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Sharjah – Hani Okkar:
The need to create a complete and integrated electronic digital storage project to record everything related to the UAE was recommended by participants of the “Electronic Documentation in the UAE” seminar organized by the Gulf Research Center at the Gulf House of Press, Printing and Publishing at the Premier Al Majaz Hotel in the Emirate of Sharjah yesterday morning, Saturday.
At the seminar chaired by Dr. Issa Al Bastaki, President of Dubai University, they called for the unification of electronic procedures and the establishment of a central authority for electronic documents, in addition to the creation of an award for individuals and institutions to recognize their contributions to the transition from paper to electronic filing.
Participants stressed the importance of not destroying and preserving traditional and paper documents, as they are the basis and origin of national references and recording processes, while not hindering the completion of the development process and the transition to electronic and smart archiving.
While many participants reviewed the role of their own centers and agencies in electronic documentation, everyone recommended benefiting from the experience of these centers and agencies and disseminating it at the state level to fully move to electronic services and filing.
They pointed out that national and government institutions are interested in e-filing projects, especially the initiatives launched at the level of electronic and BroadCast Unitedligent transformation are in this direction, stressing that the UAE has made good progress in this transformation process, with many initiatives in e-filing given the existence of qualified and advanced electronic infrastructure.
Regarding the challenges facing electronic documents, some participants mentioned the challenges of missing electronic archiving culture, obsolescence and digital erosion, as archived documents become obsolete due to the rapid development of digital devices and data storage containers. Over time, there is no use, except for the development of software and programming languages, which means that there are no programs to play files that have been stored for many years.
In this context, they cite solutions that can be adopted to avoid damage to electronic archiving, such as preserving technologies that allow future operation of digital resources, taking into account each period of transmission of information from one medium to another of the same type to ensure that the information is not lost in case of damage to the medium.
They mention a number of solutions for information migration, transferring data and digital materials from one hardware or software specification to another, or from one generation of computers to another, in order to preserve these materials in light of continuous changes in technology.
In the opinion of the participants, one of the challenges of electronic archiving, in addition to the security of electronic documents and optical character recognition issues, is related to the storage space and the increasing number of electronic documents, and they believe that solving this problem requires the purchase of new storage units, the development of policies and standards for preservation and digitization processes, and the development of an appropriate digital preservation strategy, in addition to the selection of appropriate storage media and adherence to standard file formats.
Recommendations related to the development of electronic archiving included the need for an academic programme to qualify staff in the field of libraries and electronic documentation, collaboration between documentation and research centres, and budgets for institutions to enable them to implement electronic archiving.
Recommendations also include the unification of electronic procedures and keeping pace with developments in the field of electronic archiving, confirmation of the compatibility and coordination between e-commerce strategies and business unit plans, as well as the principles of linkage and integration with information systems and databases, and emphasis on the principles of redesigning procedures and methods.
Participants in the seminar, details of which will be published later by the Gulf Research Center in the Al Khaleej newspaper, include: Ahmed Abdullah Ali of the National Archives, Ahmed Obaid Al Mansouri, Member of the Federal National Council, Founder and Director of the Museum of Crossovers of Civilizations, and Ahmed Othman Ahmed, in charge of electronic archiving and development at Juma Al Majid Center for Culture and Heritage, Sufyan Muhammad Buharat of the National Archives, Tariq Ahmed Al Zarouni, Head of Records Management at the Knowledge Department of Dubai Municipality, Abdul Rahman Mohammed Khalid, Director of the Documentation Department of Dubai Municipality, and Abdulaziz Al Shehi, Director of the Historical Documentation Center of Dubai Municipality.
The meeting was also attended by Federal National Council member Dr. Ali Jassim Ahmed; Dr. Ali Abdullah Fares, Director of Research and Documentation Centre at Ras Al Khaimah, Imad Abdulaziz Jaballah, Coordinator of the Institute of Archives at the University of Sharjah; Fatima Ahmed Ali bin Haider, Head of Advanced Systems Development Department at Dubai Public Prosecution; Qasim Al-Khalidi, Director of Library Management at Dubai Public Prosecution University of Sharjah, Muhammad Jassim Al-Mazmi of the National Archives, Mahmoud Kafi and researchers at Sharjah Documentation Centre, Dr. Maryam Ahmed bin Fahd, Director of Knowledge Management at Dubai Municipality, Hanem Abbas, Director of Catalogue and Classification Department at Sharjah Public Library, Hoda Uzair Mubarak, Director of Document and Record Management Department at Knowledge Management Department at Dubai Municipality, and Hind Al Zarouni, Director of Information Technology Department at Dubai Public Prosecution in Dubai.
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