Bio

Mashilo Modiba is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He completed his PhD degree in 2021 and his research title was, “Utilising artificial intelligence for the management of records at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research”. He presented research papers at both national and international conferences. He is also a published author publishing his articles in accredited peer-reviewed journals both in national and international journals. He reviews masters and doctoral proposals for the Department of Information Science, Unisa. He also reviews articles for accredited journals. He examines masters and doctoral thesis and dissertations for other universities. He is involved in community engagement projects such as information literacy programmes conducting at schools and public libraries. He is chairing a number of committees in the Department of Information Science, such as, marketing committee, chair of annual archives lecture, chair of annual information science lecture and Unilisa conference 2023. He is website manager and social media manager for the department of information science. His research interests include the application and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic machines, internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, big data and blockchain technology for the management of archives and records the public and private sector in Africa, especially in South Africa.

Project

I will be working on my project titled, “Application of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic machine to support public digital archiving in South Africa”. The project is co authored with Professor Ngoako Marutha from the Department of Information Science, Unisa. This
project sought to explore the use of AI and robotic machine to support public digital archiving in South Africa. Public archives preserve crucial records of communities for ease of access. There is a need to incorporate the use of AI and intelligent robotic machines to support the preservation of, and access to, records in the public archives of South Africa. This will be quantitative study were a close and open-ended questionnaire will be sent to national and provincial archivists to participate in the study. AI and robotic machine can be used to support the digital archives in ensuring that digital archives are safe and protected and provide access to digital archives. A framework on the application of AI was also recommended to assist with the utilisation of AI for the management of public digital archives in South Africa.