Investigation: The archives need to get more money

The mission has been to do a broad review of the archive area, with the aim of ensuring the community's access to public documents. And the lack of resources is highlighted as a bigger problem than both organization and legislation when the special investigator, Deputy National Librarian Lars Ilshammar, now submits the investigation to Amanda Lind (MP).

"During the investigation's work, it has become clear that the National Archives needs to receive a significant increase in its administrative appropriations, to a level that corresponds to the cost of the authority's broad and socially important task," he says in a press release.

Researchers have flagged that the National Archives' financial problems have led to reductions in both staff and opening hours, which threatens access to the archive. The investigation proposes that the National Archives be awarded SEK 24 million for several new tasks and assignments, of which SEK 5 million is limited to 2022-2023.

According to the proposal, the National Archives will also provide guidance to individual archives, whose significance for the cultural heritage is highlighted. It is also proposed that the regulation of the archive sector be clarified in a new archives law and a new archives regulation, which is welcomed by the national archivist Karin Åström Iko.

Government grants to regional and national individual archives are proposed to increase by SEK 10 million each. The inquiry also wants to establish a new state grant, with a limit of SEK 5 million, to stimulate new archive center solutions. Two million people want to give the Sami Parliament, in order to gather knowledge about archive files created by the Sami.