International Council of Archives

Samoa Archives update Report

The Archives of Samoa under the Ministry of Education, Sports & Culture is progressing tremendously throughout the years. Upon its founding in 1996, the existing staff at the time was tasked to salvage and safeguard archival materials belonging to the government abandoned in some old government premises. Most documents were salvaged from the old prison building, Court House, etc. These documents contain important and significant value to the government and the people of Samoa.

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Records Task Force

The Records Task Force was established in 2003 it is comprised of records managers from all government ministries with the aim to network in identifying ways to improve the management of records within the government of Samoa. Over the years some authorities and private organizations have taken interest and have now joined. The Records Task Force is consisted of more than twenty members and conducts its meetings on a fortnightly basis.  

Code of Best Practice & Common Administrative Retention Schedules

In September 2007 The Code of Best Practice and the Common Administrative Practice were endorsed by Cabinet as official Recordkeeping tools to be used across Government.
It has been developed by the National Archives Project of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture, in cooperation with the Records Task Force of Government records managers, and with the assistance of Ms Emma Murray, Australian Business Volunteer archives advisor.
Both guidelines were developed for the efficient management of records of the Samoan Government.

National Archives Project

 The National Archives Project coordinated by the Ministry of Education Sports and Culture in 2008 was aim in safeguarding of all Samoan public archives which includes records presently being created to become the archives of the future. Listed below are achievements of this project;

1. Development of classification and retention schemes for records documenting core functions of each of the pilot Ministries. (By: Records & Archives Services from Australia)
2. Procure disaster preparedness resources, archive boxes, shelves etc for all member ministry of the Records Task Force.
3. Introduction of Code of Best Practice & Common Administrative Retention Schedule.
4. Development of Procedures from Code of Best Practice (2009 by Liz Nannelli AYA)
   

This project was funded by the Public Sector Improvement Facility (PSIF).

Public Records Act

In February 2011 the Public Records Act was officially passed and approved by the Parliament of Samoa to guide the establishment of the Archives Authority and the management of records and archival documents of the Government of Samoa.

Records Task Force celebrating the official passing of Public Records Act in February 2011.

German Digitization Project

The German Colonization period in Samoa from 1900 – 1914 is one of the most significant era in the history of Samoa. Records documenting their businesses at this period are now under the ownership of the government of Samoa. In 2008 the two governments signed the agreement to digitize records of this period and transfer master copies of 24 bit color TIFF and 8 bit grey scale to Archives New Zealand. The project timeframe is two years however, due to unforeseen issues and challenges which were unidentified during the planning stage caused the project to extend and still ongoing.

Records from the Court House (Strong Room)

The records which were salvaged from the Court House belonged to the previous ministries who were once housed there before relocating to new government premises. In the beginning of 2011 the Archives unit was target to box and transferred the records to the Archives storage rooms at our Ministry compound.

The Sorting, Listing and Boxing of records in Archives 2nd storage.

This task is made easier with the great commitment of few school secretaries who helped us during school holidays. Our prime target was to sort, list and re-box more than fifty unsorted big boxes of records on the floor of this room.

Records Task Force Mapping Workshops

So far two workshops have been completed with first drafts of fourteen Ministries and Corporations file indexes being classified according to the Common Administrative Retention Schedule guideline.
The remaining ministries are anticipated to be covered during this fiscal year.

Faafetai Lava & Soifua
Vaveao Toa (Senior Archives Officer)