The Kenya Association of Records Managers and Archivists (KARMA) are pushing legislation to anchor the profession into law.
The association chairman Cleophas Ambira said that they already have a draft Bill in place which they intend to soon take to parliament after engaging the state department on ICT.
Ambira was speaking in Mombasa during n the opening of the 6th annual Records and Archives Management Conference at Pride Inn Hotel in Shanzu
The theme of the conference is ‘Enabling Digital Economy’.
“We are convinced that legislating and anchoring this profession will significantly ensure that we have the right investments and have the right people sitting and supporting the profession,” said Ambira.
He said that the whole policy and legal framework around the management of records across the country was still a big challenge adding that infrastructure to support the industry was also a major challenge.
“We have challenges around standardization, currently in the country we have over 100 standards supporting management of information. We want to look at how we can domesticate some of these standards so that there is uniformity. There is also the challenge around the talent and the right skills to drive that,” Ambira said.
He added that there is the whole issue around security of information and also advocacy and ensuring that the records information practice sits well within the society and structures and is well supported and appreciated that need to be looked into.
Ambira said that the digital economy was all about information and data which fairly and squarely fall on the role of records managers.
He said that records are about both what people know about manual records but largely now also the digital record because the future is digital.
He added that their role in the digital economy is about ensuring that the information a user is accessing is secure, available, well managed and is a true and accurate representation of the transaction.
“Basically we want to ask ourselves, when it comes to the digital economy whether you are doing online banking or accessing any other online services, how can records practitioners and professionals ensure that they have better information record data systems to support that,” he said.
The director of shared services at the ICT Authority Michael Odhiambo said that Cyber security was a big challenge in the digital economy adding that the government was looking at it with a lot of seriousness.
He said that a lot has been done by the government to ensure that cyber security is of a major focus in all spheres of ICT for government and any other services that mwananchi is supposed to take.
“The thing about cyber security is that you can never be 100 per cent, but as a government working with all stakeholders here today, we have come together to build a robust cyber security environment that can allow for records management to thrive,” said Odhiambo.
The chief guest for the conference Henry Obino, the secretary of administration state department for culture and heritage said that the conference takes a broad spectrum of the government and the challenges they may think about.
He said that the challenges will be in the right hands to be looked at during the conference and solutions found going forward.