Administrative Training and Organization (MO0003)

Establishing administrative bodies in charge of archives and training of trainers on archives management
From August 2018 to June 2020
Lead implementing agency/actor
Archives of Morocco
Commitment description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
Article 5 of Law n° 69.99, issued on 30 November 2007, states that “persons, bodies and institutions, referred to in Article 3 of the present Law, shall, in collaboration with the Archives of Morocco, and in line with its tasks, draw up and implement a programme to manage and their current and intermediate archives. This programme sets out the structures, resources and rules to manage these documents, starting from their creation until their final archiving in a public archiving unit or their destruction”. “To this end, an archive committee, run and managed by an administrative body, shall be established within government bodies” (Article one of decree n° 2.14.267 issued on 4 November 2015 setting terms, conditions and rules to manage, sort and destroy current and intermediate archives, and deliver the final archives” However, following a research conducted by the Archives of Morocco on “the status of the Archives and Archiving Practices within the central government bodies”, the majority of the government bodies lack administrative bodies responsible for managing their entire documentary heritage. Only 18 out of 44 ministerial departments have administrative bodies, which manage the documentary heritage. These departments do not have relevant governance bodies, including, in particular, planning and monitoring committees, and the tasks entrusted to the administrative structures responsible for archives are limited to managing the documents for a few administrative entities (staff, finance and accounting files, etc.). The absence of dedicated administrative structures raises major issues such as the preservation, management, and communication of the archives, hence making government bodies unable to respond as timely as possible to requests for information. This has a negative repercussion on transparency, public accountability, and citizen participation in public life.
What is the commitment?
For the 18 ministerial departments with existing structures: Creating archive committees, replacing the administrative structures under the direct authority of the General Secretariats, creating bodies responsible for the archives the devolved units, tallying their tasks with the ones listed in Article 5 of the aforementioned decree For the other 26 ministerial departments without structures: Creating archive committees, administrative structures to be placed under the direct authority of the General Secretariats, and bodies responsible for the archives within the devolved units; Training managers of the structures responsible for managing the archives within the ministerial departments, and empowering them to transfer their knowledge, acquired during the training, to their colleagues in charge of managing the government body’s information and documents. This step will enable managers and colleagues to master rules and procedures for managing current and intermediary archives, as detailed in the Reference Guide for Managing Public Archives.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
This commitment will enable government bodies to have operational and decision-making bodies and well-trained staff in terms of archiving and managing information according to professional standards and best practices. Information managed in this way is more accessible and can easily be available to the public, either at the government’s initiative or upon request
Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
Structuring/institutionalising archive management within government bodies is key to the successful implementation of the right to access information. Once the public can access information, it will be familiar with public decisions projects in preparation. Consequently, citizens will be aware of public management, be able to hold public officials accountable, and boost government action by monitoring projects in progress. Thus, a logic and effective archive management is relevant to transparency, public accountability, and civic participation.
Additional information
This commitment is a part of the National Strategy on
Archives. The 2018-2021 National Plan on Democracy and Human Rights also promotes this strategy through a certain number of measures regarding legislative and institutional aspects, communication, awareness raising, and stakeholder capacity building (5th sub-axis: preserving and safeguarding archives – 4 the axis of the Plan: Legal and institutional framework). The Plan’s goals in terms of archives are: The overall goal: Strengthening the National Strategy on Archives The specific goals: Applying the legal and regulatory provisions on archives; Promoting a culture of archives in the public and private sector; Promoting the organisation, safeguarding, and development of archives; Promoting the culture of archives within society to preserve national memory. Structuring the archive management and capacity building of government staff in this area is a part of a national policy to further the process of political reforms, strengthen rule of law, protect and promote human rights, and support initiatives that strengthen participatory democracy
Related Commitments: Commitment 2
Milestone Activity with a verifiable deliverable
General diagnosis of the status of the archives (review of the status of the archives and archiving practices within the central government departments)
Data collection
January 2015 December 2015
Assessment of collection tools (questionnaires, interviews, site reports)
January 2016 March 2016
Drafting and publication of final report
April 2016 December 2017
Implementation of the project’s operational plan
Calculation of the level of structuring the archive management within the ministerial departments
August 2018 September 2018
Classification of the ministerial departments into two categories (category 1: upgrade [18 departments], category 2: establishment [26 departments])
September 2018 October 2018
Preparation of the training sessions (trainers, logistics, budget, targets, etc.)
November 2018 December 2018
Structuring of the archive management
Provide the category 1 departments with the necessary technical assistance to upgrade their archive management programmes, especially in terms of readjusting the administrative bodies responsible for the archives and creating Archive Committees
January 2019 February 2019
Provide the category 2 departments with the necessary technical assistance to develop their archive management programmes, especially in terms of creating the structures and the Archive Committees
January 2019 February 2019
Development of the training plan
Development of the training programme
June 2019 September 2019
Designation of the beneficiaries March 2019 April 2019
Identification of the trainers
September 2019 October 2019
Implementation of the training plan
Group 1: 11 beneficiaries
January 2020 January 2020
Group 2: 11 beneficiaries
February 2020 February 2020
Group 3: 11 beneficiaries
March 2020 March 2020
Group 4: 11 beneficiaries
April 2020 April 2020
Assessment of the training
May 2020 June 2020
Contact point details
Name of responsible person from implementing agency
Mr Mhammad HAMMOUMI
Position/department
Person in charge of managing the division of archives for central government departments and public institutions, Archives of Morocco
Email and telephone
archives.publiques@archivesdumaroc.ma 00212 5 37 77 66 85
Other actors involved
Ministerial departments The High Commissions The General Delegation of Prison Administration and Reinsertion Training firms School of Information Sciences (ESI) National Association of Information Scientists (ANI)

Commitment 3: Public Archives Management

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

"For the 18 ministerial departments with existing structures: Creating archive committees, replacing the administrative structures under the direct authority of the General Secretariats, creating bodies responsible for the archives the devolved units, tallying their tasks with the ones listed in Article 5 of the aforementioned decree

For the other 26 ministerial departments without structures: Creating archive committees, administrative structures to be placed under the direct authority of the General Secretariats, and bodies responsible for the archives within the devolved units;

Training managers of the structures responsible for managing the archives within the ministerial departments, and empowering them to transfer their knowledge, acquired during the training, to their colleagues in charge of managing the government body’s information and documents. This step will enable managers and colleagues to master rules and procedures for managing current and intermediary archives, as detailed in the Reference Guide for Managing Public Archives.

This commitment will enable government bodies to have operational and decision-making bodies and well-trained staff in terms of archiving and managing information according to professional standards and best practices. Information managed in this way is more accessible and can easily be available to the public, either at the government’s initiative or upon request."

Milestones:

"General diagnosis of the status of the archives (review of the status of the archives and archiving practices within the central government departments)

• Data collection
• Assesment of collection tools (questionnaires, interviews, site reports)
• Drafting and publication of final report

Implementation of the project’s operational plan

• Calculation of the level of structuring the archive management within the ministerial departments
• Classification of the ministerial departments into two categories (category 1: upgrade [18 departments], category 2: establishment [26 departments])
• Preparation of the training sessions (trainers, logistics, budget, targets, etc.)

Structuring of the archive management

• Provide the category 1 departments with the necessary technical assistance to upgrade their archive management programmes, especially in terms of readjusting the administrative bodies responsible for the archives and creating Archive Committees
• Provide the category 2 departments with the necessary technical assistance to develop their archive management programmes, especially in terms of creating the structures and the Archive Committees

Development of the training plan

• Development of the training programme
• Designation of the beneficiaries
• Identification of the trainers

Implementation of the training plan

• Group 1: 11 beneficiaries
• Group 2: 11 beneficiaries
• Group 3: 11 beneficiaries
• Group 4: 11 beneficiaries

Assessment of the training"

Start Date: August 2018

End Date: June 2020

Editorial Note: the commitment description provided above is an abridged version of the commitment text, please see the full action plan here: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/morocco-action-plan-2018-2020/

Context and objectives

This commitment seeks to address the lack of proper archiving systems within the Moroccan administration. Passed in 2007, Law 69.99 sets the regulatory framework for archiving in Morocco. However, a 2015 study found a lack of dedicated and qualified human resources to process archives and a lack of archiving structures in most government departments. ^[26] According to the national action plan, only 18 of the 44 ministerial departments have archiving structures. ^[27] Currently, archive management is not organized at all levels of government. Three ministries are considered the best at archiving: the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior. This commitment complements Commitments 1, 2, and 4 in this action plan.

Bouihi Houda, the government point of contact for the commitment, is in charge of managing archiving services for central administrations at the Archives of Morocco. According to Mrs. Houda, there is a well-defined guideline for training and choosing appropriate archivists, but it is not well used and respected. ^[28] Currently, the archiving system suffers from loose organization and classification. As of 2017, only 32% of ministerial departments had proper archiving structures. ^[29] Archives are in bulk, disorganized, not properly processed in the majority of ministries and only historical archives are available from the national archive. These challenges affect the government’s capacity to share information with the public, particularly when it comes to addressing information requests. ^[30]

The commitment seeks to strengthen the National Strategy on Archiving, promote a culture of archiving within the public and private spheres, as well as the organization, safeguarding and dissemination of archive data. The commitment’s objective seeks to train officers that will disseminate their knowledge to their respective government departments and to create an archiving system for departments that don’t have one. As designed, the commitment’s activities are internal facing and it is unclear whether they aim to promote the external publication of government-held information. While a stronger archives system is a vital building block towards better internal organization, this commitment lacks a public facing element.

This commitment is verifiable and expected to have a moderate potential impact on archiving practices through standardization and organization of archives across government. The creation of committees, standard procedures, and public officials' capacity to maintain archives is a vital prerequisite to fulfilling citizen rights to information as enshrined by the constitution and access to information law. Mrs. Houda stated that as long as archive commissions carry out their mission and follow archive management procedures, this commitment will make 90% of information that currently exists in archives accessible to the public. ^[31] That outcome would be obtained by organizing the files that are currently in the hands of the different governmental departments. Implementation would also make penitentiary information available. However, how the government's internal organization of archives will translate to greater publicly available information is not apparent in the commitment text. Training for public officials will be carried out by professors from ESI (Ecole des Sciences de l’Information).

Mr. Azzedine Akesbi, an access to information expert, highlighted that this commitment is a positive step forward, but full implementation will likely take longer than the implementation period. He states that archive digitalization, organization, classification as well as the publication of information across different departments will likely take more than two years. ^[32] Moreover, elected official Omar El Hyani stated that archives are currently underutilized and undervalued, and that the commitment would moderately impact citizens and public officials'  perception of the value of archives. ^[33] Additional challenges include that this commitment will require significant time and resources to implement. Finally, the commitment does not establish any incentives to promote the compliance of civil servants  with an archiving protocol.

Next steps:

While this commitment establishes a strong foundation for access to information requests, a future iteration of this commitment could include public facing elements that would strengthen its relevance to OGP values. Some aspects to be considered are:

• Within the proactive publication legal framework, expand the type of archives that would be available to citizens and civil society. Different government bodies should communicate clearly which archives would be accessible in the future and announce their availability as soon as they are organized and released to the public.
• Establish a website to centralize all available archives, searchable in a useable format and available in the working languages of the country.
• Strengthen future commitment design, turn some milestones into activities, rather than specific numbers (for instance, number of beneficiaries). Those numbers could be included as performance indicators.
• It is important that the National Archives of Morocco and agencies make sure that trainees disseminate knowledge and good practices. A key next step could also include mechanisms for ensuring and tracking civil servants' compliance with standards on archives management.

3. Public Archives Management

Substantial:

The government had set out to address the lack of proper archiving systems within the Moroccan central administration. [33] According to the national action plan, only 18 out of 44 ministerial departments had administrative bodies, which managed the documentary heritage. These departments did not have relevant governance bodies, including, in particular, planning and monitoring committees. Moreover, the tasks entrusted to the administrative structures responsible for archives were limited to managing the documents for a few administrative entities (staff, finance and accounting files, etc.). The government based its efforts on a study of the state of the archives carried out in 2017. [34]

For the provision of technical assistance, the Moroccan Archives (a government body) divided the ministerial departments into two groups based on the existence or absence of internal archive units. The first group of 18 departments needed to reorganize their archive units and create an internal Archives Committee. The second group of 26 ministerial departments needed to establish both an internal Archives Committee and an archives unit. The government, the Moroccan Archives, and the Department of Administrative Reform carried out awareness-raising activities through the organization of information meetings with the general secretaries of the ministerial departments. Additionally, an invitational letter (“circular”) was sent by the head of government for the establishment of archive units and committees, and the Department of Administrative Reform sent another letter asking for the support of the ministerial departments. [35]

However, the reorganization of the internal archive structures in the ministries was not fully completed, since some of the departments did not take measures to implement it. The government’s self-assessment [36] and the minutes of the implementation committee’s final meeting for the first action plan [37] both state that the creation of new archive structures was hampered by the cumbersome organizational changes and by the budget impact on the departments.

The Moroccan Archives, along with the School of Information Science, made full efforts to select trainers, setting up and delivering two trainings for 44 participants in ministerial departments. [38] The participants rated the training on archive management highly. [39] As a result of implementation of the commitment, 89% of the ministries have established internal archive units compared to 65% in 2018. Also, 64% of the ministries have established internal archive committees compared to 2% in 2018. [40] As most of the activities under this commitment are internal to government, the IRM did not find any evidence that implementation of this commitment led to the public gaining greater access to information.