Store your selfies, the Law classifies them as archival material
The Law on Cultural Property prescribes that all documents resulting from the work of institutions, organizations or individual, whether being written, drawn, recorded or photographed, potentially classify as archive material, and hence its fate (preservation or destroying) should be decided by the Archive of Serbia.
Although it is clear that the state has no way of supervising the implementation of this regulation among citizens, the Law has persisted in effect ever since 1994, causing very practical problems to businesses, state and local institutions and other organizations, imposing an obligation to keep all paper documents they developed in their work, in its original form. This implies high costs for renting storage space, hiring additional employees and ensuring fire protection measures.
"Within the project “Towards Paperless Administration”, with the support of UK Government’s Good Governance Fund, we are working together with the Ministry of Culture, first of all, on defining the new Law and specifying the term of archive material, so that we can stop the practice of storing all documentation, and further on, we will work on optimizing the current periods of storage. A good examples refers to location conditions which need to be stored for three years, even though they are valid for only on year, or the fiscal receipts which fade out after six months" – says Vojislav Genić, member of NALED MB and the Public Sector Director in SAP Central and Eastern Europe.
The highest expenses are borne by businesses and institutions that engage in daily contacts with the citizens, producing a large number of documents (bank, mobile operators, retail chains, local governments, public notaries etc.).
Businesses in Serbia have submitted more than 315,000 financial statements for 2017. If we take into account that each statement has at least eight mandatory pages, we can see that they used at least 2.5 million papers for making these documents, which are usually stored in their archive in paper form. Piled on one another, the papers would probably form a 253-meter high tower. Such amount of paper and printing toners cost businesses at least EUR 380,000.
An additional problem is seen in the fact that the Law on Cultural Property is in conflict with the Law on E-Document, allowing for documents to be digitalized and their paper forms destroyed. Additionally, the archives requires businesses to ask for their consent before destroying any documents, though it is clear that they lack the human capacities to visit all businesses in the country, which creates further complications in law implementation, as well as additional expenses.
The project “Towards Paperless Administration” provides support for the development of 12 by-laws to the Law on E-Document, Electronic Identification and Trust Services in Electronic Operations, which will govern in more detail the system for archiving e-documents, while public administration institutions will be provided support in implementing new regulations.
The project also focuses on analyzing the capacities of public institutions and the Archive of Serbia for transitioning to the use and reliable storage of e-documents, designing recommendations for improving their IT systems, and providing training to public officers. This will have manifold significance taking into account that the archives are currently facing a problem with storing documents that are not originally made in paper form, such as the electronic construction permits, which will be more and more frequent in the years to come.