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This study aims to develop a framework for the management of medical records in support of health-care service delivery in the hospitals in the Limpopo province of South Africa.

The study was predominantly quantitative and has used the questionnaires, system analysis, document analysis and observation to collect data in 40 hospitals of Limpopo province. The sample of 49 per cent (306) records management officials were drawn out of 622 (100 per cent) total population. The response rate was 71 per cent (217) out of the entire sample.

The study discovered that a framework for management of medical records in the public hospitals is not in place because of several reasons and further demonstrates that public health-care institutions need an integrative framework for the proper management of medical records of all forms and in all media.

The study develops and suggests a framework to embed medical records management into the health-care service delivery workflow for effective records management and ease of access. It is hoped that such a framework will help hospitals in South Africa and elsewhere to improve their medical records management to support health-care service provision.

This paper aims to develop a framework for incorporating implementation indicators of corporate governance for municipalities in South Africa. In South Africa, there is a corporate governance framework (King III report) that is regarded as a seminal work applicable to both the public and private sectors. Despite its existence, municipalities still struggle to provide services to the citizens due to poor implementation. The poor corporate governance implementation in municipalities led to several issues such as loss of credibility for local government, little interests from investors to invest in municipalities, service delivery protests from communities, maladministration and unexpected change of leadership in municipalities without succession planning in South Africa.

The study conducted literature review to demonstrate the need for a framework to implement corporate governance in South Africa.

It is evident from the study that the municipal sector could improve its performance and practices of corporate governance, if the underpinning framework is adopted and implemented as a sector framework. The integration of governance elements during the development of the municipal sector integrated development plan (IDP) will facilitate a coherent base for good governance implementation practices.

This research would go a long way in bringing out the anomalies that paralyse municipalities, the root causes of inefficiency and possible ways to rectify them.

This study offers a framework that can help the local government sector to improve on service delivery. Implementation of the framework can also assist municipalities in obtaining clean audits from the supreme audit institutions in their respective countries.

The study has a huge social impact as it would help municipal officials take notice of the issues raised and act accordingly thus improving the life of citizenry.

This study adds value to the existing theoretical and conceptual issues that form the ongoing discourse on the implementation of corporate governance in local government, especially in South Africa, as the country is characteristic by corruption and maladministration.

Despite the availability of the mandate of public archives repositories to “take archives to the people in South Africa”, archives in South Africa remain largely the domain of the elite. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of social media in South Africa as a tool for taking archives to the people especially young people between the age of 13 and 34. The researchers confined the study to all ten public archives repositories in South Africa.

This quantitative study collected data using survey questionnaires and web-based content analysis of social media presence of public archives repositories.

The study revealed that few public archives repositories are using Facebook, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn to engage users. The public archives repositories rely mostly on social media platforms operated by their mother bodies as they are subsidiary units within arts and culture departments in government. As a result, public archives repositories are restricted to operate their own accounts on social media. It is argued that public archives should be allowed by their mother departments to operate their own accounts on social media platforms. Failure to change this restriction could lead to public archival institutions continuing to take archives away from the people, instead of taking archives to the people.

The study sought to provide useful practical implications for public archives repositories as it would serve as a benchmarking tool to enable the development and reporting on the visibility and accessibility of archival material, and thus ensure an increased public knowledge of archives.

The study triangulated data collection instruments that helped to collect as much and as diverse data as possible, which generated the best possible insights into the phenomenon of interest. Previous similar studies in South Africa utilised only survey method with either interviews or questionnaires as data collection tools.

Appraisal of records to separate the wheat (records of enduring value) from the chaff (ephemeral records) is one of the most important functions of the archives. In terms of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARSSA) Act (No. 43 of 1996) (the Act), “no public records may be transferred to an archives repository, destroyed, erased or otherwise disposed of without the written authorisation of the national archivist”. In implementing this section of the Act, the NARSSA issues a disposal authority, which emanates from the appraisal process explained in the policy guidelines of 2002. The purpose of the study is to analyse the appraisal policy guidelines on the approach of NARSSA in relation to preservation of digital records.

This study has used qualitative data obtained through content analysis and literature to review the appraisal policy guidelines and approach of NARSSA in relation to preservation of digital records. The 2002 approved appraisal policy, as well as the directives issued by NARSSA in terms of Section 13(4) of the Act, is examined to determine the criteria, the process and the methodology adopted in the appraisal of records. Content analysis data are augmented through interviews conducted in person with the head of the records management unit at NARSSA and the archivist responsible for appraisal of government records.

The study has established that, in terms of the approach, records are appraised two years after the implementation of records classification systems in governmental bodies and those of archival value are then transferred to an archives repository after a period of 20 years. Twenty years is a long period as records might be lost, especially in digital environments. Furthermore, the appraisal policy guidelines limit the powers of records managers in governmental bodies in deciding on records of enduring value, as this responsibility is assigned to archivists at NARSSA. It is clear that the policy was written with paper records in mind.

This study may go a long way in influencing policy review to embrace appraisal of digital records in South Africa. This in turn will help in determining the feasibility of preservation technology for digital records.

This study is useful to ensure participation of the public in the appraisal process. This study has triangulated content analysis data with interviews to examine appraisal criteria, process and methodology, followed by NARSSA.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the trustworthiness of digital records generated in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system known as the government accounting and budgeting system (GABS) is maintained to support the audit process in the public sector of Botswana.

This qualitative study used modern archival diplomatics as a theoretical framework to examine the procedures for authenticating digital accounting records in GABS to support the audit process in Botswana. Data were collected through interviews and documentary reviews.

The study established that although GABS is not a record-keeping system, it generates digital records. In the absence of procedures, auditors rely on social and technical indicators (system application controls) to authenticate records.

The findings of the study are limited to the case study and cannot be generalised to other organisations.

The findings of the study can inform the necessary measures that can be taken to ensure that digital records generated in ERPs are maintained authentic to support financial auditing processes. In addition, the paper also presents differing approaches by records managers, auditors and information technology specialists to evaluate the authenticity of records in digital systems, thus contributing to the literature about professional allies and competitors to archivists and records managers.

This paper provides empirical evidence from an original study.

As an emerging discipline, information governance (IG) presents a number of challenges to organisations and countries. For example, IG has not yet been clearly defined and current proponents present the concepts as records management, information management, enterprise content management, privacy (data protection), freedom of information, corporate governance, information risk, information security and e-discovery, to mention just a few areas. At an organisational level, initiatives focus on one of these aspects, often conflicting with the other elements, and are initiated because of some immediate business challenge, such as the introduction of the Protection of Personal Information Act (data protection or privacy legislation) in South Africa. This is compounded by the fact that the country creates many fragmented policies and pieces of legislation on the same IG aspects which are conducted in a disjointed manner. This study aims to present an integrated IG framework at the country level, comprising key success factors, required instruments (policy and legislation), principles and a proposed list of elements or disciplines, which should be managed in a cohesive manner.

This study adopted the Information Governance Initiative’s pinwheel facets of IG to design an integrated framework of elevating IG to country level. The pinwheel helped to identify different facets of information disciplines and the responsible oversight mechanism for implementation in South Africa. The study relied on data obtained through content analysis of policy documents, legislative frameworks, and literature review regarding the identified facets of IG in South Africa.

The study established that only some aspects/domains/facets of IG are legislated and driven by policy in South Africa. These domains are at different levels of maturity and different stakeholder groups are responsible for each domain; for instance, the National Archives of South Africa is responsible for records management and the State Information Technology Agency is responsible for information technology, while the newly established Information Regulator is responsible for freedom of information and data privacy. There is generally no over-arching structure responsible for overall IG in South Africa as the elements are fragmented in various oversight mechanisms and institutions. As a result, domains compete for limited resources and often lead to “knee-jerk” responses to legislative, legal or risk drivers.

It is concluded that if IG is not regulated and modelled at a country level, it is highly unlikely to filter down to organisations. Implementing IG at country level will go a long way in helping to filter it down to an organisation level.

The study is useful by presenting a framework to ensure that IG is implemented at the country level with a single coordinating body established for oversight mechanisms such as the Information Regulator (which currently has a narrow scope of privacy and freedom of information, although with limited resources).

In South Africa, public institutions face challenges in transitioning their digital records to trusted digital repositories due to a deficiency in skills, infrastructure and systems. Free and open-source software (FOSS) presents a viable solution for facilitating the transfer of digital archives for permanent preservation. Despite the existence of FOSS policy in South Africa, the public sector has yet to fully use it to engage in the development and implementation of products for records management and archive preservation using open-source software. This study aims to explore the ingestion of digital archives into an approved long-term storage system through FOSS in South Africa with the view of developing a framework.

The study adopted a qualitative research approach to collect data through interviews with purposively selected participants (records managers, archivists and IT officials) from national government departments that have implemented records management systems for digital curation of archives, as well as the National Archives and Records Services of South Africa (NARSSA), which regulates archives and records management, and the State Information Technology Agency, which regulates information technology in government.

The findings of the study suggest that the systematic transfer of digital materials from public entities to NARSSA, as required by statute, has not taken place.

The study specifically targeted national government departments that have implemented digital archives and records management systems. Consequently, perspectives from departments that have not implemented these solutions were excluded.

A framework is proposed for the transfer of digital archives, using interoperable FOSS, from government agencies responsible for records management to NARSSA for archival preservation. This framework, it is hoped, will facilitate infrastructure and skills development in the management of records and preservation of archives through open platforms.

The purpose of this study is to examine quality assurance for archives and records management (ARM) education in an open distance e-learning (ODeL) environment in Eswatini with a view to conceptualise a framework for quality assurance in the development and implementation of an ARM programme in the context of ODeL.

The study is anchored on the interpretive research paradigm, which surrounds a systematic literature review. The researcher searched for literature online, using scientific databases such as Ebsco, Scopus and Google Scholar. The search applied the publications from 2005 to 2019. The main search keywords are “archives”, “records management”, “open distance e-learning” and “quality assurance”. A total of 15 articles, which included documents, journal articles, reports, web pages and monographs, were retrieved, reviewed and analysed in this study. This conceptual study was preliminary, and the researcher hopes that further empirical studies based on the findings of this study could be pursued in future.

ARM as a form of study and delivered on ODeL platforms have been proposed in Eswatini. The major concern among stakeholders is how to ensure the quality of such programmes.

This conceptual study was preliminary, and the researcher hopes that further empirical studies based on the findings of this study could be pursued in future.

The findings and recommendations will help in the development of ARM programmes to be offered effectively by way of ODeL, there is a need to develop a transparent quality assurance framework for such an application and its implementation.

This is the first study on quality assurance for ARM education in an ODeL environment in Eswatini. As part of the study, a quality assurance framework was designed for the implementation of ARM education on an ODeL platform. This quality assurance framework is intended to help higher education institutions in Eswatini such as the University of Eswatini as well as stakeholders such as the Eswatini National Archives and others to design ARM education and deliver it on an ODeL platform in a manner that guarantees adequate quality.

Municipalities, as the front lines of service delivery, use websites as one of the tools to communicate information to the public. While it is considered a record, many organisations, including municipalities, do not manage websites as such. This study aims to explore the archiving of websites as records in the municipalities of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province in South Africa by using the web archiving life cycle model.

This study used a mixed-methods research with an explanatory design, with quantitative data collected first through content analysis of websites and qualitative data collected through interviews. Researchers used multilevel sampling, first quantitatively analysing all available websites of the municipalities (52) in KZN, and then qualitatively selecting only records managers, information managers, web administrators, communication managers and website managers or designers from municipalities because of their understanding and involvement with websites in some way.

This study established that some records on municipal websites are often in paper format in record-keeping systems, whereas others are born digital and are not captured in the systems. Municipalities lack a dedicated web online harvesting tool as well as an archiving policy or strategy to guide website archiving. Furthermore, municipalities placed a high reliance on service providers to keep their websites operational.

It became clear during the interviews that most of the participants were unfamiliar with web archiving. As a result, only 12 of the 56 selected participants from the municipalities provided the required information in relation to the current study as others could not provide answers. Data for other participants were not analysed.

Due to a lack of infrastructure for ingesting digital records into archival custody, a framework for harvesting web content of value is proposed both internally in municipalities and externally to an archive repository.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of transformational leadership and transactional leadership styles on the retention of public librarians in Gauteng Province in South Africa.

This quantitative study used a survey research design to target a population of 394 librarians in municipal libraries in Gauteng Province, South Africa. A proportional stratified sampling was used to target a total of 191 respondents. A total of 120 respondents completed and returned the survey, resulting in a response rate of 62.2%. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 28.

The findings reveal that transformational and transactional leadership styles have a positive impact on librarian retention. In addition, transformational leadership style is observed to have more impact on employee retention compared to transactional leadership practice.

The results could be used as the basis for avoiding significant spending on ineffective leadership programmes and unprofitable directions to retain librarians in light of the multitude of leadership models.

To date, there is limited research on the impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on the retention of public librarians in the context of public libraries in South Africa.