A “digitalization process” is taking place at all state management agencies, where officers try to digitalize paper legal documents for better and easier management. However, since there is no regulation on electronic archives, legal documents still need to be printed on papers to be kept as archives.
A “digitalization process” is taking place at all state management agencies, where officers try to digitalize paper legal documents for better and easier management. However, since there is no regulation on electronic archives, legal documents still need to be printed on papers to be kept as archives.
Inconvenient and costly way
Over the last 10 years, since the National Archives Ordinance took place on July 1, 2001, state agencies have to spend big money on document storage.
The current laws only accept the archives in paper. Therefore, state agencies, especially the ministries and branches headquartered in big cities, have to reserve land plots for building storehouses and spend big money on the equipments to preserve documents, such as bookshelves, boxes for keeping documents, firefighting systems, disinfection equipment and on the technologies to preserve documents.
Besides, in order to make it easier to refer to information, state agencies also have to be equipped with powerful servers and computers which allow to integrate and manage documents, and with the equipments which allow to copy documents.
However, according to the Department of State Agency of Documents and Archives, a lot of documents remain unclassified and revised, while the application of information technology in the document management and referring at many central and local agencies remains ineffective.
Recently, state management agencies have been told to use electronic documents as a part of the program on forming up electronic agencies, electronic ministries, branches, provinces and cities, and especially electronic government.
However, electronic documents can be used only to serve the management works or to operate daily works. Meanwhile, the documents still need to be printed on papers for storage, because the current laws only accept paper document archives.
A paradox exists that in the digital era, even the documents on information technology also need to be printed on paper to meet the requirements for document preservation. And once documents are printed, state agencies have to build storehouses and install with a lot of equipments to preserve the documents, which is really a big waste of time and money.
It is very costly to build storehouses. The Prime Minister’s instruction No 05 dated March 2, 2007, clearly stipulates that central provinces and cities must have dedicated storehouses. However, in fact, only 23 out of the 63 provinces and cities have had solid storehouses with the area of 1000-3000 square meters.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior Affairs is building up the project on supporting the construction of dedicated storehouses in central cities and provinces, worth 1 trillion dong.
Awaiting new regulations on electronic archives
Electronic archive has been considered as an effective solution that helps reduce expenses and heighten the efficiency of the archive work. Especially, state agencies will not have to spend money, time and labor force on building storehouses and install with a lot of expensive equipments.
The 2006 Information Technology Law also stipulates that the electronic documents sent to state agencies must be backed up in the electronic archive system. However, in fact, no branch or ministry has been able to operate an electronic archive system in the true meaning of the word so far. Especially, document storage always means keeping paper documents.
Recently, the draft archive law submitted to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee in August 2011 also comprised an article to mention the management over electronic archive. However, experts say that the article only mentions general concepts.
If the law is ratified at the National Assembly’s session to be held in November 2011, it would take effect from July 1, 2012. However, the experts fear that the only one article is not enough to “bring electronic archive into the life”
(Source: Vietnamnet)
