On November 15, 2023, the Ministry of Justice held a republican seminar-meeting «Actual issues of the activity of territorial (city and district) archives of local executive and administrative bodies».

The seminar was attended by managers of district (city) executive committees, directors of 122 territorial archives, representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the main departments of justice of regional executive committees. There are 256 people in total.

The event in this format was held on the basis of the Ministry of Justice for the first time.

Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Belarus Kot O.N. addressed the participants of the seminar with a welcoming speech, who noted that today territorial archives occupy an important place in the system of archival institutions of the country and are an effective tool in ensuring social protection of citizens of the Republic of Belarus.

Director of the Department of Archives and Records Management Voinov O.L. emphasized that the format of the event in the form of a seminar-meeting was not chosen by chance. The participants of the event were given the opportunity not only to listen to the reports of the employees of the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Archives and Records Management, but also to speak on the problematic issues of the activity.

Representatives of the Department of Archives and Records explained the features of the requirements of the governing documents in the field of archival affairs as applied to territorial archives, general aspects of their activities, as well as questions about the implementation of legislative acts on administrative procedures; ensuring the safety of documents and the order of submission of information about documents of territorial archives in the State Fund Catalog of the National Archive Fund of the Republic of Belarus; examination of the value of documents stored in territorial archives.

Consultant of the Department of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs of the Ministry of Justice Garnaya O.R. told about the special order of submitting documents of economic entities to territorial archives in order to complete the procedure of their liquidation and answered the interesting questions of the heads of territorial archives.

Representatives of territorial archives shared their work experience and emerging problematic issues.

Director of the Vitebsk city archive Sharendo V.V. told about the activities of the archive and the state of its material and technical base. The archive is the largest territorial archive and has extensive experience in the field of organization, creation of automated search systems for archival collections.

The Director of the Soligorsk District Archives highlighted in her report the actual issues of the process of receiving documents of liquidated organizations, and shared her work experience.

Representatives of the Minsk city archive, deputy director Telyak T.I. and the head of the department for security, accounting, information systems and use of documents S.V. Zadorozhnaya spoke about the problematic aspects of accepting for storage documents of liquidated economic entities and the deadline for the execution of requests of a social and legal nature.

The participants of the seminar-meeting made a number of proposals about the need to conduct advanced training courses for employees of territorial archives, shorten the storage periods of accounting and statistical reports, reduce the number of copies of inventories, etc.

Also, during the seminar-meeting, problematic questions were discussed about the need to improve the scientific and methodological support for the activities of territorial archives; organization and methodological support of the work on the examination of the value of documents; strengthening the material and technical base of territorial archives in order to ensure the safety of documents and to expand the areas for storing archival documents; the terms of implementation of administrative procedures carried out at the request of citizens; ensuring the completeness of the composition of accepted documents from liquidated economic entities.

At the end of the seminar-meeting, the participants discussed the project of methodological instructions, which reflect the results of the activities of the territorial archives for 2021-2023, problematic issues and ways to solve them.

It was decided to finalize the methodological instructions taking into account the new proposals and present them to the participants of the seminar-meeting.

The participants of the seminar-meeting noted the necessity of further conducting events in this format for the purpose of learning and exchanging experience.

Regarding the activity of territorial archives.

In 2021-2023, current repairs were carried out in 17 district and 5 city archives. Computers and copying equipment, binding equipment, archive boxes, furniture, shelving equipment, etc. were purchased for 37 territorial archives.