From 2009 to 2011, the International Records Management Trust conducted a research project called Aligning Records Management with ICT/E‐government and Freedom of Information in East Africa, with funding from the International Development Research Centre. The research was concerned with the integration of records management components into ICT/e‐government and freedom of information initiatives, which are priorities for the governments in East Africa. This paper aims to discuss these issues.
The research focused on the governments of the member states of the East African Community; Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. In each of these countries, research teams examined the level of records management functionality in new or planned court case management systems, where possible.
The findings demonstrated how the lack of a national regulatory framework for records management, at the highest level, could affect the design and implementation of systems, at the lowest, technical level.
This paper draws together the case studies prepared by the author from data collected by the national research teams, to provide an overview of the issues encountered in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which were the member states of the original East African Community, and demonstrate the correlation between ICT and records policy integration and court case management system functionality.
