Planning Committee to study ordinance establishing document preservation and archiving program

The City Council Committee on Planning, Research and Innovation, chaired by Councilor Ian Mark Q. Nacaya, is set to discuss the proposed Ordinance Establishing the City Government Document Preservation and Archiving Program to Ensure the Safety, Integrity, and Accessibility of all City Government Property, Public Documents, and Records, including but not limited to Property Inventory, Land Ownership, Births, Marriages, Deaths, Assessments, Taxation, Accounts, Business Permits and Other Records of Public Interest in the Offices and Departments of the City Government.

Authored by Vice Mayor Bebot Rodriguez, the ordinance seeks to address the imperative need for the safety, protection and preservation of city government property, public documents and records. It draws its legal foundation from Section 458 of RA 7160, also known as the Local Government Code of 1991, which mandates the city to pass an ordinance in order to ensure the safeguarding of various public records that are of paramount importance to the city’s affairs.

In line with this, the ordinance also acknowledges the significance of RA 9470, commonly known as the “National Archives Act of 2007,” which emphasizes the transfer of public records with enduring value to a permanent government repository for effective management, control, and regulation of record disposition.

Moreover, the rationale behind this ordinance lies in the city’s commitment to upholding transparency, accountability and effective governance, thus its passage, would mean that the city acknowledges its responsibility to protect its valuable records from loss, damage and/or destruction.