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LIBERATORI – PRATI,
Elisa
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Curriculum
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Elisa is
the Chief Archivist of the Bank Group and the manager of the Knowledge
& Information Services Unit in the Information & Technology
Services (ITS) vice-presidency of the World Bank, in Washington, DC.
In this position, Elisa leads the Bank Group Archives, the Bank Group
Library, the Internal Documents Unit and the Archives Access to Information
service to the public. Her mandate is to effectively develop and implement
strategies for these functions in the context of the Open Agenda and the
decentralized nature of the institution. Elisa joined the Bank in 1998 to
develop a partnership program on Latin American Archives to reinforce
archives programs in the region. She has played a leadership role in
promoting partnerships for the Archives and preparing the strategy for the
Archives disclosure. Prior to joining the Bank, she was a senior lecturer
at Johns Hopkins University.
Elisa has a Ph.D in Italian studies from the University of California,
Los Angeles,
where she was project coordinator of the Repertorium
Columbianum.
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Title:
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Nurturing a Culture of Transparency:
Setting Policies and Engaging
the Institution to Facilitate Access to Information
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Brief summary:
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Opening the information
of an organization to the public requires a robust information
management program, a culture
which supports this program and a well managed archives with arranged and described
holdings. We will
explore how this was implemented in the World Bank - multinational
producer, customizer, and connector of development knowledge.
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Content:
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In 2010
the World Bank Board approved the Policy on Access to Information (AI
Policy) which recognized that transparency and accountability are of
fundamental importance to the development process and provided a
presumption to disclose information in the Bank's possession unless it fell
under one or more AI Policy exceptions. Successful fulfillment
of the AI Policy relied on proper management of the Bank's information. Three
policies would form the framework for success: the Policy on Management of
Records, the Information Classification and Control Policy and the AI
Policy itself. A change was also needed in the culture of the
organization to ensure compliance with these policies and their fulfilment.
Participatory and consultative approach used in creation of these policies
ensured their ownership by the World Bank staff. A group of Information
Management (IM) Focal Points was convened with representation from all
areas of the organization to establish business processes and practices to
facilitate compliance with the existing policy framework and development of
IM strategy. The Archives adopted an efficient method for arranging and
describing voluminous holdings to improve finding aids and enable access. The
Archives is in the process of adopting the open-source ICA Access to Memory
archival description application to make our archival descriptions
available electronically. This will make our descriptions available to
researchers through a flexible and customizable platform that supports
hierarchical descriptions and international archival standards and provides
automated import and export of our data. Researchers will enjoy a
user-friendly interface that enables advanced searching, filtering, and
navigation.
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Scientific contribution:
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The WBG
Archives developed an approach to describing its holdings which leverages
the records schedules and metadata related to those holdings. Analysis of
records is limited to sampling to confirm the scope and content while more
detailed analysis and description at the series level occurs only on the
smaller fonds. This ensures efficient
availability of finding aids to enable researchers to submit informed
requests. The WBG Archives sponsored a workshop in 2012 on the role of
archivists, scholars, and development practitioners in using history to
inform development policy, linking a growing scholarly interest in the
history of development with the Bank’s open agenda initiative. The Archives
is enabling a more case-based research approach in the field of economic
development and poverty reduction by surfacing archival information in the
Bank's Project and Operations Portal.
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Keywords:
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Access
to Information, Freedom of Information, Culture Change,
Archives, Open Archives, Records Management, Knowledge Organization, Information Management, Transparency,
Open Data, Policies, Open Development,
Open Agenda
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