep in mind that it is illegal to take private records that are older than 50 years out of the country without the consent of the National Archives. It is tragic if information and evidence is lost to the country in that way. And for records of potential value that are not yet 50 years old, we encourage consultation with the National Archives to determine the best preservation decisions.

How important was accessibility in the policy?

The national policy for me is a breakthrough, because we have stressed the principle of accessibility. This is something that is greatly misunderstood in Sri Lanka. It was very enriching to engage in discussions surrounding that – we received written submissions from the public and then held a public hearing. It was eye-opening to have a discussion on the need for accessibility, to stress accessibility – that is the very purpose of maintaining an archives.

Today (9) marks International Archives Day, and it is significant that the theme for this year as assigned by the International Council on Archives (ICA) is #ArchivesAreAccessible. The National Archives of Sri Lanka has held institutional membership of ICA since 1964.

It has been said that if you have archives and you can’t look after them, if they are in a very bad condition and deteriorating day by day and you can’t do anything about it, then you should give it to somebody who can do something about it, which is of course something very controversial to say. But you should be doing your level best to look after it and raise the preservation standards of your collection.

On the other hand, even if you have done the conservation, restoration, and preservation work and have state of the art infrastructure, climate control, etc. but you’re not giving it out for people to use, that is a big problem as well. If it is an open record that is not confidential, you are bound by the National Archives Law (No. 48 of 1973) to give access to any person.

It’s a closed or confidential record only if the two parties involved – the donor and the donee – agree in writing that some records are to be kept confidential for a certain period. Even then, it’s not a ban on access, and only means that you need permission from the donor.

There has been a misconception for a very long time that the archives at the National Archives are not accessible. People don’t know that they have a right to come here and refer open archives and that that right is actually protected by the constitution and further protected by the Right to Information Act and the National Archives Law.

Inventories of the records that have been handed over to the National Archives must be to an international standard. It’s when we make the inventory – we also call it a finding aid or catalogue – to a proper standard that people can then access the information. So, it’s not only about scanning everything and putting records online, it’s also about the searchability of the database.

Now with handwriting text recognition and artificial intelligence (AI), creating that metadata can become easier up to a point, but it still requires intensive commitment.

You mentioned the creation of records. What role does the National Archives play on that front?

One important aspect about the new policy is the duty to record. The duty to record has been identified as a necessity in other countries that introduced freedom of information legislation, where they found that public servants stopped recording decisions, actions, transactions, and policies.

When you introduce freedom of information legislation, public servants realise they are now accountable to the people and will have to account for their actions and report them to the people. The public is going to demand information, so then, public servants stop writing down decisions or start writing down as little as possible. When that happens, there won’t be records that are created and if there are no records created, there won’t be an archive.

That’s why some countries have taken steps to stress the duty to record – that public servants have an obligation to record decisions, actions, and transactions. The Universal Declaration on Archives states that archives record decisions, actions, and memories.

We have introduced provisions for the duty to record in the proposed new law as well, which if passed will require regulations to be passed on how public servants have to maintain records. The creation of records is where it starts. You need to contemporaneously create records in order to make sure that our history, day-to-day actions, transactions, and decision making is preserved for the next day.

Why is it important to manage records properly?

We say in public records management training that maintaining and managing your records in a systematic manner is vital for the day-to-day operations of the office. Public servants spend so much time looking for information – just imagine how much time you spend on your computer looking for information when you haven’t organised all your folders properly.

Studies conducted abroad have found that office workers spend an inordinate amount of time looking for their records. If you have five people working in an office and if on average one person looks for documents for 1.5 hours a day, that’s 7.5 hours per week – almost an entire working day. It’s like one person out of five people didn’t even come to work that whole day. The service that he could have rendered is completely lost to the business or the institution.

This is often what happens if you don’t properly maintain your records. You waste a lot of time. To avoid this, it is crucial that you have an approved records retention schedule, which is stressed in the policy.

A retention schedule is also sometimes called a disposal schedule or a records retention and disposal schedule (RRDS). Making a retention schedule is vital and it is already in our existing law – in the National Archives Law (No. 40 of 1973) under Section 16, which states that only the minister in charge of the National Archives can issue in the Gazette what needs to be permanently preserved in a public institution and what can be destroyed. Even the Director General of the National Archives cannot approve the destruction of a record. It has to be approved through a proposal presented to Parliament by our minister, which is vital for accountability, transparency, and the proper management of information in the public sector.

Unfortunately, although those legal provisions exist, we have in the past issued only three retention schedules; one for court records (issued in 1979), one for district secretaries or kachcheris (issued in 1980), and another one which is called the General Records Schedule (issued in 1984).

Sometimes the stories you hear are tragic. People go looking for information in so many places and they can’t access that information. Most of the time, most of the information is there, but because of poor management of records, the officers cannot find the records. If you have an approved retention and disposal schedule, then the head of the institution is authorised to dispose of records accordingly, ensuring they keep it for the minimum period.

Keeping it for longer is not advisable. It is natural to be afraid to destroy records even if it has been authorised. It’s like that in any country. But if you don’t destroy it when possible, you will keep it stocked up somewhere and it keeps piling up. Eventually your entire records management system breaks down because you can no longer concentrate on what you need to keep.

If you had reduced the piles and the number of records, you could focus on the vital records that you do need to preserve and those that have been earmarked for transfer to the National Archives.

We may recommend destruction after a certain number of years usually because the information in that record is either duplicated elsewhere or is of no use anymore. Sometimes there’s information that is summarised and included in other records which are then sufficient for permanent preservation.

The creation of a retention schedule is vital in order to ensure that public institutions can get their records in order. This requires a complete system change because it is something completely new for public servants in Sri Lanka, and we’ve been conducting online training since March on how to start drafting a retention schedule.

Do we have the resources for digital record keeping?

Now that the Government is very keen on the digitalisation of public services, we need to stress that in developing electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS), you have to ensure that the archiving requirements are met for the retention and disposal of digital records. 

If you are making a database or a document management system, usually there is automated retention, but that retention has to follow our retention schedules, which are format-neutral. They apply to records created in any format, such as paper, ola leaf, digital, or audiovisual.

You need to also make sure that you are creating the digital record in the correct format to hand over to the National Archives so that we can preserve it. This is why it’s very important that the National Archives is consulted when you are creating a document records management system to ensure that the digital records retention and permanent preservation requirements are met.

The other thing about digitalisation is that you need to be ready to meet the preservation requirements within your organisation, such as having at least three backups and using software that can maintain the integrity of a digital file.

This is a big challenge, as maintaining a data centre is almost impossible for a small department like ours.

How has the RTI Act impacted records management?

When the Right to Information Act was introduced in 2016, it superseded the National Archives Law and public institutions couldn’t destroy records as they were doing under the General Records Schedule from 1984.

The RTI Act has a section on records management, which states that all records must be kept for a minimum of 12 years since the date of creation, if they were created after the RTI Act came into effect. So, the RTI Act came into effect in February 2017, and a record created after that date needs to be kept for a minimum of 12 years since the creation of the record.

If it was created before the RTI Act came into effect, it has to be kept for a minimum of 10 years after the Act came into effect. 

Unfortunately, this section was misinterpreted in two ways. One, that the minimum retention periods were an authorisation to destroy records after those periods have passed, which it is not. Second, that the provision referred to 10 years since the creation of the record, but that is not what the Act says.

The minimum period is not an authorisation to destroy. The RTI Act only gives you a mandatory minimum period to keep the record, but it is in no way an authorisation to destroy.

It’s only the National Archives Law which can provide an authorisation for destruction. It’s the only law that mentions the legal destruction of public records in general. All this is important because without legal authorisation to dispose of records, you cannot manage your records effectively, which in turn affects access to information in the public institution.

And it also affects us at the National Archives when those records have to be permanently transferred to us.

It’s chaos if they haven’t been maintained properly, which is why we come in at the point of the creation of a record. If at the point of creation or even before you create a record, you don’t follow the guidelines issued by the National Archives, then records management in your institution can potentially collapse.

Why is ARM a field a lot of people haven’t studied in Sri Lanka? Is it the lack of opportunities?

I think it’s because universities don’t offer any coursework, which is what we are trying to change.

In the entire South Asian region, you see a dearth of coursework in the field, and that has affected Sri Lanka very badly. It is most fortunate that the chairperson of the committees to draft the policy and the new law, Nigel Nugawela, has postgraduate qualifications from London and many years of experience in ARM. We were also very fortunate to obtain the expertise of other members such as Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, Piyatissa Ranasinghe, Yamuna Ranawana, and Ravindra Priyantha Lal.

We produced a comprehensive framework legislation that was hailed as potentially a model law by international experts. The policy was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in April this year, and the framework legislation has been sent to the Legal Draftsman to draft as a bill. I am grateful to the support of the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious, and Cultural Affairs for facilitating a highly transparent and consultative process from its inception in 2022 and to the Minister Dr. Hiniduma Sunil Senevi for his continuing support.  

We have very few people trained in records management in Sri Lanka, so capacity building in the public sector requires the special attention of the government. For that reason, the national policy has also highlighted the need for trained professionals, so that we can have trained records management officers in public institutions.

We want to prioritise courses in universities and are currently working with a university to introduce ARM coursework. If it goes through, it will be the first course ever in ARM in Sri Lanka, as we’ve only had library science courses where they teach you one module or so of the subject. My staff and I were reviewing our plans for the celebration of 125 years since our inception in 2027, and it was they who pointed out to me that one of the most significant achievements to mark the anniversary would be the start of ARM coursework in Sri Lanka for the first time. I couldn’t agree more.

‘The policy sets out a course of much needed action’: Nigel Nugawela

The committee to formulate a National Archives and Records Management Policy was chaired by archivist Nigel Nugawela and comprised Dr. Nadeera Rupesinghe, Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, Piyatissa Ranasinghe, and Ravindra Priyantha Lal. The same members, with the addition of Yamuna Ranawana, formed the committee to formulate a National Archives and Records Management Bill.

Of the national policy, Nugawela said: “Following approval by the Cabinet of Ministers, Sri Lanka now has a National Policy on Archives and Records Management that very clearly sets out a course of much needed action. In addition to the urgency of responding to the crisis in records management, some of the key strategic areas outlined include new legislation on archives and records management, which is currently with the Legal Draftsman’s Department, the drafting of comprehensive records management guidance, the creation of retention schedules and, quite crucially, the introduction of a specialised qualification in archives and records management.”

“The successful implementation of this National Policy will ensure that the Sri Lanka National Archives has the necessary resources to effectively exercise its powers and functions as the apex institution for archives and records management in the public sector and that the country’s evidentiary infrastructure is systematically managed and preserved, thereby strengthening accountability, safeguarding the rights of peoples, ensuring efficient administration, and even supporting current and future processes that aim to remedy the harms of the past,” Nugawela added.