Archiving and Information Management at KI

Registration and recordkeeping

For KI to fulfil the requirements on public access to documents, good organisation of the documents is important. One way of obtaining this organisation is to register the official documents in a register. The Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act contains fundamental rules on registration of official documents. The general rule is that all official documents received or drawn up by KI should be recorded. Documents which are not covered by secrecy can be organised in another manner provided that it is possible to easily determine whether the document has been received or drawn up. Documents which are completely or partially covered by secrecy must be recorded under the law. Recordkeeping of official documents must take place without delay. Received documents should be recorded the same day they arrive. Drawn up documents should be recorded when they are dispatched, a decision is made or when they are completed in another manner. A document’s status as official cannot be deferred by recording it on a later date. For more information on recordkeeping, please contact registrator@ki.se.

Activity based archive reporting

KI reports its archives in accordance with activity based archive reporting which means that the entire authority’s information flow is reported based on its processes and activities. In practice this means that all KI’s documents are classified and reported in accordance with the classification structure developed by UA’s archiving function. The classification structure is a policy document which reports on KI’s five fields of activity with related processes.
1. Control activities – describes the controlling processes in KI’s activities
2. Support activities – describes the supportive processes for how KI conducts its assignments
3. Manage education – describes processes of the core activities for education at first, second and third cycle
4. Research – describes processes of the core activities for research activities
5. Communicate and collaborate externally – describes the processes of core activities for communication and collaboration

Preserving documents

Documents used in the ongoing activities can be stored in a local archive close to the activities. Documents preserved for the future should, when they are no longer required for the ongoing activities, be organised and listed and placed in approved archiving premises. It is important that the original document is preserved in archiving premises in so far as the original document will not be dispatched. Then a copy of the original document is stored instead. For some types of more important documents, for example, signed agreements and decisions, it is appropriate to only use working copies, i.e. copies of the original document, in the daily activities. The archiving premises should be close to a department in order to guarantee that official documents can be accessed at any time. The starting point is that only authorised persons should have access to the archiving premises. Therefore it is important to have locks and procedures for handling keys. Only archives may be stored in the premises. Furniture or other material which obstructs accessibility and reduces the safety of the archives may not be contained in the premises.

Submission or moving of archives

Another authority

In the event that a department needs to move documents to another authority, for example, during a research transfer, a request for submission of documents to another authority must be made to the Swedish National Archives. The request should contain, inter alia, a description of the documents, an account of the documents’ scope, a description of their use and reasons for why the authority wants to submit the documents. UA’s archiving function should always be consulted for planned submission of archives to another authority.

Between departments

Generally each department has archiving responsibility for the documents created within the framework of its activities. A research project can sometimes start at one department and then continue to be managed at another department. It is then advisable to transfer the documents from the original department to the new department which takes over the archiving responsibility. An agreement between both departments on the takeover should be drawn up which clearly states that the new department approves the takeover of the archiving responsibility. The responsibility entails providing archiving premises and keeping applicable archive lists available. The agreement should be recorded by the new department. In terms of recorded documents concerning the researcher or research team, different rules apply depending on whether the case has been completed. If a researcher moves to another department within KI, the contracts/agreements which are still open in KI’s register should be transferred to the new department. Administrators at the new department change official and departmental affiliation for the relevant cases. The processing and responsibility for completion of the case is accordingly taken over by the new department. The cases which have been completed are kept at the old department.

Screening

Archiving and screening of electronic documents

• Electronic archiving refers to long-term preservation of official documents in electronic form. 
• Electronic documents which have a screening deadline of up to 2 years can be saved in their original format in existing systems up until screening.
• Electronic documents which have a screening deadline of between 2 and 4 years can be saved in existing systems in PDF format. In the event of system discontinuation, the documents for which the screening deadline has not been attained must be transferred from the systems and stored in another location.
• Electronic documents which have a screening deadline of 5 years or longer may, if they are converted to PDF/A-format, remain in the systems until the system is discontinued. In the event of system discontinuation, the documents for which the screening deadline has not been attained must be transferred from the systems and stored in another location. The concept electronic document also covers KI’s web pages. These constitute outward documents and are thus official. KI’s presence on social media may also contain official documents which KI is thus responsible for.

Please contact PS’s archiving function with questions on archiving of web pages and social media.