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Cabinet to invest NT$5 bn in national archive centers

The Cabinet is planning to spend NT$5 billion to build the nation's first National Archive by 2011, the Taipei Times learned yesterday.

"We're thinking of taking a gradual approach to build a bigger and permanent facility to store national archives," said Lin Chiu-yen (林秋燕), chief secretary of the National Archives Administration under the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission.

According to Lin, the commission hopes to spend about NT$5 billion building the facility, not including land acquisition expenses, by 2009 at the earliest and by 2011 the latest.

With about 130,000 to 150,000 document entries transferred from local governments to the National Archives Administration each year, Lin said that the administration hopes to establish the nation's first National Archive in northern Taiwan by 2011, a second one in central Taiwan by 2031 and a third in the southern part of the country by 2051.

The administration hopes to build the first facility with 5,000 to 10,000 pings worth of landscape area and 20,000 pings of floor area.

Currently, the nation's official archives are kept in the 1,000-ping exhibition center and a 30-ping warehouse located in the National Archives Administration building in downtown Taipei.

While local governments have about 600 million to 700 million entries of official documents, Lin said that about 20 million of them are older than 25 years old and are worthy of preservation at the National Archive Administration.

Established in 2001 and inaugurated in January 2002, the administration spent about NT$33 million renovating the 37-year-old, three-story building, which was formerly a military base.

The administration currently has about 73,000 entries of paper archives and more than 7,000 pieces of non-paper documents in storage. It has digitized about 60,000 entries of the documents, or over 1 million pages.

Before the long-term goal is achieved, Lin said that the administration hopes to complete the establishment of a virtual national archive by the end of this year.

The Web site would encompass four major themes: the 921 Earthquake, the Formosa Incident, the 228 Incident and the constitutional reforms conducted by the National Assembly before the body took on its new role as a non-standing body that only convenes for specific purposes.

The administration also hopes to spend NT$100 million finding a temporary facility in Taipei City, measuring about 500 to 1,000 pings, before the permanent facility is complete.

Meanwhile, Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮), head of the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, yesterday revealed that the Cabinet is scheduled to launch an integrated official bulletin, the Cabinet Register, on Jan. 1 next year.

The Daily Gazette, published online and in hard copy, is designed to integrate the official bulletins currently published by various Cabinet agencies. The publication would cover administrative decrees or government policies formulated by central government institutions or approved by the Cabinet.
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