Records, Computers, and Resources: A Difficult Equation for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Computerization has led to rapid and dynamic changes in the way organizations operate, and the strategies adopted for integrating and managing paper and electronic records are changing over time as well. The world's wealthiest nations are investing substantially in electronic records management programs; developing countries do not have the resources to do so. However, ongoing research and development must produce methodologies that are accessible and affordable to developing nations. If records are to survive and be useful in supporting the functions of a public organization, ensuring the rights of citizens, and preserving a cultural record of the past, then records professionals in developing countries need to be engaged in the global discussion of how best to capture, manage, and preserve computerized information over time.

This article focuses on the issues for managing public-sector electronic records in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa. Its key objective is to raise awareness and encourage further dialogue so that all records managers may better understand the common problems experienced around the world. Many of the issues identified are similar to those faced throughout the developing world and by institutions with little funding in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Insights are drawn from working with national governments and educational institutions throughout sub-Saharan Africa, including those in Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

The first section presents a high-level overview of the main problems with computerization and the management of electronic records commonly found in the public sector in Commonwealth Africa. The opinions expressed are based on one author's experience working as a records management consultant and researcher in the region. Short case studies from the other authors provide perspectives from both an operational point of view (the National Archives of Namibia) and from the standpoint of an educational institution (the Archives and Records Management Department at Moi University, Kenya).

Intentionally, the authors do not attempt to offer advice for solving the issues raised. The expectation is to define the problem more clearly and lead to broader discussion, recognizing that technology alone will not solve any problems, but that the solutions must be integrated within the social, institutional, and policy context. This recognition applies to situations found in every country in the world. The challenge, therefore, is not to find solutions that can be implemented by programs with unlimited resources. Rather it is to identify strategies that address situations where capacity and infrastructure are limited -- but where the need still exists.

Information and Communication Technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the last 20 years, much of the developed world has been transformed by what are now termed information and communication technologies (ICTs). African governments, like others elsewhere, are eager to implement technological solutions as part of their programs to demonstrate accountability to citizens, the courts, and the legislature as well as to improve efficiency. ICTs are seen as a significant means of accelerating development and promoting economic growth.

In sub-Saharan Africa, financial functions are often the first to be computerized. Integrated financial management systems, integrated personnel and payroll systems, debt management systems, and systems to collect revenue from customs and excise comprise the key systems. Apart from these large strategic systems, databases are often developed to assist essential government services such as passport control and vehicle licensing.

Developing country governments are coming under increasing pressure by the donor aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to improve services to citizens. Therefore, in addition to implementing database projects, many public-sector institutions are beginning to initiate e-government projects. Yet most are only at an early stage of modest use of the Internet to post information about themselves for the benefit of citizens and business partners. The reality is that a great many of these computer initiatives have failed.

These failures are the result of

* an idealistic determination for self-reliance on the part of the public service

* a simple lack of economic or human resources to acquire and utilize ICTs

* the lack of telecommunications infrastructure to support them

In most cases in sub-Saharan Africa, public-sector ICT projects are funded by international or bilateral donor aid money. External consultants and aid agency advisers largely drive the project design and implementation. As a result, little regard often exists for institutional structures and responsibilities. Given the circumstances described previously, it is not surprising that many, if not most, ICT projects fail in the Commonwealth sub-Saharan region. According to a survey on government and the Internet, approximately 85 percent of all public-sector ICT projects anywhere in the world are failures (Ramsey 2000).

In developing countries, government ministries, departments, and agencies are often advised to passively adopt standard ICT products that have been developed in industrialized countries and which can be employed immediately. Successful use of ICTs, however, requires much more than the mere installation and application of new hardware and/or software. In addition, it requires the use of implied knowledge of the organization along with management of the technology and its application to the environment in which it is used.

This implied knowledge suggests accumulated experience from the use of previous technologies over time. New ICT implementations are often unsuccessful where an organization lacks the knowledge accumulated by previous experience. Because it is common for much of the work to be done by consultants, implied knowledge is lost when the consultant leaves. In cases where civil service counterparts are trained to run the system, they more often than not leave to work in the private sector soon after the project is completed. Wages in the public service are simply too low to retain competent, qualified staff.

The high failure rate of many strategic ICT systems means that when systems are abandoned, a great deal of data and records are cast off. This record loss leaves gaps in organizational data and records. For example, financial management systems are a focal area for computerization initiatives. Older government accounting systems written in COBOL and other mainframe languages are rapidly being abandoned in favor of commercially available networked integrated financial management systems. As new systems are adopted, the older data is left to deteriorate. No efforts are made to maintain access to these electronic records even though financial regulations may require that the information still be available for a specified period.

When governments implement ICT projects, they need to consider whether the records created by those systems and the systems they replace are required for accountability and statutory purposes. They need to ensure that they have the capacity to maintain these records and to access them as evidence for as many years as they are required.

Computerization and Recordkeeping

Introducing ICT solutions under present conditions in developing countries increases the vulnerability of official and public records. External consultants and government ICT staff often ignore the statutory obligation of the national archives to manage records whether they are paper-based or electronic. Moreover, records staff have difficulty providing meaningful advice because they often are not given computer training to use computers and have seldom thought through the requirements for keeping records electronically.

Electronic records are entirely dependent upon technology both for their creation and their storage. As a result, they must be managed over time in a computerized environment. Although governments in industrialized countries have invested heavily in research programs to address these issues, no comprehensive technical solution has yet been found. Basic strategies are emerging that include refreshing storage media and migrating data. However, common methods for operating computerized recordkeeping systems, if they are even known, are not being practiced fully or consistently in developing countries.

Comprehensive, practical training in the management of electronic records is not available in the region. Records staff who receive training in North America and Europe return with skills that are considered rare and therefore highly marketable in the private sector. As a result, those staff seldom remain in the public service. Institutional budgets cannot sustain memberships in foreign professional associations, and national archives often do not have Internet connections necessary to obtain materials.

Despite the realities in African governments, ICTs will continue to flow into institutions and therefore cannot and should not be ignored. What is required is the ability to take an informed view of (1) exactly which records are being created that must be kept electronically and then (2) consider realistic approaches to maintaining them.

Typically, the general approach to electronic recordkeeping in sub-Saharan African public administration can be very informal. Because many government projects are funded by donor aid agencies, a great deal of electronic documentation is stored on personal computers provided by and used exclusively for the project and on external consultants' and aid advisers' laptops. Existing records management systems capture very little data and records created by these projects.

Most of the personal computers that are available in government offices are used like typewriters; yet even the full functionality of word processing is often not adequately realized. As a result, documents are not named or stored in ways that make version control and retrieval efficient or even possible at times. Furthermore, much of the information contained in key strategic systems is in the form of data and not documents; many key decisions are still being made on the basis of data sets. Although the data is backed up regularly, controls on the quality of backups and the environmental conditions in which they are stored vary widely. When systems fail, problems restoring the data frequently occur. Attention is rarely given to providing adequate records management controls on the source data and to maintaining links from the input documents through the computerized system to the output documents.

The archival and information technology community has had decades to learn how to preserve data sets and to develop procedures to preserve the integrity of the information they contain. However, much of this basic data management expertise is not being applied in developing countries.

Currently strategies for maintaining electronic documents are less of a priority; intranets are very rare; personal computers are not exploited properly; and document management systems have yet to have a strong impact. However, as the number of computerized systems being replaced increases, along with the implementation of new systems to meet growing demands for improved services to the public, the problem of what records and data are created and how they are kept increases.

With the implementation of these systems, less control over the records tends to occur. Controls are seen to fall within the domain of systems administrators, and computerized records are generally omitted from the existing recordkeeping regime.

Electronic Recordkeeping in Namibian Government

The records management systems in Namibia are much better than many others in the region. At present, however, they have no capacity to control the receipt and creation of electronic records. Increasingly, the government of Namibia is managing work and making decisions on the basis of computerized information. As a result, the National Archives of Namibia, like other institutions in the region, is faced with difficult decisions about how to approach the management of electronic records while addressing ongoing problems in managing paper systems. Already these institutions are faced with a serious lack of resources and trained staff. The emphasis is on the current paper situation with significant implications for their ability to manage electronic records.

The Archives of Namibia was established in 1939 as a subsection of the State Archives of what was then South Africa. Another archivist came from Pretoria, South Africa, to arrange the German colonial archives. At that time the archives functioned according to a number of acts of South African origin. In 1987, the "transitional government" promulgated Act 4 to supersede previous legislation. It was not until after independence in 1990 that the present-day National Archives of Namibia was established according to the Archives Act, Act 12, of 1992.

The present-day National Archives has responsibility for managing all government records regardless of format throughout their life cycle. The 1992 Archives Act provides "for the custody and care of and control over archives in Namibia, and for matters incidental thereto." The word "archives" in the Archives Act covers both current and noncurrent documents. Under the Act, the National Archives of Namibia contributes to the protection of the rights of all Namibians and enhances a sense of their national identity by acquiring, conserving, and providing access to private and public records of national significance in all formats and media, and by guiding the management of central, regional, and local government records.

The 1992 Act also tasks the Archives to collect, "organize and make available all substantive documents including printed [and] electronic ..." The Archives has a statutory obligation, then, to provide guidance and supervision on the selection and management of electronic records throughout government, as well as more traditional paper records. However, the Archives has no capacity to meet this responsibility with respect to electronic records.

In practice, no other legislation is in place to govern the handling of electronic records in offices. As far as records management is concerned, the National Archives can only recommend to government offices and other institutions that they file a hard copy of the final version of a document, in whatever medium, that is sent out officially.

Obstacles to Managing Records

One of the main obstacles to achieving consistency in the management of records is the fact that much of the management cadre consists of politically appointed officials who are not aware of the importance of sound recordkeeping and registry administration. (Registry describes sections of departments, offices, and ministries having responsibility for registration, treatment, and custody of all documents used for the business of the unit involved. The term central files is related.) These individuals did not rise through the ranks of the civil service and thus do not have basic procedures ingrained in them. Instead, their tendency is to keep records in their offices and file them into ring binders or keep computerized files on their hard drives.

These procedures may work as long as the officials in charge are the ones using this "private" system. Once they are promoted and/or transferred, however, the information is lost to whoever replaces them. The result is time wasted searching for information or, if the information cannot be easily found, duplication of effort to gather it again and recreate the records. This extra work is done at the expense of the taxpayer and surely at the expense of efficiency. The staff of the National Archives has difficulty in particular with high-ranking officials who are unaware of their obligations and are not willing to take time to be trained in practices that they regard as marginal -- including recordkeeping.

Civil servants tend to view the records they receive and create as something personal; they refer to them as "my records." Registry personnel with responsibility for current records received and created by the public organization are recruited from the lowest ranks of the civil service. They have little or no means to enforce registry regulations in offices, nor do they have the influence to encourage officials to file their records in the registry. Another problem is that registry staff members themselves are often untrained. Managers do not, then, trust them to handle their records. To illustrate this point, the number of files of one of the largest ministries in the Namibian Government, the Ministry of Basic Education, Sport, and Culture, has only 600 documents in its entire registry.

In cases where a records clerk shows initiative, the individual is quickly promoted to another post with better remuneration. This promotion results in the employment of yet another low-paid clerk with little or no background, training, and authority to make a filing system and a registry work. Records staff that should be advising on the design and use of filing systems are simply not capable of advising on the development of computer directory structures and file naming conventions. In most cases, registry staff are not computer literate.

The records management issue is becoming increasingly crucial. The functions of ministries are frequently changing, with the result that core activities are being reshuffled, added to, or taken away in regular intervals. Filing systems have to be revised accordingly by officials barely familiar with the former system and the services of the Archives are much in demand. During these transitions, officials claim to have all their records on their computers. They think that nothing can get lost as long as they have it stored electronically. Yet when civil servants are transferred or promoted, they often delete everything off their computer. Similar to the situation with paper files, research must be repeated by the successor to recreate the information. No controls are in effect that provide guidance on the management of computer files or that prevent the misuse of computer files.

Faced with these problems, the National Archives of Namibia is unable to fulfill its task of managing the recordkeeping of all ministries, local authorities, parastatals, and regional offices. (Parastatals in sub-Saharan Africa are units, like the U.S. Postal Service, that are one step removed from direct government accountability.) In particular, the staff situation at the Archives makes controlling, monitoring, and advising all registries throughout the whole country impossible. At the time of this writing, no records management staff are trained and available to provide guidance and advice. More to the point, only one professionally qualified staff member is at the Archives.

Records Management Initiatives

Recent attempts to build capacity in records management by attaching a records management adviser from Zimbabwe for two years to train staff were thwarted by no fewer than three counterparts leaving for better-paid positions elsewhere. With the staffing limitations alone, how can the Archives possibly control all the personal computers in government offices to ensure that the records are filed and stored either on computers or as hard copies in government and agency registries throughout the country?

In the last few years, the Government of Namibia has implemented strategic countrywide computerized systems that are generating electronic records of permanent value to the nation. These records are likely to hold not only current administrative value, but also to have considerable historical interest to future generations; for example, domestic and foreign debt management systems (Third World debt), customs and excise systems (economic history and trade), and Inland Revenue systems (social and economic history). Unlike earlier systems, where paper printouts would probably have sufficed for most purposes, the value of these new systems to economists, social scientists, and historians will be the ability to manipulate the data for statistical purposes.

In the next five years, the National Archives will need to develop the capacity to provide data archive services. For the time being, however, the only solution that comes to mind is to begin by raising awareness of the problems facing the National Archives. Senior civil servants should be taught to appreciate the requirement for naming and storing computer files to aid retrieval. Also, they must ensure that, until other provisions can be made, a copy of all records is printed out and filed at the registry. File numbers should provide links between computerized versions and the filed paper copies. Yet for such strategies to be successful, senior officials must be convinced of the benefits of recordkeeping; otherwise, their staff will not comply with instructions.

The prospect of keeping records electronically is very remote at this point in time. Current staffing and resources at the Archives are inadequate to meet their responsibility to manage current paper records, let alone electronic ones. If this situation is allowed to continue, experience from other countries suggests that the long-term impact will be a continued collapse of records management, leading to difficulties for management in holding individuals accountable for their work. For Namibia, the future for electronic recordkeeping seems very bleak indeed.

Equipping the Next Generation

A recurrent problem throughout the region with managing electronic records is training and education. As the situation in Namibia illustrates, a shortage of qualified and trained archivists and records managers exists, yet the demand for their skills is high. Few archives and records management education programs are in the region.

Information Sciences at Moi University

The Faculty of Information Sciences at Moi University, Kenya, was established in 1988 for the training of information workers in Kenya. Its establishment followed the recommendations of a presidential working party, appointed in 1981, to look into the country's long-term educational needs and to evaluate the requirements for establishing a second university. Among its recommendations was that a Faculty of Information Sciences be established to offer a broad-based bachelor's of science degree in information sciences. Since then, the faculty remains one of the very few library, archive, and information science schools in sub-Saharan Africa.

The faculty has four teaching departments: archives and records management, media and information technology, library and information studies, and publishing and the book trade. The faculty's harmonized curriculum was influenced by two fundamental global trends. One, that information was increasingly being acknowledged and exploited in many countries as a key resource for national development. Two, that the rapid advance in computerization globally was continually changing the way information was gathered, processed, managed, and disseminated to the end user.

Records and Archives Management Training

The Department of Archives and Records Management was established in the faculty in 1991 to provide comprehensive training in archives and records management by paying attention to both the life cycle and continuum concepts. In recent years, the department recognized the need to produce graduates equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills in the management of electronic records.

This awareness was created following a major international seminar held in Nairobi, Kenya, in March 1996, on managing electronic and paper records as a strategic resource for good government. This conference was organized by the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers (ACARM), in collaboration with the International Records Management Trust (IRMT), the African Association of Public Administrators and Managers (AAPAM), Kenya's Ministry of Home Affairs, the Kenya National Archives and Documentation Service, and the Faculty of Information Sciences at Moi University, with financial support from the Management and Training Services Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

One major finding of the seminar was that computerization was being introduced rapidly throughout Commonwealth Africa without adequate preparation for its management. Among the solutions proposed was for Commonwealth universities to design training programs that lay the foundation for the management of electronic records. This foundation is absolutely critical because the whole subject of electronic records management is relatively new in this part of the world. Records managers in organizations and institutions, such as the Kenyan national archives and universities, are not conversant in ways to manage records in electronic formats. Therefore, no opportunity should be lost in articulating the challenges associated with the management of electronic records.

Integrating Electronic Records Management in the Curriculum

As the archives and records management department endeavors to integrate electronic records management in its curriculum, it recognizes the need for a sound tech- nological base, good infrastructure, and adequate resources to support teaching and research in electronic records management, none of which is satisfactory now.

Although the department strives to maintain reasonably high standards in teaching and research, it is fully aware of the major challenges and constraints that undermine these goals and aspirations. These challenges include

* a shortage of adequate human resources capacity with appropriate academic qualifications

* inadequate reading materials and journal literature

* limited budgets

* poor electronic and communication infrastructure

* lack of Internet connectivity

* poor salaries, which are a disincentive to the recruitment and retention of qualified staff

These constraints are not unique to the archives and records management school at Moi University; they similarly apply to other such programs in the region. These challenges must be addressed if archival schools in the region are to make a meaningful contribution to the development and harnessing of computer technology for enhancement of teaching and research in archives and records management. Although computer technology offers great potential for improved communication, data processing, and information exchange, these obligations cannot be realized in an environment of inadequate basic requirements that are a prerequisite to the development and use of computer technology.

Investment in Information Technology

In this regard, decision makers, both at institutional and national levels, need to appreciate the need for investment in appropriate infrastructure. These needs include adequate power supply, telephones, and, in the telecommunications sector as a whole, a way of promoting technology development. Investments here must be complemented by corresponding information and communication policies at institutional and national levels.

Computer systems have largely been introduced as a component of donor-funded projects. However, even where these are institution or government driven, this introduction is often done without recognition of the need to maintain, upgrade, or replace systems in accordance with changing institutional or technological requirements. Computerized systems need to be developed and implemented on the basis of sound infrastructure -- including provision of extensive training of technical personnel -- knowledgeable maintenance workers, and an availability of foreign exchange for sourcing of spare parts.

Issues of capacity building and human resources development must be critically evaluated in terms of the suitability of overseas training to local conditions and requirements. Although a majority of academic staff in most of the archival schools in Africa are alumni of accredited, well-established archival programs in Europe and the United States, they often return to Africa with skills that they are not able to practice or apply due to the lack of appropriate facilities and infrastructure.

Need for Information/ Communication Policies

Examined against this background, the constraints mentioned seriously undermine the ability of these archival schools to produce graduates appropriately skilled in the management of electronic records. This situation can be reversed only with well-coordinated government policy as well as ongoing support by records manager counterparts in the developed world. Although the existing staff at Moi University and elsewhere in the region are well aware of the issues pertaining to electronic records, their ability to do more is hampered by lack of practical exposure, inadequate resources and facilities, poor infrastructure, and the absence of information/communication policies, particularly with regard to information technology.

Conclusion

Recordkeeping and records management are fundamental building blocks of a functioning public institution. Many public-sector transactions that are currently being carried out on paper will be performed electronically as networked computer systems move to center stage. However, with the shift from paper to digital information, the current state of electronic records will not be sufficient to support the evidentiary needs of government business functions. The problems of linking business transactions to documents created in different forms and formats will increase. This challenge presents a danger of losing access to records stored on personal computer hard drives, in e-mail boxes, or in shared space on a local area network.

Senior civil servants need to be in a position to understand the implications of introducing computerized systems on the ability of their organization to be accountable and to be able to retrieve and access information over time. In particular, a sustainable, consistently applied and enforced program for the management of electronic records requires endorsement by senior management. Before this endorsement can have any practical effect, however, managers need to be educated in the importance of keeping records -- all records in any media. Perhaps once they recognize the benefits of managing paper records effectively, they may then appreciate the complexity of managing electronic records.

Tied to this understanding is the need to provide training and continuing education for records staff in the management of computerized records. Although records staff do not require high-level computer skills, they must be taught to understand the principal concepts and the technical limitations of information technology. They will need to have the ability to communicate electronic records management requirements credibly both to departmental managers throughout the public service and to computer specialists. Yet the requisite educational facilities are distinctly lacking in the region.

The need to raise awareness continues throughout the region -- and beyond -- of the limitations for managing electronic records in African governments. In addition, professionals struggling for solutions must be included in wider discussions being carried out elsewhere in the world. The 1996 Nairobi seminar was instrumental in calling attention to the need to manage electronic records. Perhaps now is the time for bringing a wider community to the region to begin to discuss solutions.

AT THE CORE

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES:

* the high failure rate within the public-service sector of many strategic systems in sub-Saharan Africa that leaves broad gaps in data and records

* reasons why developing countries do not have the resources to invest substantially in electronic records management initiatives

* the low capacity in the region to teach the management of electronic records

REFERENCES

"No Gain Without Pain." The Economist, 24 June 2000. Available at: www.economist.com/display/story.cfmpstory_ID=80764 (accessed 8 January 2001).

Kimberly Barata is Research Manager, the Rights and Records Institute, the International Records Management Trust (London, UK). She has eight years' experience in electronic records and public-sector records and archives. She is a member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), serves on its publications board, and is an Expert-Evaluateur for the European Commission DGXII-AG Research Directorates General. She has a masters of library science and a certificate of advanced study from the University of Pittsburgh. She may be reached at [e-mail].

F. Jochen Kutzner is Chief Archivist, National Archives of Namibia (Windhock, Namibia). He is a member of the East and Southern Africa Branch of the International Council on Archives. He may be reached at [e-mail].

Dr. Justus Wamukoya is Senior Lecturer and Head, Department of Archives and Records Management, Faculty of Information Studies, Moi University (Eldoret Kenya). He received his doctorate in archival studies from University College London (UK). The author may be reached at [e-mail].