Focusing on haphazard destruction of documents and confirming its role in preserving historical documents

The National Archives calls to mind the stages of document transfer and informs about the destruction procedures



As part of organizing and developing the UAE’s government bodies’ archives as well as educating their employees about the importance of preserving the documents that make up the country’s documentary asset, the National Archives organized a training course and educational workshop about the procedures of transferring documents from government bodies and ways to destroy them. Both the course entitled "Transferring documents from government bodies" and the educational workshop entitled "The mechanism for the document destruction in government bodies" were held in accordance with the requirements of federal law No. 7 of 2008 on the National Archives and its amended laws and executive regulations. The two events received the attention of government bodies and many archive officials and staff, and both reflect the role played by the National Archives in the development of archival awareness and the dissemination of archival culture across all government agencies that aim at forming and preserving the national archival assets according to scientific basis and modern and sophisticated practices.

The first training course entitled "Transferring Documents from Government bodies" was delivered by Mr. Mohamed Al-Bashr from the Archives Department of the National Archives, and it shed light on the history of the National Archives, legal and standard references, notably federal law No. 7 of 2008 on the National Archives and its amended laws and executive regulations.

The course, which participants followed through interactive media, dealt with the transfer of the archive in view of the articles of the Executive Regulations of the said Federal law. It elucidated the methods of transferring documents to the archive unit of the government entity, then transferring them to the National Archives stores for permanent preservation, the transfer requirements, and the duties of the National Archives and the government entity in the transferring and moving processes.

On the other hand, the National Archives, through visual communication technology also organized an educational workshop entitled "The mechanism for the document destruction in government bodies" for officials and staff of the Ministry of Community Development, in which Mr. Ahmed Mujab, archiving expert at the National Archives, explained the purpose of document destruction process in the government entities and the principles by which each entity must abide to implement the process.

The workshop focused on the risk of complacency in destroying any document without obtaining approval from the National Archives, and the consequent  legal liability, penalties and fines specified by law.   The workshop presented the most important tools or models needed to complete the destruction procedure, such as document destruction form and document destruction record form.

 The workshop stressed the need to commit to sending lists of documents to be destroyed to the National Archives Destruction Committee in accordance with the requirements of Federal Law No. 7 of 2008 on the National Archives and its amended laws.

It should be noted that the procedure for destroying documents is to dispose of worthless documents, in view of the articles of the aforementioned law, which set the conditions to be followed prior to the destruction process in order to avoid the haphazard destruction of government documents, to control the disposal of documents and files produced in government entities, and to reduce the volume of documents stored.