ICA is pleased to announce that the preliminary programme for its first Annual Conference “Accountability, Transparency and Access to Information” has been published. The conference, to be held in Brussels on November 23-24, will kick off with four keynote speakers including the Belgian Information Commissioner, the head of Communication and Transparency at the Council of the European Union and two pioneers in the international records management field.
Drawn up after a call for proposals that attracted an amazing 110 submissions augmented by a few specially solicited speakers, the programme contains three parallel streams with a total of 49 presentations.There is a very on-theme first parallel session, “Open Government and Open Data”, which will be in the main auditorium following the keynote addresses which promises to provide up-to-the-minute insights into what the leaders in the field are doing. The rest of the programme fits neatly into a number of multi-session strands relating to the major themes of the conference as suggested by the best submissions. These include:
Two sessions on records management challenges and approaches.
Two sessions devoted to truth and reconciliation
Four linked sessions around access to information, data protection and the legal issues and tensions associated with them for archivists and records managers
Two sessions on the role of archivists and records managers with respect to the conference themes
Two sessions inspired by the Belgian host’s representation on the programme committee on citizens’ engagement with government, archives and history
Two ICA sessions: one a showcase session where members can hear about the Programme Commission’s products and achievements; the other an ICA update session where the elected officers, the FAN, FIDA and the Secretariat can brief participants on key issues and progress.
The Programme Committee have tried to bring together presentations from all over the world, to hear from practitioners from all walks of the archives and records management field to include academics, national archives workers, private archives, associations, consultants and pressure groups. The result is a varied yet coherent programme with something for everyone. We hope that ICA members will continue to endorse the new format as well as agree that the programme for the 2013 Annual Conference is interesting and vibrant by demonstrating by their participation that the conference is not to be missed.
See the calendar of the governance meetings here.