In this presentation, Marion Ville, from the Vitam programme, explains the tools used within the French public archives network to facilitate the collection and archiving of office documents.
1 – The context of public archives in France
In France, the archiving of documents produced by the public administration is overseen by a structured network:
- The Comité Interministériel des Archives de France (Interministerial Committee for the Archives of France) defines the main strategic orientations for public archives.
- The Interministerial Service of the Archives of France (SIAF), attached to the Ministry of Culture, coordinates and evaluates the State’s archiving activities, with the exception of the archives of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and those of the army, which have their own autonomy.
2 – The Vitam programme
The Vitam programme is an electronic archiving system funded by several ministries (Culture, Foreign Affairs, Army). It aims to structure and modernise the management of public archives by guaranteeing their durability and accessibility.
3 – The challenges of electronic archiving
Public archive services face two major challenges:
- Data processing: It is essential to archive and quickly retrieve documents in a growing volume of information.
- The submission package: The archived documents must comply with the SEDA (Standard d’Échange de Données pour l’Archivage) standard and be integrated in XML SEDA format.
4 – The archiving tools presented
Archifiltre-Docs
Developed in 2019 by the Archives Mission of the social ministries, this tool allows you to visualise and organise file trees. It helps to sort, describe, enrich and identify documents that can be eliminated before their final archiving.
ReSIP
Created by the Vitam programme and available in Open Source, ReSIP allows you to import, process and export SIPs (information packages subject to archiving), thus offering an advanced solution compared to the old tools that were mainly used to perform tests.
Octave
Developed by the Service Interministériel des Archives de France (Interministerial Archives Department of France), Octave facilitates the creation of office archive submission packages. It is specifically designed to meet the needs of local public archives.
5 – Demonstration and conclusion
The presentation ends with a demonstration of the three tools in action, illustrating how they enable the collection, organisation and integration of public archives.
In conclusion, solutions such as Archifiltre-Docs, ReSIP, Octave and other electronic archiving tools enable archivists to meet regulatory requirements while complying with current standards. These solutions offer different approaches adapted to the needs of archiving professionals.