With the aim of promoting archival work and for further awareness,

The National Archives organizes a training course to raise and spread archival awareness

The National Archives has organized a virtual training course entitled “Raising and Spreading Archival Awareness” that is part of the “Knowledge Transfer” project, which the NA relies on in training the employees, developing their skills, bridging the knowledge and skills gap, exchanging experience among employees, and providing them with the required knowledge to boost professional development. The course was held upon the appointment of a number of employees by the NA to equip them with adequate experience of the duties they have to perform in accordance with the work system and mechanisms applicable at the NA.

This training course is part of the activities, courses, lectures and workshops, which the NA focuses on in the “Knowledge Transfer” project that provides employees with knowledge, which helps them in achieving their objectives and improving their skills through a chain of activities of national, academic and professional contents.   

The training course, delivered by Hatem Younis, Technical Expert at the NA, tackled documents definition, preservation period and the difference between current and intermediate archives. It highlighted the FAQ related to archives and reviewed Federal Law No. (7) of 2008, its amendments and Executive Regulation. Moreover, it presented the NA’s archival policies, procedures, and guides.

The course, held via interactive communication technologies, began with defining documents, their means of storage, lifecycle and the three ages:  which start from documents creation and preservation at the current archives (1-5 years), and then they are transferred to the intermediate archives where their values depreciate, and they remain there for 15 years. Finally, they are moved to the permanent archives, the historical archives, and they become of a great historical value. If they are useless, they are disposed following a number of legal processes and after getting the NA’s approval for disposal.

Frequent asked questions in the field of archives were presented in this training course. The lecturer reported that these questions are available on the NA website and that they should be reviewed due to their importance in all fields of work at the NA.

Furthermore, the course illustrated Federal Law No. (7) of 2008, its Executive Regulations and amendments in addition to the amendments expected to be made in the near future. It showed the main articles of the law since they serve as the roadmap for the archives of government and semi-government entities in the UAE.

The training course, which is aimed to raise and spread archival awareness demonstrated the policies and procedures applicable at the NA such as the NA’s policies of documents accessibility, historical archives collection, paper and electronic documents management and documents preservation.

The course concluded with a detailed explanation of the NA’s guides, which are the Archives Guide, Electronic Archiving Guide and Documents Disposal Guide. All these guides are available on the NA’s website.