The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pleased to announce the beginning of the formal operation of its online electronic platform that allows access to its digitized archives, at the webpage arxeio.mfa.gr.
After many years of efforts, the Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives completed a large and innovative project, not only by the standards of the Greek Foreign Ministry, but also by those of other major European states. The project concerns the digitization of more than 4,000,000 pages of documents covering the entire archives of the Central Service of the Ministry for the period from 1821 to 1923. These documents are available now and can be accessed by the public, without restrictions and further verifications, simply by entering the above webpage. The same applies to all catalogues of the MFA Archives, even of those of non-digitized material, through a modern search engine. The project was co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund – ERDF) and was realized in the framework of the Operational Programme “Digital Convergence” of the NSRF (National Strategic Reference Framework) 2007–2013. The “Digitization System” was designed by the Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives and was developed in cooperation with the contractor that was selected after a public international tender and the Special Service for Coordination and Implementation of Funding and Investment Programmes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The digitization of the archives of the MFA Central Service which covers the first centenary of the Greek State constitutes a leading event for the Ministry and it is assessed as particularly important to the research community. The digitization of a huge amount of files covering an entire century critical to the progress of Hellenism, and the creation of an integrated infrastructure (in hardware, software and know-how) to continue the digitization of the MFA Archives, but also the free access to it by each citizen, wherever he/she is inside or outside of Greece, put the Greek Foreign Ministry among the pioneers worldwide in this area and heavily satisfy the global demand of our times for transparency and free access to information, as is also stated in Article 5A of the Greek Constitution. The completion of the project would not have been possible without the enormous efforts of the staff of the Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives and the Special Service for Coordination and Implementation of Funding and Investment Programmes.
It is reminded that due to the digitization project, a few months before the opening of the platform on the internet, a new and modernized Regulation for the access to MFA archival material was adopted and entered into force in March 2015. It defines access conditions, rights and obligations of both the Ministry and those researchers who wish to have access to the material.
The formal presentation of the project will take place this coming autumn by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
June 26, 2015