Enhancing Access to the Archive (TN0034)

Enhancing access to the archive

14. Enhance access to the archive held by the National Archive institute

Commitment Text:

The aim is to facilitate access to a significant volume of historical documents since the Husseinit period until today. These documents are characterized by their originality, uniqueness and diversity of their content, dates, languages (Arabic, French, English, Turkish, Italian, and Hebrew).

Opening up these documents will offer enumerable benefits for many users, especially for researchers and developers of web/mobile applications in several fields.

Milestones:

• Developing an archival platform to allow access to documents that have been digitized,
• Organizing training in this field for all dealers with documents in order to have the necessary skills regarding organizing classifying and coding documents.

Responsible institution: Tunisian National Archive

Supporting institution(s): None

Start date: June 2016        End date: July 2018

Context and Objectives

The Tunisian National Archive holds a document collection that goes back to the Ottoman Empire. However, the maintenance and functioning of the institution is archaic, relying more on classical methods of storage and indexation.

The objective of this commitment is to develop a platform for providing access to the National Archive by creating a new portal with digitized archives, and to train its staff for digitization, coding and classification, which is an essential step for publishing information. Therefore, this commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information.

The National Archive started to develop a more modern project allowing visitors to research part of their digitalized content online, though this service is no longer available due to technical issues and underfunding. The current website is static and often unavailable. [43] If fully implemented, this commitment will have a minor potential impact. It will allow Tunisians, mostly researchers and academia, to access the content of the National Archive online.

Completion

This commitment is not started.

According to the National Archive officials, Terms of References have been developed for the platform, however, no documentation has been made publicly available.

Next Steps

The IRM researcher recommends the following:

• This commitment overlaps with commitment 2 of this action plan. Therefore, they should be combined to address the challenges of implementing the access to information law.
• Seek other implementing partners to support the National Archive financially and technically, such as: The Presidency of the Government, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies (part of the presidency) and UNESCO.

14. Enhancing access to the archive

Commitment Text:

The aim is to facilitate access to a significant volume of historical documents since the Husseinit period until today. These documents are characterized by their originality, uniqueness and diversity of their content, dates, languages (Arabic, French, English, Turkish, Italian, and Hebrew).

Opening up these documents will offer enumerable benefits for many users, especially for researchers and developers of web/mobile applications in several fields.

Milestones:

• Developing an archival platform to allow access to documents that have been digitized,
• Organizing training in this field for all dealers with documents in order to have the necessary skills regarding organizing classifying and coding documents.

Responsible institution: Tunisian National Archive

Start date: June 2016 End date: July 2018

Editorial Note: This is an abbreviated version of the commitment text. For the full commitment text from the Tunisia National Action Plan, see here.

Commitment Aim:

The Tunisian National Archive documents were not available online and its website was not functional. This commitment aims to develop a platform for providing access to the National Archive by creating a new portal with digitized archives, and to train its staff for digitization, coding, and classification.

Status

Midterm: Not Started

The implementation of this commitment did not start by the midterm assessment. The IRM researcher requested information on the implementation of this commitment but did not receive any evidence from the National Archive or the government.

End of term: Limited

The national OGP steering committee confirmed to the IRM researcher that lack of funding blocked the implementation of this commitment. The government end of term self-assessment report confirmed that the terms of reference were developed. [63]

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Did Not Change

Since the implementation of this commitment did not start, the status of the government remained unchanged.

Carried Forward?

The commitment was not carried forward.