19 May 2014

Poor records management has been identified as one of the factors that affect service delivery within government.

The acting director for Botswana National Archives and Records Management, Ms Linda Magula, said this when addressing representatives from various government departments at a recent breakfast meeting in Francistown.

Ms Magula said members of the public often raised concerns regarding lack of feedback from government departments as service providers. She said through their assessments, which they did last year by sampling out some departments, they noted that there was no compliance on mail management.

As such, Ms Magula said there was delay in mail circulation within offices; hence feedback was often not given out to the correspondent. She further mentioned that the 10-day time frame as per government service standard, which stated that correspondents should be given feedback within 10 days, was not adhered to.

The acting director added that often the officers who were supposed to give feedback did not do, but instead assigned messengers or records officers to do so. She noted that that led to delays and complaints regarding service delivery as acknowledgement of concerns and inquiries would be made but without action being taken to address the concerns.

Ms Magula stressed that although records officers were responsible for the receiving and filing of incoming communication, they should not be the ones making acknowledgment but responsible officers.

She further said inadequate ownership of records management by senior management as accounting officers was also a major concern because as managers, they should make sure that information was well kept for future referencing.

Furthermore, she cited that in their last year’s audit of records management at corporate services at 21 of the 27 ministries, the key findings were that most of them did not have key controls in place for the management of records.

This, she added, was something which indicated that there was a disregard for action by accounting officers. “Some offices do not have mail registers for incoming and outgoing mail and it raises questions of whether there is anyone accounting for actions taken in such an office,” she said.

For her part, the principal records manager for Francistown office, Ms Lorato Motsaathebe said they had realised that heads of department were not taking records management seriously across most of the departments.

She said since their presentation to the Office of the President (OP), it had been decided that senior officers would be assessed on records management on a quarterly basis. Ms Motsaathebe said the aim was to improve government information records keeping and taking accounting officers to task on giving feedback and addressing issues raised in correspondents.

She also pointed out that, as a way of assisting departments and ministries to improve on records keeping, they usually call and arrange workshops, which are not only targeting records officers, but together with heads of department to train them on the importance of manning such records. Ends