Políticas de avaliação de informação no sistema arquivístico da Região Autónoma da Madeira: análise de conteúdo às portarias de gestão de documentos (2004-2014)

Background: This master’s degree dissertation has as its central theme policies on archival appraisal in practice in regional administration of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM). An exploratory and comparative analysis to the concepts, models and theoretical and methodological influences, processes and procedures for archival appraisal is carried out, based on a theoretical scientific corpus and its international, national and regional legal-normative framework. Also, an analysis of procedures for the appraisal of archival information in the autonomous regional administration of Madeira (RAM) is made. This analysis is based on a corpus of records management ordinances published in the Jornal Oficial da Regiao Autonoma da Madeira, through which we identify semantic patterns around the objectives and strategic guidelines that the producers have adopted for the management and control of their informational resources. Objectives: The aim of the present study is to analyze the policies of archival appraisal from a scientific, legal and regulatory corpora, within the framework of the madeiran regional archival system, particularly around legal and normative dispositions (portarias de gestao de documentos) recommended by the regional law, as Decreto Legislativo Regional no. 26/99/M, de 27 de agosto and Decreto Legislativo Regional no. 5/2004/M, de 14 de julho. Design research and method: This master dissertation has a qualitative approach to the theoretical framework of organizational phronesis, through a review of literature and content analysis of textual corpora of the “portarias de gestao de documentos”. To support our content analysis, the specific software CADQAS was used. Results and conclusions: Regarding to the literature review around the scientific and legal corpora and the regulatory framework about records appraisal, we observe a methodological diversity practiced through different archival appraisal traditions, in particular the schellenberguian tradition, whose theoretical and methodological assumptions were incorporated by various national archival systems. The madeiran regional archival system, as extension of the national public administration, encodes the archival appraisal in records management ordinances. The results of content analysis show that the portarias de gestao de documentos are key instruments for public archival appraisal in regional public administration, for the purposes of reduction of information/documentation and for the constitution of the Archival Heritage. However, the majority of the ordinances for records appraisal focuses on idiosyncrasies of producer organization and the perspective of the archival appraisal processes and procedures only consist of a vertical relationship between the producer body and the management body of the regional system of archives. To cope with the obsolescence of the archival appraisal instrumenta and the subsequent problems of control of archival goods of the madeiran public government, we propose an increase of functions and attributions of the main managing body of the regional archival system and the regional archival network’s implementation to strengthen the existing architecture of the regional archival system.