hello and welcome to another fintech surge advanced team conversation today we're joined by hamad al-mutteiri who is a director at the national archives of the uae he will be presenting at the future blockchain summit on blockchain and ai in the realm of archiving and interviewed today by john lillywhite google research associate at the mohamed bin rashid school of government over to you john thanks oscar hamad thanks so much for joining us today thank you thank you so much for this great opportunity uh so i'd like to thank you for inviting me uh to talk about archiving ai and blockchain yeah we're really happy to have you so just to begin with you are the director at the national archives department in abu dhabi so what is the national archives department and what does it do sure so um um my name is hamad anteri i work as a director of archives department at the national archives of united arab emirates in abu dhabi the national archives was established in 1968 even before the union of the country wow that's really early yeah the the idea was behind establishing this center is to capture everything related to the to the region uh not only to the to the city of abu dhabi at that time and um from that uh the this center start to develop and enhance and gather lots of documents records from all over the world related to the region and in 2008 uh uae issue a law number seven to regulate the archiving and record management activities not only in abu badi but on also the federal level as well well that's really interesting so i mean you know i've spent a bit of time in the region and and as i think we were saying before the call my background's actually in history so so i studied history at uh university in the uk and and in my country history was quite a respected subject and then i came out to the middle east and i and i loved it but one of the only few downsides was whenever i told my friends i studied history they'd always go why um but and this this was in jordan but i mean we did discuss kind of national archives programs and why archiving um was important and i think another thing that you and i might have in common is that when i graduated i ended up in in a dusty basically a monastery in the middle of nowhere in italy working on these old documents in italian i could barely read italian having to date them file them put them in a theme you know theme them and file them away in this in this air-conditioned physical room where the documents you know could presumably be kept for decades and of course there's all sorts of worries about you know will the paper rot you know is the room safe all of this kind of stuff so so that was a long time ago maybe 20 years ago but it was my first kind of experience of archiving the lack of glamour in archiving but also the importance of archiving because you know i remember reading documents really one or two documents from senior states people or or just from ordinary people that meant an awful lot to that country you know what i mean and so you could really get a sense of what was happening in a country far more than from even a newspaper report or from an um online website it was something very immediate about it that you'd always remember and of course now it's you know 2021 and we have some of these new technologies coming out but we also have you know the uae um kind of growing becoming more of a global country but also wanting to remember its own identity its own tradition and histories so i guess that the the next question is really why do you think archiving is important and i know that the the institute is also doing something with the sorbonne to increase education with archiving so if you could talk a little bit about just some background into archiving why it's important the history of the uae in your efforts to kind of increase training and literacy in this area sure it's actually it's a very important question i believe leaders in uae and the government of uae took a very very wise decision um because they established this national archives under ministry of presidential affairs um and this actually gave us a value when we go to government entities and ask them to comply with our laws and bylaws and our regulations um and i think i agree with you um previously we used to think about archives at a dusty place um so people maybe will think that this not be the right job or my dream job but i think in uae we changed this concept we've launched several activities and campaigns to show the value of archiving because even while uh setting the uh the strategic plan for the national archives we consider lots of all the challenges and we thought of raising the awareness not only for the let's say senior people in the government but also the the different layer and the community we thought also of raising the awareness would be individuals because they might also have some records personal data so if i will answer this question i will say can you imagine you wake up one day without having any sort of data so can you imagine you don't have any data all your data is deleted let's say you don't have any data in your personal uh phone or laptop so can you imagine this on an organizational level or a country level so how would you be able to do your activities your business your day-to-day you know roles and responsibilities without having your data from that we also had several partnerships with different organizations and i remember that in 2017 we we started the partnership with sorbonne university who launched to launch actually three academic program the program number one is a professional certificate in archive and record management it's for about six weeks where the the student can can learn uh the basics or the foundation of records management and archive management the second program was the bachelor degree in archiving and record management and by the way those programs are the first program in archiving in united arab emirates and i'm very happy and glad that in in september we will be launching our master degree in in the archiving field as well we're also thinking to to launch the phd program maybe within the coming two or three years let's say when it comes to government organization and raising the awareness on the different layers from the top management to the different even business units business you know different functions within the government organizations because all functions are generating data every day so we cannot say it's it's a responsibility of one single business unit within the government organization but it's the responsibility for everyone who's dealing with data and i can say that everyone now is dealing with with the data so we started a campaign where we focus on let's say this strategic organization let's see the main ministries ministry of education ministry of health ministry of uh economy so we started this this campaign uh meeting the leaders in in those organization and setting up with them um a long term and a short-term plan so we we go with a checklist uh based on the requirements from the law and from the by-law and we try to assess and to provide them with the gap analysis reports and we work with them step by step to make sure that we can close those gaps if i will move also to to the individual uh uh perspectives we also launched a campaign a few years ago called water and we distributed um a box where individuals can store their own personal records their health records their educational records and we provided lots of guidelines and you know brochures to show the value of record keeping because the the ultimate goal of the archives in general is to provide the data when needed for researchers for decision makers and for for continuing our you know day-to-day activities how to do that by preserving those records in the right way according also to our law and bilo and the way that we defined a document let's say so when we came up with with the definition of document uh we we thought of explaining that the document can be any container of any information in any format so um the record might be a written document might be a photograph might be a video might be just an audio file or a map so we need to think about how are we going to preserve those records to be able to provide access and use those records when needed well so that's a really good segue into kind of discussing digital archiving and technology and it's probably a good point to mention that you joined the national archives i think in 2009 but your background before that was as an iet professional and an enthusiast with practice in strategic planning and risk management and i believe cyber security as well if i'm not interesting so i mean what you just said is you know i think your comparison talking about why individuals need to remember their own data and and their own background why it's so important for an individual and then just imagine how important it is for an organization or a country is a really good simple way of describing the importance of what you're doing and of having a national archive but i think the second point you just made that if we're going to do that then increasingly so much of our lives and so much data and so many records are are online i'd say if not most of them how do you preserve a tweet how do you preserve an image a video because there's this um slang in american english memory hold which is the idea that the internet very easily forgets something and how do you record that video that could you know be removed a couple a couple of uh months or weeks or years later um and it's a really big problem i guess for for archivists and and anyone who try and tr who wants to try and record what's happening in our digital lives you know in cyberspace and even so much you know political and social life is on the internet so you know i thought that is is a great kind of point at which we can move into archival kind of legislation and standards and and what is it you guys are doing to try and preserve um what technologies are you looking at to try and preserve you know digital history digital archiving digital documents yeah so um i think after we agree that it is very important to to preserve this documentary heritage we need to also identify the way or the proper way to do that and to be able to do that um uh we we issued this um law in the country law number seven of 2008 and um from that law we also issued a bilo to explain the way that we we can implement the sections of of the the the law because the law to be honest it's a general document details will be mentioned uh on on the bilo level and we didn't stop only there we we also uh developed lots of guidelines um especially for the different business units that they will take care of their records and archives for example we came up with a guideline for electronic archiving so what is the best way of to store and preserve the digital archives and what do you mean by digital archives can we implement the the normal uh let's say guidelines or procedures that we that we do and we deal with the uh traditional archives um so that's why we we thought of you know providing um guidelines and uh standards where even the i.t department for example can understand the the way of dealing with different type of records um i think that my background in it helped me a lot to understand and to have these two hats sometime i think as an i.t and sometime i think as an archivist and um it's very difficult and sometimes i have this you know debate between between i mean myself so i think sometimes um how long will i keep and preserve this data it's it's very costly who's paying for example we are using social media we are using you know different type of you know online platforms so who's taking care of data how can we make sure that we have and we have the right data because preserving those data on electronic you know devices that's and yeah it's a very very creative way to make sure that what what we preserve is the right data that we will require and will need in the future i think by implementing the legislation and the standards we will be able to identify the most important data that we would need for the future and we we use in the archiving field something called retention policy where it will this policy will help you to identify even before generating the document before writing the document or before before issuing the document or the recall you will know the um the the future let's say plan of this record will it be kept forever will it be kept for a certain period or i can maybe delete it after a certain amount or a certain number of years um so i think there are some basics uh that if we consider while dealing with with record and especially electronic records i think we will be able to to you know keep track and keep the right data in place and by the way most of our you know legislation and laws and bylaws are based on international standards and best practices so we we do lots of benchmarking just to make sure that we are you know not reinventing the wheel i mean we just you know try to cooperate internationally to make sure that we are doing the right thing when it comes to managing records whether it's physical or internet well that's that's i mean that gives a very good understanding of kind of some of the challenges you're facing but also some of the opportunities so this might be a good point at which to talk about future technologies and the role of blockchain and the role of ai so as you were talking i was realizing that at some point um i'm sure in the past it would be a problem with cloud storage and if you're arguing you know we need to store and and and collect and retain all these videos all these tweets all this all this data then you have to store it somewhere and in the past that's been on a centralized server probably in the cloud and as many of us in the tech industry know those those cloud servers can become very expensive very quickly particularly if you're housing the data of an entire country now of course the blockchain is decentralized and is a immutable ledger which accurately records data and then there is also of course this kind of current buzz around non-fungible tokens connected to the blockchain so you know owning a little piece of the internet but essentially the blockchain is a way to record data um on the internet in a way that is decentralized that shouldn't cost massive amounts of money and should be open to everyone so what do you think about this new technology as an archivist and is it something that you're looking at closely yeah this is actually again a very very very important topic because we need to find this interception between the two industries not only the two industries but i mean all the industries so one of the questions that i used to ask my team even um what are the technologies that we can use and implement to enhance the way that we are dealing with the archives management and records management i think if we start with what we need why we need it and how can we implement it we will be able to achieve the best and you know we will utilize those technologies in the right and the best way when it comes to blockchain ai big data and all emerging technologies we need to start thinking about building some cases we have something called the archival process or archiving value chain or process chain so what we started to do at the national archives united arab emirates was we started to analyzing those processes and try to see where ai blockchain can support and where can ai and blockchain can be implemented to make our you know processes smooth and effective we started implementing some machine learning to recognize the characters when it comes to written documents for example we are using ocr and we are we at the beginning we used to use normally ocr but uh when the machine learning was introduced uh within the ocr technologies and solutions we saw the real value so the system started to learn and create some pattern from the interaction with between the archivist and the system and i think also the uh the revolution of you know face recognition and the way that we can identify data and uh create some uh assumptions and again at the beginning we we we had to interact more and more with the system but now we can see that the system uh started to uh be mature to understand more and to take the right position on behalf of the human in the best way so we we started implementing the the machine learning and the recognitions on on our internal systems to identify for example some keywords um right now we are also investigating on another solution to for example identify uh even if it is for example uh if the person was happy or sad at the picture nowadays the researchers are more into the audio visual archives they are not very interested with the written documents yes there are some you know let's say the researcher community they are very interested in the written documents and we had them a lot when we started ocring and started to implement the machine learning ai can be also implemented in several ways and and archives and appraisal and deciding on the classification of the the records whether it's sensitive or nonsensitive or this can be classified as let's say human resources record health record or maybe financial recall it can be implemented also in the way that we can transfer the documents and records from government entities to the national archives uh when it comes to blockchain um as you mentioned it is um decentralized databases and i think by implementing uh blockchain we will be achieving lots of benefits especially that we will uh secure we will have let's say um a great infrastructure that can provide security integrity and availability of of records so at the moment we are studying this uh technology to see how we can implement it uh on a government and federal level and to host it also on in on the federal cloud where we we can provide this tool and platform for all government entities where we can share collaborate data without feeling that this data can be altered or changed or you know that's a good point i forgot about that you know the manipulation of data too you know which is important um but but no thanks for that overview and listening to you i think one of the points we we might have overlooked when when discussing this with our audience is that what you're doing is in way very very challenging because i mean if you look through history you know you had human beings writing on stone slabs and then we had papyrus and then we had paper which could be a you know a couple of educated merchants or scribes or monks writing you know for the rulers but that writing was incredibly expensive to do and was kept in in vaults and would often be destroyed in wars and and then we kind of moved to you know the the age of prince in the 16th century which caused lots of problems in europe and we moved routine to the enlightenment through to industrialization and mass printing and you know very cheap books and now we're kind of in this new age where we have terabytes and terabytes of data being produced every single day and and that's never really happened in human civilization not at this scale i think there's all sorts of crazy statistics like human beings produced more data in one day than you know in entire centuries of history before us and so individuals such as yourself and archiving institutions have this massive historical challenge which is what data do we record how do we record it how do we make sure it's accessible and and how do we make sure no one can can manipulate it so that the you know the data is accurate and true and and and it stays there and you know that really is in a way it's a very exciting opportunity but also a very very big challenge yeah um i have a 100 percent agree with you john um nowadays you know the way that we create data every day it's something really really uh we need to take care of we need to think about the way that we're creating those records those data and how to select how to how to make sure that we are keeping the right data you know um if i will talk about a personal uh level sometime for example i just take a screenshot of something maybe it's just um a receipt online receipt or maybe it's um a ticket for the cinema um how long will i keep this uh do i need it in the future um because i'm creating this data and i need to consider that um i need to take care of the state those data in the future so again going back to the guidelines standards regulation legislation if we can have a standard way of uh and some some sort of let's say control on the way that we we uh create the data and the way we we would like to preserve those data on a personal level on organizational level that will help a lot um you know dealing with with the data it's something might be easy at the beginning if we are not aware of the implication of the way that we will be managing it in the future the way that we need to classify those data because if i'm keeping something i need to make sure that i can go to it when i want easily so i need to have some sort of metadata to uh let me find those records whenever i need i need them uh it's it's again it's it's very challenging fascinating yeah yeah i i also um remember that there are several uh international initiatives uh understanding and trying to understand um the the way that technology can support uh behind uh you know the user experience because sometimes the user might not you know think about uh implementing the right let's say policies or or the right standards but if we try to systemize or automate those policies those procedures within our systems using the emerging technologies that will help a lot and that will uh lead to having the right and the exact data that we would like to keep well yeah i mean on that point i think i have two questions really for you one is on common standards because i know you're a member of the programs committee in the international council on archives so i think the first question is on you know why are common standards between different jurisdictions important for researchers and governments and then i think the second question is is one you've probably heard before but it's more about ai and it's about can we trust ai to create metadata for us to to scan images can an ai really choose or decide what is important for us to remember as human beings and for us to archive or should that be something that's a bit more human so so there are kind of two questions and they perhaps might be a bit related so we as national archives of united arab emirates are a part of the international council of archiving this actually organization um was established i believe you know more than 70 years ago the aim of this organization was to raise the awareness of the archives and to start to think about building and uh initiating projects where all gov all countries can benefit from uh they have lots of training courses we have lots of projects all over the world they are meeting regularly and they are trying to invite different industries to think with us as archivists on how can we integrate with other industries um i work also as uh as a person i was i work on the program committee where we also try to work on a project for example to provide let's say standards provide awareness and online courses for different communities and layer within within the archiving we supposed to have in 201 20 are we supposed to [Music] have here at uae the biggest event in the world in the archiving field which is the ica congress but because of the pandemic we decided to postpone this event because we we would like to have it uh you know physically because we will be having lots of you know exhibitors where they will come and they will they will showcase their technologies uh their best practices in the archiving industry um if i will ask answer the the second uh part of your question about you know how can we trust um ai and the new technology i think uh when it comes to to the new technology we are mainly concerned about data privacy uh the number of you know errors that can be generated from the uh automated processes without any supervision of any human or any human interaction i think um at the beginning we need to keep uh monitoring those systems we need to keep you know uh observing uh the outcome uh the outcomes of the um systems um and i think step by step we will be able to at least to reach to a let's say a sustainable systems and sustainable environment where we can have some sort of trust uh on the system i don't know how much we can trust those technologies but i think we we don't have a choice we are moving toward that change definitely i mean and that's the same across industries you know you have the same question in healthcare you know in in the military in the sciences you know to what extent is the meaningful human control and to what extent can ai make decisions for us and and you know i think this is happening across industries um and i think so connected to that point you've just made and and to kind of bring today towards a close i wanted to ask what do you think are the the prospects for collaboration between the national archives here in the uae and the technology industry to explore you know new applications in blockchain archiving or in ai document historical data recognition sure as i mentioned earlier because we are you know a member uh at the ica the the international council of archiving we had this exposure to talk to different uh national archives uh all over the world and we established a partnership with uk national archives in 2017 and we thought of working together on uh platform online platform where we can provide access to a huge amount of historical records and i'm very glad that we we achieved that project we launched this um project called agda yeah you mentioned in arabian gulf digital archives and we are very proud of of that collaboration and right now we are thinking also to communicate with um different archives uh in the world to understand and to discuss the challenges and the way forward um john as i told you maybe earlier about the initiatives uh related to blockchain i remember that uk national archives also working on a project called archive angel where they are investigating the way that archiving industry can benefit from blockchain that's that's very interesting and you know possibly in future um the local blockchain industry and entrepreneurs can also play a role but you know one thing we also haven't haven't noted here is that in the arabic language archiving of course is incredibly important there's there's so much arabic content and arabic literature out there that in the past hasn't been archived always and the fact that you know if you can go to an online platform and search for that and find that in arabic it's actually a very big deal now obviously i'm not an expert in arabic but i'm guessing that's also the preservation of the arabic language is also something that's important yes john it is very important and challenging at the same time because you know most of the technologies they're they reach to a a very let's say high performance when it comes to you know english for example exactly yes but in arabic language we we face lots of issues when it comes to you know recognizing the arabic characters um but with the machine learning uh and using you know um very complicated algorithm we reached to a very you know satisfying results and i think i think this will be improved uh very very soon um again using those technologies that's fascinating and i mean this is a quick aside but one of my previous projects last year was a collaboration with google entitled why can't machines read arabic at scale so why can't machines read you know terabyte scale arabic language data sets and we faced exactly the same challenge that you were talking about in that you know on an individual article the translational or the machine recognition was was okay it wasn't great but it was acceptable but once you have vast data trades of arabic incredibly hard to use kind of to leverage some of those technologies that that we've been talking about today and i think you know if if anyone is going to figure that out or is going to have an incentive to figure it figure that out it's it's going to be the national archives department so it's really exciting that you're working on that um so you know i guess for us to close today um hamad what are your hopes for the future what are the most exciting projects that you're working on and what do you think the future of the national archives is over the next couple of months and years to come okay so um because we are you know as i told you we we don't have a choice we are going toward the digital and the cyber in a world so we need to adapt we need to make sure that we are building the right capabilities and yes we know and we used to deal with you know physical records but i think we need to make sure that our teams the national archives and the government entities and even the individuals they they need to be trained they need to be educated on the way that they can manage their records and their archives um so the the the the traditional archivist will i mean his roles and responsibility will be changed will be more dealing with you know electronic and digital records um one of the things that i would like and i hope to see in the future where we can you know implement a federal let's say systems based on ai and blockchain and i think we started this journey because um the government of uae had a vision on and the strategies to implement blockchain artificial intelligence and i think all of us as government entities we need to make sure that we align our strategies with the government strategy to make sure that we can implement and success uh i i mean provide a successful story where we can all be proud proud of data as they say is the the new oil so we need to make sure that we as a national archives can provide the trusted and the authentic data to the decision makers to the government to the researchers and the best and the right way and the easy way by you know uh providing those data and records uh and the smart platform and uh electronic platforms so hamad al matari thank you so much for your time today um jazeelan ramadan kareem and um yeah i think we learned a lot about the the national archives program and the future of digitalization uh in archiving in the uae thank you john thank you so much for having me today um and i would like to thank you for for this great opportunity where we discuss and we will keep discussing things related to archiving and the emerging technologies yeah i hope you can talk again soon thanks ahmed