Previous - Next
Introduction
The failure of "traditional" archival
appraisal
Appraisal: from the physical to the conceptual
Towards a model: appraisal and societal dynamics
An appraisal model for the citizen-state
interaction
Conclusion
Notes
1. This chapter will propose a model to aid in understanding the creation and thus the appraisal of personal information records. While the context in which this model is to be used will be outlined more fully in Chapter 4, it may be introduced here by noting that the appraisal of series of case files should occur in the following order:
-- First, the subject file series from the agency relevant to the information or programme documented in the personal information case files should be appraised, from the most senior policy and programme coordination levels down to the larger operational areas.
-- Secondly, related electronic records and systems should be assessed, especially all programme-delivery and programme-analysis systems.
-- Thirdly, personal information records should be appraised which are in the essential category (see section 2.22 above).
-- Fourthly, the case file series which are valuable primarily at a collective level or. for their evidential value -- such series forming the vast majority of those created by government -- should be appraised (which is the focus of this chapter).
-- Finally, the appraisal of particular files in a series for specific informational or genealogical value takes place (which will be dealt with in Chapter 4).
While the model advanced and the research advocated in this chapter for appraising case files collectively, as well as the above schema, may be pertinent for appraising the other types of records before getting to these case file series (i.e., the subject files, electronic records, etc.), such wider applicability of the model is outside the scope of the present study.
The failure of "traditional" archival appraisal
2. When faced with a series to appraise, archivists have traditionally undertaken three distinct intellectual activities or, perhaps better, have asked themselves three different types of questions:
-- assess the records in terms of their context, form, and content (such factors as age; time span; uniqueness; extent; internal structure; relationship to other records; evidence of their creator's activities, ideas, or organizational context; additional information on persons, places, and things).
-- consider whether the records may be useful for present or (more problematic) anticipated future research in one or more disciplines.
-- address practical and technical issues relating to the costs of arranging and describing the record, preserving and perhaps copying it, storing it, and making it available for research must be considered, as such factors may change an otherwise positive appraisal decision to a negative one.
3. What is missing from this traditional approach to appraisal is a general theoretical overview of records creation in society. Such an overview is essential in order for archivists to decide which series of records it is that they should be applying the above three levels or sets of appraisal questions to in the first place.1 Where personal information records are concerned, as they have been defined in this study, this involves building a model or paradigm of how the citizen interacts with the state. Some such interactions are naturally more important than others for revealing the nature of society, the dynamics of government, the lives of ordinary people, and prevailing ideological issues. To determine which citizen-state interactions are most important and under what circumstances they occur requires isolating the key factors involved, and the significant variables of each one. Once the most important interactions have thus been identified, only then should the actual series of records containing personal information created by those interactions draw the archivist's attention in applying some of the above-mentioned traditional appraisal criteria. The "macro-appraisal" based on this theoretical model must come first, because it is essential in coping with the great complexity and enormous bulk of modern personal information records: dealing on an ad hoc basis with particular series of such records one by one without that theoretical context leads the archivist into a hopeless quagmire. Yet this theoretical approach to appraisal, as noted before, is largely absent from archival literature and archivists concede that its absence is responsible for haphazard and poor appraisal decisions.2
Appraisal: from the physical to the conceptual
4. Appraisal in the first instance at least must be seen as an issue of mind over matter. The information context and the records-creating processes surrounding a series of records must transcend, for the archivist, the storage medium which carries the information or even its subject content.3 Archivists must not get distracted initially by the physical form or schematic organization of the record, but rather look at the processes and functions behind records creation. In this first and most important phase of appraisal, they must understand why records were created rather than what they contain, how they were created and used by their original users rather than how they might be used in future, and what formal functions and mandates of the creator they supported rather than what physical characteristics they may or may not have. Archivists must look at the essence of the communication between the citizen and the state rather than at what was communicated. This intellectual link to the creator shifts the central importance of provenance from the physical origin of the records in their creator's office to their original conceptual purpose in that same office.4 Once this is understood, the archivist can target the records or groups of records likely to have the highest value and appraise them in more detail.
5. This conceptual approach to appraisal of records containing personal information does not deny the importance of the traditional appraisal steps outlined in section 2 above: determining evidential and informational value, research use, and practical and technical factors. Rather, it posits that these issues or questions should only be considered later by the archivist, after the "macro-appraisal" has illuminated which particular series of records are worth appraising at the secondary stage, or better that they should be considered as component parts of the theoretical approach. In either case, they should not be considered, as they usually are, in isolation as the only important factors.5
6. This conceptual approach to appraisal requires a research agenda for archivists in their daily activities. Appraisal is a work of careful analysis and of archival, diplomatic, and historical scholarship, not a mere procedure or process. Applying guidelines or checklists in the appraisal process, as well as developing broader acquisition strategies, only works if such application is based on a rich understanding by the archivist of the history of the records creator, its official functions and legal mandates, its internal organizational structure, its decision-making processes, its records-creating procedures, and the changes in all these over time, as well as a similar understanding of the often subtle characteristics of the records themselves. These factors are especially difficult where the personal information involved is shared in different jurisdictions or, even worse, across national boundaries. Unravelling the complexities of the citizen-state interaction in light of these factors is a challenging intellectual work rooted in careful and sustained research.6 In this approach, searching out actual and anticipated research uses of the records is not part of the archivist's job. Indeed, acquiring records to serve or follow research trends is unarchival, and distorts good appraisal.
7. This new approach must be coupled strongly with an active, archivally driven emphasis to records management and records disposition activity (a point which will be amplified in Chapter 4). In an archivally directed appraisal environment, archivists focus actively on the 5 per cent (or less) of records in a government's holdings which have permanent value rather than passively on approving for destruction the 95 per cent without continuing value. The reorientation of an archivist's work from "a negative disposal principle" to one of "positive selection" is necessitated by the volume and character of modern records.7 This new approach is especially important when dealing with the enormous bulk of records containing personal information.
8. There are other conceptual issues affecting appraisal theory which are outside the scope of this study of appraising records containing personal information, but which archivists should also consider within the context of their own national and institutional situations. In addition to appraising particular series of records to decide which to keep or destroy, according to traditional archival selection criteria (see section 2 above), archivists must incorporate institutional acquisition policies and mandates into their appraisal framework, as these will also define (and usually narrow) the field from which records can be acquired. Very often, too, these policies will reflect the political pressures (mentioned earlier) under which archivists may well find themselves. There is, in short, a need to reconcile records evaluation criteria and institutional policy when developing an acquisition strategy. Naturally, institutional jurisdictions will vary from country to country in forming or balancing this equation.8
9. A very promising conceptual approach to appraisal is the "documentation strategy" which has been articulated in recent years in the United States. It argues that appraisal must transcend (although also incorporate) records evaluation criteria and individual archival institutions' acquisition policies to become a multi-institutional approach that combines many archives' activities in order to document the main themes in society. The documentation strategy integrates in its analysis both official government and other institutional records with private manuscripts and special graphic material, as well as published information. Its focus is not in the first instance provenancial, but on themes (or more properly societal functions) such as educating college students or developing the computer industry, or, as an alternative, on a very limited geographical area, but documenting therein many themes. It has been rightly noted that "the documentation strategy is intended to supplement rather than replace traditional methods of appraisal" and that it "is not a synonym for all archival appraisal, although unfortunately it has fallen prey to just such use." The documentation strategy is thus well beyond the scope of this study of appraising records containing personal information generated by government institutions. The documentation strategy also carries with it, unless applied on a very narrow and local basis, the threat of enormous overlapping of themes or functions and thus the real possibility of duplication of archivists' research work and record acquisition. In many ways, it is most appropriate for the world of private manuscripts rather than government or institutional records. Nevertheless, the new focus of the documentation strategy on "macro-appraisal" of first understanding societal functions before appraising particular groups of records, and basing such understanding on careful research and analysis, is complementary and analogous to the approach of this study.9
Towards a model: appraisal and societal dynamics
10. European archivists have advocated for a much longer period than their North American counterparts the need for the archivist to understand how society functions and how it creates records before one appraises the actual records themselves.10 Societal dynamics should be a central concern in appraisal. While recognizing that the subjective and even artistic nature of appraisal cannot be eliminated, it is better in the European view for archivists to speculate less on possible uses for records tomorrow and to concentrate more on developing criteria to ensure that the records acquired reflect the values, patterns, and functions of the society contemporary to the records creators. This approach is not, however, to be confused with uncritical Hegelianism. Such patterns and functions should mirror the complex realities of actual society, rather than conform to some overarching ideology -- searching for and designating as archivally valuable only those records, for example, that demonstrate the paramountcy of dialectical materialism or free-market liberalism.11
11. Yet the problem remains that this full "reality" of society's patterns and functions (which the records should reflect) can never be objectively determined by historians, archivists, or even philosophers. How then can archivists chose a representative "slice of life" to reflect a reality that is unknowable? The answer lies in focusing less on that reality and more on the most essential ways and means in which that reality is formed. Through research and reflection, the archivist can determine where the best documentary evidence (as opposed to the historical truth) of that reality will most likely be found, and the central factors or players that shape that evidence. This approach has been defined in Germany as focusing on the "image" of society -- that is to say, not on the objective reality of society per see, which can never be known absolutely, but rather on the mechanisms or loci in society where the citizen interacts with the state to produce the sharpest and clearest insights into societal dynamics and issues.12 It is at these points that the best documentary evidence will be found. The culmination of that evidence, if chosen on this basis even by hundreds of archivists in scores of locations, will over time add up to a "reality" at the broadest levels of metahistory, myth, and social contract ideals -- even if no one archivist is ever able to perceive that "whole" reality as he or she works on its "parts." If the method for the part is sound, the whole will be reflected as a result. It must be stressed too, right at the start, that such insights from the "image" need not ( end often will not) conform with the prevailing ideologies, practices, and institutions of the state; indeed, as will be seen, such insights are often most valuable where they vary from prevailing norms. Appraisal for each archivist thus consists of ensuring that the quality of the "image" reflected in records selected for archival retention is high. The rest of this chapter will explore the concept of the image and its role in shaping archival selection of personal information records.
12. It is essential to grasp this central notion of the "image." Image evokes perception, imitation, metaphor, mirror reflections. When one remarks of someone that "she is the image of her mother," one obviously does not mean that she is her mother in some objective reality, but rather that in key essential behaviour and fundamental appearances she reflects her mother's most important characteristics. So, too, is it with the institutions of the state. If not day to day or at any one moment frozen in time, the departments and agencies of government will over time reflect the "image" of society, that is, they will reflect the public hopes, aspirations, activities, and frustrations articulated by its citizens and that this reflection will be most evident where the citizen-state interaction is most vigorous. This does not suppose that this reflection or image is an objective reality of society, but rather that it contains the most important characteristics and features of that reality. The image will be most sharply focused and most responsive to change in open, democratic societies, but in all societies the dynamic outlined here will gradually take hold.
13. It is not possible for archivists to discern the total, global "image" of society as a whole any more than it is possible to know the objective reality of society itself. Achieving that holistic image may be kept as an ideal, but not as a practical tool in working reality.13 The global whole must remain a sensitivity in the archivist's consciousness, not a formal methodology. For one obvious thing, there is an inner side of human life relatively untouched by government functions and undocumented in government records, even in this era of the pervasive state and intensive citizen-state interaction. For another, there are people who slip through the cracks of society. In western countries, for example, the democratic consensus is often a white, male, capitalist one, and marginalized groups not forming part of that consensus or empowered by it are reflected palely (if at all) in the programmes and institutions of the state. Yet as will be seen, the voice of such marginalized groups may only be heard (and thus documented) -- aside from chance survival of scattered private papers -- through their interaction with the state, and thus the archivist must listen carefully to make sure these voices are heard.
14. But if this collective holistic image is too large for any one archivist to grasp, it does exist in reality; it is not an artificial construct or an idealistic leap of faith. The role of the archivist is to ensure not only that the "image" reflected in the records chosen for archival preservation is as accurate and inclusive as possible, but also to deal practically with smaller, discrete, manageable parts of that whole "image" rather than tilting at impossible windmills. In the case of records containing personal information, that "part" would be the departments and agencies of the state producing such records and reflecting that portion of the societal image formed by the citizen-state relationship as it relates to the function(s) of that agency. In this sense, the image of society is built inductively from actual human experience through the institutions (and thus records) which its citizens collectively create rather than deductively by adhering or conforming to either some unknowable abstract ideal or to the prevailing social doctrines of the state.14 Consequently, the collective or holistic image will gradually be formed by assessing its parts, although assessment of the parts will naturally proceed in conformity with the then-known dimensions of the whole. Unlike the documentation strategy approach which first focuses on themes and functions, which are always in dispute regarding the number to be chosen, their priority, and their extensive overlapping, the "image" approach advocated here has the added advantage of being provenancially rooted in the first instance in concrete, existing institutions and their records.
15. In an era when archivists will perforce be keeping a smaller and smaller percentage of the total mountain of information created -- and nowhere is this truer than for the voluminous case files containing personal information records -- the importance of convergence between the image of society and the accuracy of the reflection of that image in archival records increases accordingly. The archivist does not attempt to know or understand the image per se -- that would require a lifetime of study, is philosophically impossible to attain, and would preclude any appraisal (or other work!) ever being completed. Rather, the archivist directs his or her research in this macro-appraisal model to identifying the mechanisms and locations (the how and where) of the image formation -the key hubs or "hot spots" in the citizen-state interaction - so that the best series may indeed be isolated and appraised.
16. The interaction of the citizen and the state, and thus records containing personal information which document that interaction, assume a large significance in this image. The central dialectic of society is the tension between leading ideological currents and the mass phenomenon of people's collective lives, which dialectic usually interacts most sharply through the agencies of the state. Virtually no aspect of human existence is untouched by this dialectic (that is, collectively in the image if not individually for each and every citizen). As noted in the first chapter of this study, people increasingly guard their rights, argue for better social, economic, and legal privileges, protest or support state actions across a dizzying spectrum of functions, and are taxed, counted, and recorded in a myriad of ways. They fill in forms, write letters, sign petitions, and are assessed and interviewed continually. The modern obsession with uncaring bureaucracies and "red tape" is evidence of the depth of this interaction and the resultant tensions. It is necessary, therefore, to turn in more detail to understand the nature of this interaction, the central factors or players affecting it, and the implications for appraising the records containing persona' information which result from the interaction -- that is to say, the implications for sharpening the archivist's understanding of how and where the image of society is formed and thus for locating and focusing on the best documentary evidence of it.
An appraisal model for the citizen-state interaction
17. There are three factors which define the citizen-state interaction: the programme, the agency, and the citizen.15 From this interaction is created the records containing personal information which the archivist must appraise. Taking these three factors in turn and exploring the key variables of each, many of which will refer back to the physical and context typologies for personal information records outlined in Chapter 2, the following sections will suggest a "macro-appraisal" approach suitable for selecting such records. This explanation of the interaction of the programme, agency, and citizen will demonstrate that the mechanics or location or nature of the formation of the image of society which the archivist must consider varies widely from one set of citizen-state interactions to any other, and thus from one series to another of the resultant personal information records. Depending on the type of variation involved, the records have greater or less permanent value.
18. The Programme. The programme is the purpose, intent, idea, even the theory or ideology, behind a particular government function. It is articulated through laws, regulations, directives and guidelines, operational procedural manuals, and published mandate statements, as well as in parliamentary debates and certain media commentaries. The programme encompasses more than just political ideology and party policies; it extends to the intellectual intent of government employees by which that ideology and those policies are interpreted and modified in the working practice of government administration. The importance of the programme depends on its impact on society, which is determined in part by its continuity, permanence, size and coverage of the population affected, and relevance to major social problems or higher policy issues, as well as the degree of change and impact in comparison with similar programmes, There is, nevertheless, the central idea of a programme being a prompt or agent or mirror of social change. If archivists were only documenting the programme per se, then acquiring the records mentioned above (laws, regulations, procedures, manuals, and so on) in conjunction with all related policy files and major subject files would be sufficient. No archivist should document the programme itself through personal information case files found in such great numbers at the bottom of the information pyramid.
19. But it is never that easy. The intent of the programme is not always realized in practice. There is often a large gap between the intention and formal articulation of a programme and how it was actually operating in practice. The greater this gap, the more significant are the related records containing personal information.16 For controversial programmes, such as medical aid for abortions in some countries or admission standards for "economic" refugees in others, the gap between the target of the government's policy or programme and its result is obvious to all, and widely and often hotly debated. In such controversial areas, every single individual case file (whether a medical consultation with a pregnant woman or an appeal hearing for an illegal immigrant) will contain vestiges of these wider conflicts between the theory and ideology of the programme on the one hand and its practice and reception (itself not devoid of ideological factors) on the other. (As will be seen, that does not mean each such file must be retained by an archives!) Even in less controversial areas, such as the payment of income tax, there are fixed regulations and then there is the working reality of most taxpayers twisting the rules to their own advantage. Yet even here, there is an unwritten understanding by the state and by the citizen of the difference between shaving the tax collector to "even things up" and criminal tax fraud. Nevertheless, in such ways, the actual programme is de facto modified; the sharpest "image" of society will be found at those points where such modification is most acute.
20. In considering a programme, there is also a negative side, where the failure of a programme may also reflect or demonstrate an important social reality, in that the projected citizens did not participate at all or as planned. Even a programme without a major impact on society reflects in its intent a predominant mentalité or ideology or intellectual/ philosophical/cultural paradigm, and thus it may have significance as well. For such failed programmes, there may be far fewer traces in the subject files, and thus the reasons for the failure or non-compliance may only be evident in the case files.
21. The gap between the target and result of a programme depends on numerous factors, some of which are present in the wider society, some involve as will be seen the nature of the agency and the citizen, and others are inherent in the nature of the programme itself. For the latter, does the programme consist of "hard rules" rigidly applied or is it "softer," allowing discretion and flexibility? Does the programme allow the citizen (as much as the agency official) discretion for qualitative input and interaction? Is participation required by law or voluntary in nature? What is the source of the programme's information: directly from the citizen or indirectly gathered, and was that gathering operation overt or covert? Is the programme designed for direct or indirect delivery: if indirect, then the personal information records of the direct programme will be more significant than the indirect ones (block housing or medical research grants from the federal government to provinces or states, which then administer them in turn directly to local homeowners or doctors: in such a case, the latter record will be more valuable for documenting the citizen-state interaction).
22. In terms of archival appraisal concerning these programme variables, although more will be said later, the greater the discretion and variation a programme allows, the greater likelihood that the personal case files generated by the programme will have the potential to focus more clearly the societal image that is not reflected in policy and subject files or in the actual documents which define the programme itself (laws, directives, and so on). Of course, this is only important for appraisal for those programmes, have a significant impact on society and which have targets and goals which are often changed, modified, or abandoned -- thus indicating that for this programme the dialectic of citizens' interaction with the state was having a concrete influence. This "image" factor concerning the programme must be present for the archivist to assess the personal case files involved as having permanent value. Simply because a programme was flexible does not, therefore, automatically render its records archivally valuable.17
23. The Agency. The sharpness of the "image" is affected by more than bias or flexibility in the programme involved. Government agencies also have biases. If the word "programme" refers to ideology and general intellectual intent in the broad sense, "agency" refers to the administrative structures (including the administrators) created by the state to implement or realize that ideology or programme. Government organizations consist of human beings who have their own loyalties, prejudices, and ideologies, and these are not always consistent with the official policies and stated goals of the government. The anti-democratic orientation of the public servants in the German Weimar Republic is a well-known example, as is the pro-Liberal leanings of the Canadian administration after 1957 during the first Conservative government in twenty-two years. Sophisticated programmes, may be undermined, accelerated, delayed, or even paralyzed if faced with consistent opposition by public officials in organizations whose culture allows significant discretionary latitude to staff. In this regard, by analyzing decision-making processes, hiring and promotion practices for staff, the nature of the administration (professional, clerical, technical), and internal hierarchies and organization, the archivist can determine the type of ethos or operating culture that the agency exhibits. Is it essentially negative (strictly interpreting "hard" fixed rules, such as many taxation or pension or unemployment insurance agencies), positive (actively encouraging socio-economic development with "soft" rules allowing flexibility and discretion, such as many regional development or cultural agencies), or more neutral (investigating and essentially fact-gathering, such as statistics agencies)? These three types of ethos are not more or less important for archival appraisal, but they do help in determining whether the case files of such an agency will demonstrate significant variation away from the official programme or policy, depending on whether a greater degree of initiative, interpretation, discrimination, and discretion is allowed by the agency for its officials and administrators. The existence of bias in public servants for personal factors must also be considered, such as career aggrandizement, promotion opportunities, or preference for or discrimination against citizens based on race, colour, tribe, religion, and gender. Insofar as these factors exist in an agency to a significant degree, then the possibility exists of variance (which will be reflected in the individual case files of the agency) from the official programme.
24. There are other factors concerning the agency which are important.18 In terms of the actual programme, is it the primary or a secondary or auxiliary function of the agency? Is the agency the prime mover for the programme compared to other agencies (four major Canadian government departments created case files concerning grants to citizens for home insulation during the energy crisis years)? How decentralized is the agency and at what level of the hierarchy does the key citizen-agency interaction take place? What level has more discretion in the application of policy and guidelines? In Canada, for example, it is possible for an immigrant to go through more than a dozen separate levels of bureaucracy, including various hearing and appeals boards on up to the minister's office; it is obviously essential for the archivist to understand how the agency operates at each level and the relationships between the levels in order to locate the key decision-making area(s). Finally, the degree to which the agency adds information (perhaps unknown to the citizen) to input already received from the citizen -- doing credit, criminal, or other reference checks to add to personnel records, for example -- must be analyzed as well. The general rule for these agency factors is that the narrower and less flexible the range of interaction between the citizen and the administrator (or agency), the less significance the personal information case files will have in focusing the societal image (or that portion involving citizen-state interactions).
25. The agency also has a large impact on the organization and structure of records and records-keeping systems. Understanding the nature of the medium behind the message is essential, for the quality of the image reflected by the records is always shaped and often distorted by the limitations of various records systems. Thus the practices of the agency in this regard must be thoroughly researched, so that the nature and significance of the physical and con-text typologies of the actual personal information record --how it is created, filed, indexed -- can be determined. These records systems, as noted in Chapter 2, may by their very structure increase or decrease the distance between the citizen on the one hand and the agency and programme on the other. To return to the example of the Canadian immigration agency, while an immigrant exhausting every avenue of appeal could interact with over a dozen separate administrative entities, many of these share the same individual case file: they add information to the file and then pass it up or down the hierarchy for future action and thus the addition of further documentation. In such a case, the distance of the different entities from the citizen -- some are very approachable, others are very remote and difficult to approach -- is rendered less significant to the archivist appraising the personal information record, since the case file involved will reflect the citizen-state interaction at all (or most) of the levels. Obviously, in agencies where each level of the bureaucracy maintained its own case file, the opposite would be true. And whether there is one or many files created on an individual's interaction with the agency, archivists must also determine whether files which transcend the routine to become controversial or precedent-setting are handled in some special way in the agency's records system: filed separately, coded or coloured or annotated differently, or key information abstracted or indexed elsewhere. In this and other ways outlined in Chapter 2, therefore, the agency's role in creating and maintaining records has an indirect but significant impact on the nature of the image of the citizen's interaction with the state.
26. In trying to document the agency per se and how it functions, the archivist will research and often acquire organization charts, programme information (the mandate statements, procedural manuals, internal regulations, and so on noted in section 18 above), annual reports, forms management records and examples, records classification guides, internal histories, and personnel information (regarding training, promotion, career profiles, and so on). Again, some of this information will be located on policy and subject files. However, as one commentator has correctly observed,19 agency information is now so widely available in published form and in central agencies' records (budgets, audits, statistical profiles, investigative reports, public hearings) that archivists in an age of information overload should be extremely selective concerning how many records they acquire from each individual agency solely to show how it operated (the evidential value of records). If that is true of policy and subject files, it follows that personal information case files as a general rule should not be acquired solely for their evidential value (beyond a very small example or sample to demonstrate the types of forms and procedures used, where these are significant and cannot be documented in any other way). In summary, these agency factors are not to be used by the archivist to determine whether records containing personal information can be used to document the history of the agency itself, but rather to indicate the susceptibility of the agency through its internal ethos to affect significantly the dialectic of citizen and state, and thus sharpen the resultant societal image.
27. The Citizen. The importance of the citizen in the citizen-state interaction and in the resultant records containing personal information should be obvious, although it is too often overlooked by archivists and therefore researchers.20 Furthermore, in that the historical significance of the agency and of the programme is best documented, as noted above, through other sources, personal information case files have their main archival significance as they reflect the attitudes and behaviour of the individual citizens covered by the records, and not on how they reveal the nature of government operations per se.
28. Here it is important to consider both the quantity of information produced (whether under compulsory or voluntary participation -- which is a programme issue per se) as well as its quality: its completeness and accuracy, the mental distance of the citizen from the actual programme (the further away, the more significant), and the length of time of the citizen's interaction with the agency (the one-shot application versus a continuing function, such as medical or police records). Is the citizen's input self-created (by the person directly, or indirectly through a mediator/translator/form-filler/lawyer) or does the agency create the record (known or unknown to the citizen)? Do the transactions in which the citizen is involved permit in this input the expression of opinions and emotions through free prose (individual letters or extensive "comments" spaces on forms) or only through filling in predefined boxes and checking-off given choices? If the administrator records the views of the same citizen instead (or as well), the same questions apply, but here the "free prose" must also be analyzed to see if regular stereotypes or repetitive model paragraphs are used rather than more original, expressive prose to reflect the views of the citizen. And in all this, how many of the ideas, emotions, and opinions of the citizen are found in the records in contrast to those which really document the programme or the agency? Does the citizen consciously interact with the agency and programme and have room for intervention, discretion, and influence on the decisions made? The records' significance will also depend on the degree to which the citizen is predisposed to be accurate and complete, and the competence of the citizen to present his or her views accurately and completely. Of course, the opposite can be true as well, where, because some citizens may believe a particular programme to be wrong or unfair, they deliberately seek to undermine it by being inaccurate and incomplete in the information they provide. Finally, the distance of the communication from the subject must be weighed: expressing views on oneself, or on a family member, or on a neighbour, or on a casual acquaintance -- to cite four degrees of remoteness -- clearly decreases objective accuracy as distance increases, although not necessarily archival importance.
29. Appraisal Significance of this Model. Although the programme, the agency, and the citizen have been handled separately in the foregoing paragraphs, and archivists will probably analyze these factors separately as they do their research, all three factors must be combined at the stage of appraisal decision. The records containing personal information resulting from the citizen-state interaction are important for documenting that interaction per se, and not for documenting the programme or the agency or the citizen separately. As mentioned, there are better and less bulky sources to do the latter without resorting to acquiring individual case files. It is at the centre of this theoretical model, however, as programme, agency, and citizen interact, that the essential dialectic takes place -- in the interaction itself, not in its three separate components. It is here that the image is sharpest. This does not mean that all images reflected in individual case files formed at that juncture or interaction point are significant. Some are rather commonplace; many are excessively routine. Some will adhere closely to or reflect the articulated programme and agency goals and mandates. Some while significant can be documented through less voluminous sources. But where other sources cannot clarify the image sufficiently, or where the programme's targets and actual results differ substantially, or where the events are so momentous in the eyes of contemporaries (Holocaust activities, refugee quotas, for example) that greater detail in clarifying the image is desirable, or where marginalized groups find a voice (even if reflected through others only faintly), then the case file records generated at that point of interaction may have potential permanent value. The important variables in the three components of the model which transform that potential into actual value depend entirely, as mentioned above in several contexts, on the flexibility and discretion allowed through the programme and in the agency for its citizens to express their opinions and reflect their activities in an honest rather than in a stilted or distorted or indirect manner.