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        The National Archives Continues Its Specialized Educational Workshops On Updating Its Correspondence Policy and Ways of Managing It.
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        The National Archives continues to provide virtual specialized educational workshops that aim to acquaint its staff with its policy of correspondence, and the updating of the information of the external entities that are being dealt with in order to facilitate the management, preservation and documentation of their correspondence. In this context, Mrs. Noora Al Hamadi (Chief Archives Officer), at the Center’s Archives Section, presented a workshop entitled: Updating the Information of the External Entities, and Mrs. Safeia Al Jefri (Senior Archives Officer), at the Center’s Archives Section presented a workshop entitled: Correspondence Management Policy. The two workshops revealed the most important mechanisms and requirements which were added or updated in the management of incoming and outgoing correspondence upon the keenness of the National Archives on the requirements of a green work environment, facilitation of the follow-up of the communication between internal and external entities and updating, preserving and documenting the correspondence policy.
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        The first part of the workshop shed light on the development of the internal system for automating requests for updating the information of the external entities received from different departments of the National Archives, and linking it to the correspondence management system in cooperation between the Center’s Archives Section and the Information Technology Section; as this system is considered a main means of communication of all official correspondence between all the departments of the National Archives and the external entities. That had necessitated the development of an integrated database that includes the list of external entities and their communication information; by receiving requests for addition or updating or auditing the information and approving and automatically registering them in the correspondence management system by the Center’s Archives Section in the National Archives.
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        The workshop introduced the correspondence management system, its purpose and requirements. It revealed the development of the system with the aim of using it to manage correspondence in the National Archives, and to preserve the correspondence, documents and information they contain in complete confidentiality according to an effective authorization system, in addition to speedy information retrieving.
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        The first part of the workshop also reviewed the basic information required in defining the details of the entity, the basic information in the people’s details, the request’s flow pat and the system’s instructional video.
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        The second part of the workshop (Correspondence Management Policy) presented the objectives of correspondence management policy, and reviewed the context and scope of applying the policy, responsibilities and guiding principles. The end of the second part of the workshop witnessed the interaction of the participants with its pivots which provided answers to all inquiries.
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        The workshop defined correspondence as: a means of exchanging official information with internal communication and the external entities, responding to requests, providing information related to the activities of the National Archives. It described correspondence as one of the important sources of information in the National Archives, similar to other documents. Therefore, it is necessary to establish regulatory controls in order to handle, maintain and benefit from correspondence when needed. That requires issuing a policy for managing paper and electronic correspondence in the National Archives, because using correspondence involves many risks due to the important information it contains. Many problems may occur as a result of wrongful use of the system.
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        The workshop defined correspondence as: a means of exchanging official information with internal communication and the external entities, responding to requests, providing information related to the activities of the National Archives. It described correspondence as one of the important sources of information in the National Archives, similar to other documents. Therefore, it is necessary to establish regulatory controls in order to handle, maintain and benefit from correspondence when needed. That requires issuing a policy for managing paper and electronic correspondence in the National Archives, because using correspondence involves many risks due to the important information it contains. Many problems may occur as a result of wrongful use of the system.
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        This policy includes the provisions related to the establishment, registration, coding, distribution, classification and preservation of correspondence in combination with the rest of the official documents of the National Archives. As the National Archives always seeks to apply the best international practices and develop electronic systems in the field of document and archives management, therefore it has designed an electronic system called “Correspondence Management System”; to facilitate the process of managing and exchanging correspondence internally among its departments.
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        The National Archives
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        The National Archives of the United Arab Emirates, the affiliate of the Ministry Presidential Affairs was founded in 1968 at the directives of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, with the aim of collecting and documenting all materials pertaining to the history and heritage of the UAE and the Gulf region. After forty years of its founding, President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued Federal Law No. 7 for the year 2008 converting it to the National Center for Documentation and Research, and was entrusted with the tasks of organizing the archives of government agencies in the United Arab Emirates, and more recently its title (National Center for Documentation and Research) as per the above mentioned law - has been modified to (the National Archives), according to Federal Law No. 1 for the year 2014 issued by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

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