The National Archives is starting the first yt negotiations in its history. The reduced number of visitors accelerates the transfer of its services online
National Archives will start collective bargaining negotiations for all its personnel next Monday. The negotiations are the first in the history of the National Archives, and they are estimated to last six weeks.
Negotiations can lead to a maximum of 30 person-year reductions. Currently, the National Archives has 269 employees, one hundred of whom are temporary.
The reason for the Yt negotiations is the weakened financial situation.
“Maintaining two different service channels, high real estate costs and an increase in expenses”, sums up the Director General of the National Archives Päivi Happonen money holes.
Two service channel means both physical archives and research halls as well as digital services.
“We have nine different locations across the country, all of which have research hall services. You won’t get quick savings from real estate costs, for example by reducing the network of locations. Each office has several kilometers of archive material, which in any case should be placed somewhere.”
Director General of the National Archives, Päivi Happonen.
The operations of the National Archives are rapidly transitioning to digital. The background is a decrease in the number of visitors and changed research processes. Over the past 20 years, the number of archive customers has dropped by more than 80 percent, and the number of documents ordered to the research hall by more than 50 percent.
“More than 90 percent of our customers only use our digital services. Corona reduced the number of visitors somewhat, but the declining trend has been clear even before the pandemic,” says Happonen.
As a result, the National Archives plans to reduce the opening hours of the research rooms and lower the service level.
Teaching- and the National Archives under the Ministry of Culture is responsible for preserving the national documentary cultural heritage. The archive receives information materials archived by the state administration, acquires private documents for its collections, and acts as an expert authority for archiving.
The material can be freely used by all citizens.
“The National Archives’ largest customer group is genealogists, but they have largely moved online years ago. Professional researchers and students make a lot of use of the archive’s services, but also a large part of them only use digital materials.”
Albert Einstein’s and Interior Minister Juho Niukkanen’s letters in the National Archives.
Happonen says that the archive has been communicating to the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM) about insufficient resources for a long time.
“We strive to find sustainable strategic solutions in cooperation with the ministry. However, they do not bring relief at this moment.”
The National Archives in addition, private archives are also cramped when state subsidies have been cut. At the moment, a private archive strategy is being drawn up under the leadership of OKM, which aims to take into account the changed circumstances.
“The digital world and changing customer behavior also affect the private archive sector, where funding sources are very different. Centralized services would be a cost-effective solution”, thinks Happonen.
The only thing that is certain is that there is no going back. For example, the National Archives no longer accepts anything other than digital material from the state administration. If the material is analog, it must be converted to ones and zeros before handing over.
“The archive of the future offers easy-to-use, customer-friendly and centralized digital services. The data produced from the database can be utilized and mined for different purposes,” says Happonen.
“However, not everything should be digitized. Digitization is focused on materials that customers order and need.”
Read more: The National Archives starts the yt negotiations
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