Members of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly approved a draft law on archives and records management
On 1 April 2022, at the meeting of the eighth session of the seventh convocation of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, the senators approved the draft law “On Amendments to the Law on Archives and Records Management in the Republic of Belarus”. The bill was earlier passed by the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus in the first and second readings on 21 December 2021 and 25 March 2022, respectively.
The document aims at improving the efficiency of legal regulations in the sphere of archives and records management, taking into account new achievements in science and technology regarding the creation of documents, their management and preservation.
The draft law updates the conceptual apparatus: certain terms and their definitions are clarified and new terms are introduced (electronic document, scientific and technical processing of documents, a copy of an archive document on the rights of the original).
The law establishes a rule according to which in organizations that do not provide for the establishment of full-time positions for archives staff, the functions of receiving, storing, accounting and using archival documents are assigned to a person appointed by the head of the organization.
The composition of the state part of the National Archival Fonds of the Republic of Belarus and the time periods for temporary storage of documents have been specified (100 years for civil status records and 55 years for personnel records). In case of removal of archival and personnel documents, their return is mandatory. Documents in electronic form, including electronic documents, of the state part of the National Archival Fonds of the Republic of Belarus, upon expiration of the established terms of temporary storage, shall be transferred from the information system of the archive of a state body or other organization for permanent storage in the state archive by means of the information system of the archive of electronic documents of the National Archival Fonds of the Republic of Belarus.
The documents of the non-state part of the National Archival Fonds may be kept on a paid basis not only in state archives, territorial (city or district) archives, but also in other organizations on the basis of a storage agreement or transferred free of charge to state archives on the basis of an agreement that provides for the transfer of ownership of the documents to the state. State bodies and other organizations that are sources of acquisition of state archives have the right to carry out scientific and technical processing of their documents on their own or to use the appropriate service of state archival institutions.
The information has been prepared on the materials of BELTA.