Rachida Dati appointed Bruno Ricard (57 years old) to the post of head of the Interministerial Service of the Archives of France (SIAF), assistant to the director general of heritage and architecture, from February 1, 2025.
Archivist-Paléographer graduated from the National School of Charters in 1992 and the National Heritage Institute in 1993, Bruno Ricard is a general heritage curator. He began his career in the diplomatic archives, before directing the departmental archives of the Oise. Subsequently, he carried out functions within the SIAF as a project manager, then sub-director. In 2019, he was appointed director of the national archives.
During his mandate in the National Archives, Bruno Ricard worked to increase public attendance by establishing free exhibitions and developing participatory initiatives such as “the 4 essentials” and “the remarkable 4”, highlighting emblematic documents of The history of France. He also driven the digital transformation of national archives, in particular by continuing the development of digital archiving, by launching a collaborative indexing platform open to users and by adopting artificial intelligence applications for automatic recognition of handwritten characters.
The SIAF, attached to the Ministry of Culture, designs, pilot and controls the action of the State in matters of archives for administrative, civic, historical and cultural purposes. Its missions include scientific and technical control over public archives, the coordination of the national network of public archive services and the definition of standards in terms of conservation, classification and digitization of archives.
Bruno Ricard succeeds Françoise Banat-Berger who asserted his retirement rights.
