Records management for open government at Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development Botswana

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to help records and information management professionals of organisations for both the public and private sector to understand the role good records keeping brings to the attainment of open government. This paper complements open government through the application of a records management perspective to an analysis of the records management practices. Conversely, the study adopted a mixed methods approach to collect data from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) that consisted of purposively sampled respondents. The target population consisted of 54 respondents. Forty-five questionnaires were distributed, with 33 successfully completed and returned to the researcher. Similarly, nine Heads of Departments (HoDs) were scheduled for interviews and only five interviews successfully continued as planned, and the study included appropriate documents for analysis. The study’s findings showed that there is a lack of good records management overall at the MLGRD, which emanated from unskilled records management staff. Similarly, the study identified MLGRD staff manning the records management division to being incapable of managing digital records. Furthermore, the findings revealed that there is no proper infrastructure to manage digital records and that there is no records management policy to be used to guide on good records keeping practices. Based on the findings, the study, among others, it is recommended that the records management staff of the MLGRD should be upskilled to have records management competencies, especially in digital records keeping, and that the MLGRD should acquire ICT infrastructure to support good digital records keeping practices.