Strengthening records management systems in Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) member churches

Abstract

Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) is an Ecumenical Organization composed of the three Mainline Churches; the Roman Catholic Church, The Anglican Church and the Uganda Orthodox Church. This study was conducted at three sites constituting UJCC headquarters at Rubaga, Namirembe and Namungona respectively and aimed to examine the current Record Management System used in UJCC Mainline Churches by identifying its strengths and weaknesses and recommend an effective and efficient RMS for future direction.

The main objective of this study was to examine the current Records Management System (RMS) used in UJCC Mainline Churches and determine its weaknesses and to recommend an effective and efficient RMS for UJCC Mainline churches. The specific objectives were to: examine the types of church records generated; analyzed various activities associated with the current Record Management System, identified challenges linked with the current Record Management System used by UJCC Mainline Churches and made proposals and recommendations for strengthening Record Management in UJCC Mainline Churches.

The conceptual framework adopted for this study was flexible enough to capture the range of the record keeping activities undertaken in the three churches. The study design was case study was adopted and used interviews, observation and document review. The instruments included Interview guide, Observation guide and Content Analysis guide.

The study concludes that UJCC Mainline churches do not have a clear records management program to guide records management. In addition, UJCC had no proper record centers in place; and no skilled personnel to manage the records; ICTs have not been embraced due to among others the inadequate funding required to meet its costs.

As a result, much is left to be desired resulting in inadequate information flow affecting necessary decision making to support various functions performed by the UJCC.

Therefore, a comprehensive records management program should address issues affecting records management among the UJCCC Mainline churches.

The study concludes that the study the crucial focus of the records management program should be an enabling environment for managing church records. The study recommends that there is need to take specific measures to ensure that records are managed on daily basis, develop; a Classification Scheme and Retention Schedule; clean; out records which were beyond the approved retention period; educate and train to embrace ICTs and other changes in the LIS fields; creation of an enabling environment to facilitate records location, accessibility, retrieval and timely utilization of information.