Hong Kong’s universities ‘not being transparent’ with management records by failing to properly archive documents
- Experts say minutes of governing council meetings should be passed to archives run by professionals, with clear policies to ensure accountability
None of Hong Kong’s eight major universities keeps records of meetings by their governing councils in proper public archives despite controversy in recent years over how the institutions are managed.
The discovery by the Post comes as the city’s Law Reform Commission carries out a public consultation exercise on a proposed archives law that would cover government departments and some statutory bodies.
Universities would not be accountable under the law, but experts said they should be, in light of their growing entanglement in Hong Kong’s political wrangling.
The University of Hong Kong said it used to keep the records, minutes and agendas of council meetings in dedicated archives, but had not done so since 2004.
The index page for the archives at the University of Science and Technology showed the same information had not been sent in since 2006. However, a spokesman said the HKUST archives contained files from as late as last year. Documents on HKUST council meetings are kept closed for 25 years before being made available for public viewing, according to the university website, and the institution said only selected documents were open to the public.
The HKUST spokesman added that the university had comprehensive guidelines on retention, arrangement and access to records in the archives.