1. ‫أكاديمية الحكومة اإللكترونية الفلسطينية‬
The Palestinian eGovernment Academy
www.egovacademy.ps
Tutorial 6: The Legal Framework of New Technologies
Session10
E-archiving
Dr. Feras Milhem
PalGov © 2011 1

2. About
This tutorial is part of the PalGov project, funded by the TEMPUS IV program of the
Commission of the European Communities, grant agreement 511159-TEMPUS-1-
2010-1-PS-TEMPUS-JPHES. The project website: www.egovacademy.ps
Project Consortium:
Birzeit University, Palestine
University of Trento, Italy
(Coordinator )
Palestine Polytechnic University, Palestine Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Palestine Technical University, Palestine
Université de Savoie, France
Ministry of Telecom and IT, Palestine
University of Namur, Belgium
Ministry of Interior, Palestine
TrueTrust, UK
Ministry of Local Government, Palestine
Coordinator:
Dr. Mustafa Jarrar
Birzeit University, P.O.Box 14- Birzeit, Palestine
Telfax:+972 2 2982935 mjarrar@birzeit.eduPalGov © 2011
2

3. © Copyright Notes
Everyone is encouraged to use this material, or part of it, but should properly
cite the project (logo and website), and the author of that part.
No part of this tutorial may be reproduced or modified in any form or by any
means, without prior written permission from the project, who have the full
copyrights on the material.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC-BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-
commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations
under the identical terms.
PalGov © 2011 3

4. ILOs
• Explain what is meant by e-archiving
‫• توضيح ما المقصود باألرشفة األلكترونية‬
• Explore the legal framework of e-
archiving in Palestine.
‫• معرفة اإلطار القاوني لألرشفة األلكترونية في فلسطين‬
• Explain the obstacles and clarify
solutions
PalGov © 2011 4

5. What is archiving
‫ما المقصود باألرشفة‬
Archiving: Items that are no longer required for current use,
but have been selected for long-term or permanent
reservation as they have been appraised to have
continuing value.
‫- تلك األدوات التي لم تعد مستخدمة‬
Archives are kept by a wide variety of organizations, and
can be either physical or digital
‫يستخدم نظام األرشفة في مؤسسات مختلفة وقد يكون هذه األرشفة ورقية أو رقمية‬
Physical archives often simply consist of paper documents,
‫األرشفة التقليدية تقوم على ملفات ورقية‬
E-archives are documents kept digitally
‫األرشفة األلكترونية تحفظ الملفات بصورة رقمية‬
PalGov © 2011 5

6. purpose of archiving
‫ما هدف األرشفة‬
• The purpose of archiving is to ensure that full
and accurate records of given organisation are
preserved for a period of time.
• Legally speaking most governmental or
private institutions are a obliged to store
certain documents for a period of time. The
aim is to make them available for retrieving
when requested. E.g. Judicial cases are
stored for 15 years according to the
Palestinian Civil Procedure law.
PalGov © 2011 6

7. ‫‪purpose of archiving‬‬
‫ما هدف األرشفة‬
‫• الغرض من أرشفة هو ضمان أن يتم االحتفاظ بسجالت‬
‫كاملة ودقيقة لمكتب معين لمدة زمنية مناسبة.‬
‫قانونا معظم الشركات أو الحكومات ملزمة بتخزين‬
‫وثائق معينة لفترة من الزمن من أجل إتاحتها لالسترداد‬
‫عند الطلب. على سبيل المثال يتم تخزين الدعاوى‬
‫القضائية لمدة 51 سنوات وفقا لقانون المرافعات المدنية‬
‫الفلسطيني.‬
‫1102 © ‪PalGov‬‬ ‫7‬

8. When to archive
‫متى األرشفة‬
• The document is considered
operationally closed and is no longer
required in day-to-day functions, or
‫• تم إغالق الوثيقة والتي تعد غير مطلوب في التعامل‬
‫اليومي‬
• An office is closed and the documents
are not to be incorporated into
another’s work.
‫• أغلق المكتب وعليه لم تعد الوثائق مطلوبة لعمل آخر‬
PalGov © 2011 8

9. Questions & Challenges
‫أسئلة وتحديات‬
• Legal admissibility: the needs to be able to prove,
brfotr a court that the contents of a particular
document or data file created or existing within an
Electronic Document Management System have
not changed since the time of storage. “If the data
file is an electronically stored image of an original
paper document, an organisation must be able to
prove that the electronic image is a true
representation of the original. Proving the
authenticity of electronically stored documents is
crucial to their admissibility in a court”.
Source: http://www.alliancegroup.co.uk/legal-admissibility.html
• The Palestinian Evidence law is silent
PalGov © 2011 9

10. Questions & Challenges
‫أسئلة وتحديات‬
– Access by administrations and authorities,
who can access, who can modify, who
can retrieve, who can order the
destruction
– Data protection and Privacy (No
Palestinian law yet, general rules in the
Basic Law)
– Confidentiality
– Security
– Digital signature
PalGov © 2011 10

11. What to be done
‫ما يمكن عمله‬
• Legal solution
• Amend exiting laws, mainly evidence
law
• Adopting laws: data protection an
privacy, e-transactions, legal
aknowlegement of e-signature
• No harmonization in the Arab region
• No harmonization on the international
level
PalGov © 2011 11

12. Good example
• The automation of retrieving archived
judicial cases in the first instance court
of Ramallah.
• The project was put on hold because
lacking of enough security (technical
problem) as well as authentications,
data protection, admissibility (legal
questions)
PalGov © 2011 12

13. Summary
• The legal framework in Palestine do
not support e-archiving.
‫• اإلطار القانوني في فلسطين غير مهيء لألرشفة‬
.‫القانونية‬
• There are many laws needed to be
adopted or existing laws needed to be
amended.
PalGov © 2011 13

14. References
• Romain Robert, CRIDS, University of
Namur, PowerPoint Presentation on e-
archiving , 2011.
• http://www.alliancegroup.co.uk/legal-
admissibility.html
PalGov © 2011 14

15. Session End
PalGov © 2011 15