National and Municipal Archives of the Federal Republic of Germany

Effects of data protection on the archive system in the Federal
Republic.

Topics: The survey questionnaire is organized in 7 sections:

1. Effects of data protection on the archive: hinderance of one´s own
work by legal regulations of data protection; feared impairment of
archives in case of extension of data protection legal regulations also
to ´files´; perceived tendency to ´over-regulation´; current effects of
data protection on archive; resulting refusal of third parties to use
archive data due to data protection laws.

2. Legal regulation of acceptance of records from authorities or
material registered in the archive: type of legal or administration
regulations due to which written material is archived; type of written
material that can not be accepted; preservation of written material in
trust for authorities; tasks and responsibilities of the archive;
perceived restrictive distribution practice of authorities; time limit
to acceptance; attitude to storage of personal data on a random basis
to reduce a possible data misuse.

3. Mass records: attitude to archiving mass records (scale); refusal
by authorities and offices to provide mass records for reasons of data
protection; acceptance of mass records within the last 10 years;
judgement on one´s own possibilities of continuous acceptance of mass
records; presence of systematic plans for preservation or annulment of
mass record holdings; interest in recommendations of social scientists
for the use of statistical procedures to obtain representative samples
from registries of different structure; presence of statistical
censuses or surveys since 1945 in personal holdings.

4. Machine-readable data: access to data processing equipment; number
of employees with experience in electronic data processing; knowledge
about type and amount of machine-readable data accumulating in
government offices at the time; judgement on personnel and actual
equipment of archive in view of archiving machine-readable data;
acceptance of data, complete or on a random basis; characterization of
holdings; interest in further archiving; reasons for not yet accepting
or reasons for intent to accept machine-readable data in the next few
years; effects of use of machine-readable data on archiving process;
attitude to preparation and integration of data sets as archive task;
assumed future user group with interest in machine-readable data
holdings.

5. Tasks and way of working of archive: assessment of archive as
information and documentation facility; judgement on selected measures
to increase reputation of archive in public (scale); type of acceptance
practice of written material by archive; influence of archive on
addition of background information to archive holdings; possibilities
to estimate future development of holdings; archiving for a limited
time documents whose historical value could not be estimated at the
time of acceptance; instruments used to record files or develop files;
presence of usage statistics; determined changes in composition of
users; possibility to classify holdings according to different user
groups; perceived change in task of archives in the last few years;
expectations of the technical information center for the humanities;
securing written material as primary task.

6. Usage regulation: type of usage regulation; presence of usage time
limits and conditions for use; type of written material with use time
limits; time of sole decision about the usability; modalities of use of
holdings; usage regulations and data protection; access modalities for
research; perceived change of archive task.

7. Archive laws: probability of a new archive law coming to be;
judgement on legal basis of archive up to now and for future
requirements of data protection; attitude to the function of archive
laws, both to satisfy the need to protect the citizen as well as to
meet the information needs of historical research; most important
archive tasks needing to be regulated by an archive law; judgement on a
usage restriction for authorities after archiving; judgement on
practicality of a general right to access and information for persons
affected; assumed number of such queries; desire for stronger effort on
the part of scientific users for the interests of the archive system;
presence of sources containing information on marriages in the time
period from 1800 to 1945; superior department; number and course of
training of employees.