The review of the Provincial and District Administration functions for the Southern Province was carried out in 1958. At that time, the Southern Province consisted of ten districts: Port Herald (now Nsanje); Chikwawa (present day Chikhwawa); Blantyre; Mwanza; Chiradzulu; Cholo (now Thyolo); Mlanje (now Mulanje); Zomba; Kasupe (now Machinga); and Fort Johnston (now Mangochi). One of the areas under review was filing and registry systems. The assessment of the Provincial and District Administration (P&DA) registry services focused on the receipt, registration and despatch of mail; classification, indexing and numbering of files; the association of papers and their files; recording the location of files; the bringing forward of files for action on future dates; the custody and repair of files; management of classified correspondence; and procedures for instituting and supervising a new registry
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system. On the basis of these assessment criteria, the O&M observed that the registry services of the P&DA as a whole left much to be desired (Nyasaland Government, 1959), for a number of reasons.
Among other findings, the O&M noted that the Provincial and District Offices adopted different filing systems such that in many cases and on their own initiatives, District Officers reorganised the filing systems in their offices for their individual benefit. When new officers took up post, it was difficult to follow the systems that had been instituted by their predecessors, and, as such, they resorted to further reorganisation of the systems for their convenience. In order to deal with the problem, it was recommended that the Provincial Commissioners should designate officers in Provincial Headquarters with responsibility for the oversight of registry services and for approving, on a Provincial basis, the introduction of any changes (Nyasaland Government, 1959). Since the District Commissioners dealt with similar issues in the districts, O&M recommended a uniform registry system that would assist district officers to handle records in a uniform manner so that once posted to another district, officers would find registry systems with which they were familiar.
The survey also observed that the classification of files was defective as evidenced by the fact that a variety of subjects were dealt with in the same file. As a result of this problem, some files were naturally permitted to grow indefinitely and too thick thereby outgrowing their covers and their fasteners while other files contained fewer papers and were consequently much thinner.
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Veteran Head Clerks and Filing Clerks were highly credited for their ability to produce the required papers by memory and without hesitation, even where the papers were filed away under classifications which only remotely resembled the given topic. However, owing to the ever growing number of topics which the P&DA had had to deal with, there was an increase in the number of files that were created. Consequently, memories of Clerks could no longer be relied upon for the effective retrieval of information. This being the case, O&M recommended the development of a uniform file classification system upon which filing staff could depend for filing and tracing of papers.
Since African clerks usually had an inadequate comprehension of the English language and the simple problems of classifying and indexing would be difficult for them, the proposed file classification, indexing and numbering system was to be simple. A system that distinguished between ‗subject‘ and ‗case‘ files was recommended, where the subject files would deal with policy matters while the case files would deal with individual cases on various policy issues. Additionally, the new classification system recommended that papers dealing with related business should be brought under one subject file.
Landreth (2010), Baker (2010), Strachan (2010) and Harvey (2010), all agree that as District Commissioners in Nyasaland, they received no instructions from the Secretariat on the retention and disposal of non-current District Administration records. As we have learned, retention and disposal of the District Administration records was done unsystematically in the districts. Similarly, O&M found that ‗no directions... [were] given to the Registry Clerks as to the custody and disposal of files
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upon which action [had] been completed‘ (Nyasaland Government, 1959, p. 18). This resulted in the district office registries being clogged up with inactive files that were long overdue for either disposal or transfer to the archives for further preservation. For the first time, a policy on the systematic retention and disposal of District Administration records was recommended by O&M and later implemented by all the Provincial and District Administration offices.
Determination of the retention periods for district records was considered a task beyond the capability of the P&DA registry clerks, so that the task was assigned to the correspondence officers. The correspondence officers were required to classify the records, examine the contents of the files, determine the retention periods for all the files and then indicate the disposal instructions on newly designed file covers, as shown in Figure 5, below. Files that the office was unlikely to use again were to be marked in the Disposal Instructions box on the bottom right corner of the file cover indicating the date when the files would be sent to the Archives and signed by the correspondence officer. In the same Disposal Instructions box, the correspondence officers were supposed to indicate whether the files sent to the Archives were routine or policy ones. Routine files were to be disposed of by the Archives on particular dates that the correspondence officers were supposed to indicate. Policy and other important files were to be preserved indefinitely and indicated as ‗P.A‘ [Put Away] in the box on the front cover. The proposed Standard Form of File covers were adopted and are still in use today.
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Until the O&M‘s survey, the P&DA offices used file covers that were inadequate for permanent records. The files covers were made of flimsy manila, which led to quick wearing out of files and the spilling out of contents. Additionally, files for Confidential, Secret and Open correspondence were not differentiated. It was therefore recommended that standard file covers in two qualities (light manila with a flat on the right hand side and a stout manila with gussets in the spine and flap with linen strips reinforcing the insides of the gussets) should be supplied by the Government Printer. In order to distinguish between Confidential, Secret and Open subjects, green, red and plain manila files were to be introduced for Confidential, Secret and Open files, respectively. The two qualities of standard file covers and use of different colours for files to distinguish between Confidential, Secret and Open subjects as suggested by the O&M were adopted and are still in use in the Public Service today.
Although only the P&DA offices in the Southern Province were surveyed, the findings represented the situation in all the three Provinces, and O&M‘s recommendations for improving the record keeping systems were to be implemented by all the P&DA offices throughout the country. Among the procedures to be followed when reorganising the P&DA registry system were that: the Government Printer should make ample supplies of new files; copies of file lists or registers from all parts of the P&DA should be obtained and compared in order to extract a list of subjects by which all business of any P&DA could be described, and then a Master List of Key Words was to be published and distributed to all districts; all files upon which there had been no action for two years were to be despatched to the Archives; Correspondence officers were to be introduced in the new record keeping system; Registry Procedures Instructions were to be published by Provincial Commissioners
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and distributed to all districts offices as standing instructions (Nyasaland Government, 1959).