Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and
DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE)
Audit Toolkit: DRAMBORA
Andrew McHugh, Perla Innocenti, Seamus Ross, Raivo
Ruusalepp, Hans Hofman
Digital Curation Centre (DCC), DigitalPreservationEurope
(DPE),
HATII at the University of Glasgow & National Archives of the
Netherlands
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About
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Trusted repositories
The origin of DRAMBORA
Ongoing activities and liaisons
DRAMBORA future
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Trust, Trustworthiness and Safe
Stewardship
• Evolution of the Digital Preservation (specifically
Repository) Landscape:
– Defining the problem
• Preserving Digital Information
• Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes & Responsibilities
– Practical Responses to the problem
• repository software [DSPACE, ePrints, Fedora]
• metadata schema [PREMIS]
• reference models [OAIS]
• This work focuses on determining the success of the
solutions we propose or have already deployed
• “Stewardship is easy and inexpensive to claim; it is
expensive and difficult to honor, and perhaps it will prove
to be all too easy to later abdicate” Lynch (2003)
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10 Characteristics of Digital
Repositories
• An intellectual context for the work:
Commitment to digital object maintenance
Organisational fitness
Legal & regulatory legitimacy
Effective & efficient policies
Acquisition & ingest criteria
Integrity, authenticity & usability
Provenance
Dissemination
Preservation planning & action
Adequate technical infrastructure
© HATII UofGlasgow, 2007
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(CRL/OCLC/NESTOR/DCC/DPE meeting, January 2007)
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Trust, Risk and Repositories
• Are repositories capable of:
– identifying and prioritising the risks that impede their
activities?
– managing the risks to mitigate the likelihood of their
occurrence?
– establishing effective contingencies to alleviate the
effects of the risks that occur?
• If so, then they are likely to engender a
trustworthy status – if they can demonstrate these
capabilities
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Preservation risk is actual
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It is technological
It is social
It is organisational
And it is cultural
Actual risks can be assessed and measured actual risks can be managed.
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The origin of DRAMBORA:
DCC Pilot Audits
• Digital Curation Centre (DCC) engaged in a series of pilot
audits in diverse environments
• 6 UK, European and International organisations
• National Libraries, Scientific Data Centers, Cultural and
Heritage Archives
• Rationale
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establish evidence base
establish list of key participants
refine metrics for assessment
contribute to global effort to conceive audit processes
establish a methodology and workflow for audit
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Digital Repository Audit Method Based
on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA)
• Developed by DCC & DPE, DRAMBORA encourages
repositories to:
– develop an organisational profile, describing and documenting
mandate, objectives, activities and assets;
– identify and assess the risks that impede their activities and threaten
their assets;
– manage the risks to mitigate the likelihood of their occurrence
– establish effective contingencies to alleviate the effects of the risks that
cannot be avoided.
• Supports:
– Validation [“Are my efforts successful?”]
– Preparation [“What must I do to satisfy external auditors?”]
– Anticipation [“Are my proposals likely to succeed?”]
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DRAMBORA Objectives
• The purpose of the DRAMBORA toolkit is to
assist an auditor to:
– define the mandate and scope of functions of the
repository
– identify the activities and assets of the repository
– identify the risks and vulnerabilities associated with
the mandate, activities and assets
– assess and calculate the risks
– define risk management measures
– report on the self-audit
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Benefits of DRAMBORA
• Following the successful completion of the selfaudit, organisations can expect to have:
– Established a comprehensive and documented selfawareness of their mission, aims and objectives, and of
intrinsic activities and assets
– Constructed a detailed catalogue of pertinent risks,
related to digital repositories categorised according to
type and inter-risk relationships
– Created an internal understanding of the successes
and shortcomings of the organisation
– Prepared the organisation for subsequent external
audit
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DRAMBORA Workflow
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Stage 4: Identifying Risks
• Assets & Activities associated with vulnerabilities
– characterised as risks
• Auditors must build structured list of risks,
according to associated activities and assets
• No single methodology – brainstorming
structured according to activities/assets is
effective
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For Risk Identification, Analyze…
• Existing activities for associated risks
• Objectives for an absence of particular activities/existence
of superfluous activities
• Assets for threats that may result in their continued value,
existence or availability being prejudiced
• Activities or objectives to identify where assets are
required but don't exist
• Contextual intellectual influences such as legislation,
regulation, organizational policy
• Physical contextual influences such as security
infringement, adverse environmental conditions, terrorism
• Objective best practice recommendations for relevant and
applicable risks
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Example Risk
• Loss of Trust or Reputation
– One or more stakeholder communities have doubts
about the repository's ability to achieve it's
business objectives
• Example manifestation
– Irrecoverable loss of digital objects provoke
community concerns about competence
– public statement about cut in funding raises
concerns about viability of repository's continued
operations
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Example Risk
• Business policies and procedures are inconsistent or
contradictory
– Rationale and/or practical approach adopted for
particular business objectives introduce obstacles to
successful completion of other business activities
• Example manifestation
– Repository requires staff to undertake quality assurance
procedures for each object ingested, which takes on
average ten minutes, although a further objective is that
ingest should take at most eight minutes
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Example Risk
• Liability for regulatory non-compliance
– Repository is liable for failure to conduct its
activities in accordance with industrial, business
oriented or global regulation
• Example manifestation
– Repository fails to conform to appropriate
jurisdictional health and safety regulations for
employees
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Example Risk
• Loss of key member(s) of staff
– Individuals with roles, responsibilities or aptitudes
vital to the achievement of business objectives part
company with the repository, rendering
achievement of those objectives less
straightforward
• Example manifestation
– Repository head systems administrator, the sole
individual with knowledge of the system's root
password, leaves the organisation to work
elsewhere
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Example Risk
• Budgetary Reduction
– Repository's operational budget is reduced
• Example manifestation
– Local recession provokes budgetary reduction
of government financed repository
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Example Risk
• Media degradation or obsolescence
– Storage media deteriorates, limiting the extent to
which it can be written to and read from
• Example Manifestation
– Tape stored content is inaccessible or corrupted
due to deterioration of magnetic tape
– Contemporary tape drives are incapable of reading
dated storage media which is prolific throughout
archive
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Example Risk
• Incompleteness of submitted package
– Received packages do not contain information
that is necessary to facilitate their preservation
• Example manifestation
– Submitted package lacks metadata information
that, in accordance with contracts, must
accompany all deposited content
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Example Risk
• Unidentified information change
– Repository is incapable of tracking or
monitoring where one or more changes to
archived information has taken place
• Example manifestation
– Repository has failed to record or maintain
adequate checksum information to detect
where changes have been made to archived
content
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Example Risk
• Ambiguity of Understandability definition
– Repository is unable to describe what
understandability means with reference to their
identified community's expectations or
requirements
• Example manifestation
– Repository preserves information and associated
metadata based on a perception of what is required
by communities that is not necessarily
representative
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Example Risk
• Authentication subsystem fails
– Systems for limiting accessibility of information are
insufficient, resulting in inappropriate accesses or
failures to access
• Example manifestations
– Individuals who are not entitled to have access to
content can access it due to IP based
authentication; all local network users connect via a
proxy, essentially sharing an IP number and share
unrestricted access
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Example Avoidance or Treatment
• Legal liability for IPR infringement
• Avoidance
– Assess preserved materials to determine those
to which IPR restrictions may apply
– Seek legal advice to determine legality of
actions
• In the event of risk's execution
– Establish policies and procedures to follow in
the event of IPR challenge
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Example Avoidance or Treatment
(2)
• Staff skills become obsolete
• Avoidance strategies
– Establish means for staff training, and for staff
to employ skills of limited frequent value in test
environment
– Implement staff performance reviews to identify
skill levels and training req'ts
• In the event of risk's execution
– Provide training to reverse obsolescence
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Example Transfer Strategy
• Enforced cessation of repository operations
• Transfer Strategy
– Establish succession arrangements
– Establish contingency plans or escrow
arrangements
– Establish exit strategy
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Example Tolerance Strategy
• Preservation strategies result in information
loss
• Tolerance Strategy
– Implement policy to define the parameters of
acceptable loss resulting from these activities
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How DRAMBORA Combines with
Objective Metrics
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Testing DRAMBORA 1.0
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National Archives of Scotland,
Edinburgh, UK
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National Library of the Czech Republic
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National Central Library of Florence,
Italy
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International Institute for Social History,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Netarkivet (Danish Internet Archive),
Denmark
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Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Linz,
Austria, in cooperation with the Ars
Electronica Center
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E-LIS repository managed by CILEA,
Rome, Italy
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Lithuanian Museum of
Ethnocosmology, Lithuania
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Testing DRAMBORA 1.0 within
DELOS Digital Preservation Cluster
• MBooks Michigan-Google
Digitization Project, US
• CERN Document Server,
Switzerland
• Kungliga Biblioteket, Sweden
• Gallica, National Library of
France
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DRAMBORA Future
• Release of DRAMBORA Interactive
• Training within DPE Training Programme
• Dissemination of results and activities in
scientific journals and conferences
• Version 3.0 in Spring 2008
• Accreditation of self-auditors in 2008
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Drambora Interactive
Drambora Interactive Home
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Get involved!
If your organization wishes to learn more about
DRAMBORA, request support or join the growing
network of DRAMBORA users, contact us online at
www.repositoryaudit.eu
or by email at
[email protected]
and
[email protected]
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