In accordance with the current regulations (Legislative Decree No. 42 of January 22, 2004, the Code of Cultural and Landscape Heritage, Article 41), the State Archives exercise the function of supervision over the archives produced and kept in the offices of the Public Administration.
This supervision is carried out through the “Commissioni di sorveglianza”, established for each peripheral office of the state administration. These committees are composed of members appointed by each office, a representative from the competent State Archive, and one from the Ministry of the Interior. The composition of the committee should reflect the various interests and perspectives regarding the documents. In particular, the State Archive representative should advocate for the preservation of these documents as sources for historical research.
The territorial competence corresponds to that of the supervised office, which is usually at the provincial level.
In the periodic meetings, the Commission inspects the storage archive, discusses matters related to the proper preservation and organization of the documents, proposes the disposition of archival series (which are later approved by the Ministry of Culture), and the transfer of records to the State Archive for files that are over 40 years old.
The disposition of archival series is based on specific schedules (a list of series types with the anticipated maximum retention periods) when these have been prepared by the relevant government agencies. In other cases, the Commission relies on practices, customs, and the judgment of its members.
From the perspective of the sedimentation processes of documentary sources, the importance of the Commission, and the archivist’s role within them mainly lies in controlling the archives during the delicate phase in which, between the original production, temporary storage in different offices, intentional rearrangements, accidental confusion and then disposition, the archival fonds eventually take on the character that will define them.
