Although the establishment of regional record management institution was made compulsory with the law, it is yet hard to find an institution that is acting as an independent record management institution. Thus, currently the regional record managemen...
Although the establishment of regional record management institution was made compulsory with the law, it is yet hard to find an institution that is acting as an independent record management institution. Thus, currently the regional record management is being conducted around the arrangement and computerization in some regions and districts that are interested in record management. Therefore, the computerization of records is the essential process for realization of electronic government in that it overcomes the limitations of storage space and solves work productivity and efficiency problems.
Thereupon, on researching preceding studies, I found that they emphasized the need to systematic management of regional records or the necessity to digitalize old records that were not reproduced electrically, but were not able to seek ways to use them.
Thus, this research was conducted on the subject of ways to activate Seoul districts' important record database usage in an effort to improve regional record management organizations' status and enhance regional records' user service as well as usage. Also, this research is based on the premise that the conclusions of this study would be adaptable to the actual case of Dongdaemun-gu.
This research suggests ways to activate usage of important records database in three aspects such as business usage and browsing function reinforcement, active promotion and formulation of record evaluation system, and regional-social application through contents development, which can be summarized as following.
First, current important records database is mainly used through data center systems, but since the browsing function provided by the data center system is somewhat unstable, the accuracy of browsed results is not trustworthy. Therefore, in the records management system which will be introduced to local governments, an efficient data browsing solution developed by a government-certified company should provide a more reinforced browsing function.
Second, browsing technique should be introduced to help selecting search words appropriate to user need. That is, users should be helped to express their information requests in detail through extracting and providing often used search words and lists of search words according to subjects.
Third, apart from currently demonstrated browsing functions, record browsing function according to department and year, keyword browsing function and text browsing function should be added so that current status of all records can be seen at first sight, and time consumed in record usage can be shortened effectively.
Fourth, access to computerized records through important records database is restricted into the ground. Thus, for activating the use of database, the restricted access to the records should be relaxed. Until now, the restriction to computerized old records have been set up according to standards based on The Act of Public Archives Management and The Public Information Act. For this reason, most of the records remain completely closed or only partially revealed. This not only makes user's access to records difficult, but also resultingly acts as a negative factor restricting the usage of important records database. Therefore, the contents of computerized records and access should be reexamined, and more efforts should be made towards the usage of the database through forming more systematic as well as active criteria for opening/closing records according to departments or person in charge.
Fifth, regular training and education for person in charge and managers should be conducted for cultivation of awareness for record management. For this, as a means to enhance participation in the record management training, the education and government official learning system should be aligned and learning hours accredited or systematic record management means as well as knowledge about important records database usage be learned through online record educations.
Sixth, in contemporary knowledge-information-oriented society, records are not only results of work, but further are regarded as knowledge informations needed for conducting work. In this environment, accurate evaluation of record's values is combined with the organization's working process, and performs a key role to selecting information essential to organization management. Thus, an evaluation system should be introduced in the process of selecting records that will be electrically reproduced when conducting the project of constructing important records database. This will help both the use of historical records that are not active and current work formation as well as usage.
Seventh, for the enhancement of important records database usage and implementation of records information service, the establishment of database usage activation policy must be preceded. That is, standards for providing public information should be arranged and distributed through improvement of related institutions. Also, organic links such as non-governmental-governmental cooperation system should be built in order to provide public informations owned by local governments more effectively to the public.
Eighth, combining the high-quality public information provided by the important record database and IT infrastructure based on high technical skills, it is possible to develop competitive education contents. Such contents could be provided for educational purposes. Furthermore, these educational contents could help developing historical education programs. If lists of database and records are provided through regional websites or cultural organizations in the community, not only effective providence of database to numerous users but also transparency of record management administration can be achieved.
Ninth, the currently constructed database is mainly for administrative use, which makes the quantity of records able to provide to general citizens very scarce. Therefore, efforts to reform the record center to a community culture organization should be made through consistent expansion of record database.
However, this research was not able to compare various cases of many districts that have completed the construction of important record database, which makes acquiring validity of its improvement measures difficult. Further studies are expected to solve such limitations. Also, establishment of detailed standards, legal, institutional as well as budgetary support should be involved to implement the measures suggested in this research.
Lastly, I hope that through referring the results of this research, the important records database construction project can be used as the knowledge information contributing to task performance. Further, I hope that this study contributes to the establishment of regional record management organization that is able to take strong roots into the community, and be used as reference for local governments' enhanced record management.