According to Article (18) of the Documents and Archives Law issued by Royal Decree No. 60/2007 referred to and amended by Royal Decree No. 62/2008 amending some provisions of the Documents and Archives Law, “The Authority shall prepare a unified system for classifying documents shared between the concerned parties and schedules for their retention periods, in coordination with the relevant administrative bodies. This system shall be issued by a decision of the Minister after the approval of the Council of Ministers.”

Therefore, the general documents management system of the concerned parties consists of the part related to shared documents, which is unified between these parties, and the part related to the private documents of each concerned party.

“Shared documents” are defined in the Documents and Archives Law as documents that are identical or similar in type and are circulated by these parties. They are almost the same and do not differ much from one unit to another and are subject to the same legal provisions and procedures. There is no benefit in each concerned party preparing a system to retain and classify them. A unified formula can be adopted that is valid for all concerned parties. This distinction has been adopted in many countries.

The joint documents are represented in 4 basic functions that were derived through a detailed study of the reality of work in the concerned parties as well as an analysis of the specializations organizing work in each party, which are as follows:

• A - General organization of the concerned party.
• B - Human resources management.
• C - Financial resources management.
• D - Material resources management.

The joint documents management system was adopted by Ministerial Resolution No. 2/2012 issued on 5/19/2012