ABSTRACT

Public record centres (PRCs are charged with ensuring that there are proper record management practices in public offices in Kenya. Failure by public record centres to facilitate proper record management practices in public offices can negatively impact on the latter‘s delivery of services. This study will investigate PRCs in Kenya in order to find out the constraints they might be facing in carrying out their mandate of helping public office registries practice proper records management as expected. This study has been motivated by the many complaints about delays in records retrieval raised by clients looking for services in a number of public offices in Kenya. The study will be guided by various objectives as namely; establish whether the procedures and policies guiding the public record centre have an impact on the attainment of their goals; determine whether the facilities available affect their service delivery to the public offices in Kenya; whether the available staff is adequate in terms of numbers and qualifications; whether awareness creation with their clients is a necessary component in the attainment of their goals and finally find out what other challenges the public record centre could be facing that are relevant to the study. The target population of the study will be fifty one, comprising the management and staff of five public record centres; Nakuru, Mombasa, Kakamega, Kisumu and Nairobi and the Director of Kenya National Archives and documentation service (KNA&DS). One of the five county record centres will be used for piloting the data collecting tools. The sample size will be twenty nine comprising twenty four staff members selected through simple random sampling (six from each of the remaining four record centres), and the Director, KNA&DS selected through purposive sampling to provide data on administrative matters. Nairobi public record centre, selected through simple random sampling using raffle papers, will be used for piloting the data collecting instruments for their validity and reliability. The tools of research will be questionnaires for the record centre staff, interviews for the record centre management staff and the KNA&DS Director and observation schedules for assessing appropriateness of the location of the record centre, accommodation for both personnel and records, as well as accessibility to the record centre. The research design will be descriptive qualitative survey because the researcher will collect data as is on the ground. The data collected will be analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and descriptive statistics based on the themes contained in the objectives of this study. The results of the analyses will be presented by use of various graphs, tables, percentages and descriptions. Conclusions and recommendations will then be made based on the findings.