Sierra Leone is on track to get its first ever policy on Record and Archive following a successful validation process on Monday. Minister of Information and Civic Education Chernor Bah praised the vision of the President Julius Maada Bio to inspire this change.
“The previous government had done some work on it and taken a bill as far as to Parliament in 2017. But when President Bio won in 2018, since then we have done more work on it. We are doing a policy on Record and Archive for the first time in this country and it will be backed by a review of the law, that will later be taken to Parliament” the Minister said.
The policy development is part of an important process of reviewing and developing policies for four important components. The policies are: national media and information policy, national film policy, national civic education policy and national records and archives policy.
This policy on Records and Archive will be accompanied by a legislation to repeal the Public Archive Act of 1965.
The Consultant for this policy Umaru Bangura Esq. said, “Since 2006 this is the closest we’ have come to having a policy and repealing the Public Archive Act of 1965”
The policy focuses on several key issues, from putting systems in place to manage records to digitalizing government records.
Following the validation of the policy, it will now be reviewed one more time to take into consideration some reviews before presented to Cabinet for approval, in the coming months.
Validations on the other three policies are also ongoing for the rest of the week.
