"ICT systems will fail if electronic records cannot be identified, retrieved and used, if they are stored improperly or if they cannot be linked to related paper records," said the E-government specialist for the Canadian government John MacDonald.
He further warned that increased financial and performance costs will be incurred if electronic records are allowed to proliferate and grow in volume without proper control.
He said that E-government initiatives will also fail and citizens lose trust in government services will be eroded if governments are unable to find the records that underpin these services.
"Services that could be trusted in a paper environment may be threatened if the services are automated and the electronic records of web-enabled transactions are unreliable, inaccessible, inaccurate, incomplete or out of date," he said.
He said this at the opening of a two day workshop on "Strengthening governance in the electronic environment: Managing records as reliable evidence for ICT/E-government and Freedom of Information" held at New Arusha hotel in Arusha, Tanzania last week.
The workshop was organized to present research findings on the records management in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania.
The research conducted by the International Records Management Trust (IRMT) identified several gaps in the records management in the EAC partner states.
Findings indicate that there is little evidence that any of the partner states is addressing records management concerns in the planning process.
"There was no evidence that functionality for the management of records was being incorporated in the planning for ICT and e-government systems," said the IRMT project director Dr. Anne Thurston.
She said three governments are supported by legislation that establishes a single authority on the management of government records.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): David Muwanga
Quelle/Source: East African Business Week, 05.09.2011
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