Är det handlingen som räknas? Förvaltningsmyndigheters erfarenhet av arkivtillsyn

Sammanfattning: The Swedish National Archives have a national overview of the archive sector of Sweden’s public authorities and the archive ordinance gives the National Archives mandate to regulate and supervise the management of the archives, their compliance with the rules via auditing inspections, and to advise on archive matters. Due to the immense digitalization of public sector information in Sweden, archives have seen an increasing amount of electronic information in both files and databases. I aim in this master’s thesis to exhibit the auditing inspections as an implementation method from the perspective of the supervised entity, and to investigate how auditing inspections, and their ancillary work, function as a contact between the supervisory authority and the administrative authority, as well as how the supervision is received by the latter. I conduct five case studies at higher education institutions in Sweden. The empirical material consists of text documentation from the archive inspections and transcriptions of semi-structured interviews with archivists that partook in the inspections. I analyse the results with the theoretical framework of implementation theory in combination with concepts from institutional theory. The results show that some archivists considered that the supervision was sufficient based on the National Archives' assignment, while others felt that the National Archives did not sufficiently review the electronic information. All archivists interviewed considered the advisory function insufficient and cumbersome, which affects the entire sector, and may lead to a diversification of the sector due to archivists' uncertainty about what applies. This study points to problems in the current design of auditing inspections. The National Archives' regulations regarding the handling of electronic information are not yet well developed, something that several of the archivists are requesting. This also means that the National Archives does not have a sufficiently well-formulated directive for the preservation of electronic information to the same extent as for physical information. The question of whether some of the concepts used in electronic records management are still adequate may be useful suggestions for further research.