Measures to improve document management and transparency at ANECA

The document management and archive department at ANECA is working to develop a Classification Table to ensure adequate technical treatment in document management: a homogeneous and permanent classification system for all documents generated and managed by the Agency in the exercise of its powers. The need for this tool responded not only to internal needs, but also to those arising from regulatory changes in the programs and the continuous structural modifications of ANECA over the years (the link to 7 different ministerial departments in just 20 years or the transition from the Foundation to the Agency in 2015).

The table, understood as a pillar for document management, will allow for the maintenance of an information system that is valid for all the organization's documents, regardless of administrative modifications, the functions developed or the procedures that have created the documents, both now and in the past.

The Document Classification Table follows a functional classification criterion (the elements are classified according to the functions developed within the Agency, regardless of possible organic changes thereof), and will be a fundamental tool in making strategic decisions that allow improving the quality of the services provided to the public. This document, which was approved this October by the Directorate, is intended to be deployed gradually throughout 2025 and 2026, accompanied by the Agency's digital transformation plan.

Some of the intrinsic advantages of the new document management tool are:

• It provides links between simple documents that are accumulated to provide evidence of activities.
• It ensures that documents are ordered and named in a consistent manner over time.
• It facilitates the recovery of all documents related to the same function or specific activity. It determines security levels in the protection and adequate access to documents by categories, assigning specific access and consultation permissions by activity and not by subject matter.
• It determines assessment actions, permanent conservation measures or appropriate deletion periods for each document.
• It distributes the responsibilities for the management of document categories throughout the organization.

 

On the other hand, the development of this tool will allow ANECA to be integrated as part of the General State Administration in the field of Archives and Documentary Heritage, following the provisions of Law 16/1985 of June 20, on Spanish Historical Heritage, according to which: “Documents from any period generated, preserved or collected in the exercise of its function by any public body or entity form part of the Documentary Heritage.” The new Classification Table will allow efficient organization of access, treatment and control of the information and documentation generated by ANECA within the established regulatory framework, and integrating it into the Spanish System of Archives of the General State Administration (Royal Decree 1708/2011 of November 18).

The table will also be available to citizens through the Archives Guide Census, in accordance with the two aforementioned regulations, and whose preparation and maintenance is carried out through the Archives Documentation Information Center (CIDA) attached to the General Subdirectorate of State Archives of the Ministry of Culture.

 

For these reasons, this classification system also represents an active exercise in transparency, thus guaranteeing the fundamental right of citizens to access public information, as provided for in the Spanish Constitution.

Since the documentation that ANECA has generated, generates and will generate is ope-legis documentary heritage, it must not only be subject to control (and an exercise in transparency) through the Census Guide, but also, no past or future document will be able to be eliminated without the relevant opinion of the Higher Commission for the Qualification of Administrative Documents, the CSCDA, a collegiate body where the Agency has also joined in 2024.

With this new tool, ANECA seeks to guarantee adequate internal organisation and adequate technical treatment during the production of documentary evidence of its activity, supported by various computer applications and information systems, such as its archiving and conservation in the medium and long term until it can or cannot be eliminated. This Classification Table is developed in collaboration with the ICT units and the staff responsible for the business units. Its use, together with other tools to be developed, such as a document management policy and/or another data exploitation policy, and the digitalisation process that the Agency is currently undergoing, should make this organisation a benchmark within the General State Administration in the long term.