Building a Business
Case: or, why
undertake digital
preservation?
Patricia Sleeman
Archivist
• How do you communicate the value of
information objects to decision-makers?
– Speak in a language they understand
– ‘Because it is important’ is not persuasive
enough!
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Three strategies
1. Risk is the only motivator
2. Challenge assumptions (including your
own)
3. Use DP to support your Organisation
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Risk as the only
motivator
• Don’t think of DP as a 'product' that makes
money
• Rather as a long-term risk management
strategy that protects the organisation
– Companies being asked to keep ‘living wills’
to ensure continuity in case of disaster
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Business Risk
Management
• British Standard 31100 - Code of practice for risk
management
• UK Office of Government Commerce’s
Management of Risk
• ISO 31000:2009: Risk Management – Principles
and Guidelines (published 13.11.2009)
• BS ISO 14721:2003 Reference Model for an
Open Archival Information System (OAIS)
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Measuring risks
• Define what the risks of digital loss are
and how they will directly affect your
organisation
• Records management risks
• Financial risks
• Reputational risks
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Tools for measuring risks
• BS 31100: Code of practice for risk
management currently being drafted
• DRAMBORA risk assessment tool
• PLANETS tools for identifying, assessing
and mitigating risk
– PLATO preservation planning tool
– Characterisation service
– Core registry
– Testbed
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Some risk triggers
• Change in policy
• Change in business environment: e.g.
merger, staff loss
• Change in technical environment
• A disaster!
• IMPORTANT to update and review risks
periodically and during these times.
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Challenge assumptions
(yours and theirs)
• Don't always assume they will think it is a
‘good idea’
• Don’t assume it is going to be expensive
• Don’t assume preservation is forever
• Don’t assume someone it is someone
else’s problem
• Don’t assume it is a technology-only
problem
(Chris Rusbridge 2006)
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Use DP to support your
organisation
• Connect to business drivers
– “The digital preservation policy should be integrated into
business drivers, activities and functions e.g. regulatory
compliance, staff development, applied technology, academic
excellence. Try to map these to digital preservation benefits.”
Beagrie, Digital Preservation Policies Study (2008)
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Use DP to support your
organisation
• Analyse existing policies
– “Identify what exists in your organisation in terms of high level
policies and schedules, for example policies on financial, staffing
or risk assessment. Highlight relevant policies and clauses. Be
aware of any other detailed workflow documents within other
divisions. Once you have identified them, the mappings in this
study will help highlight how digital preservation can tie into even
very high level policy clauses.”
Beagrie, Digital Preservation Policies Study (2008)
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Use DP to support your
organisation
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•
•
•
•
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Phasing
Raise awareness
Survey colleagues
Scope
Technology
Digital Life Cycle
Beagrie, Digital Preservation Policies Study (2008)
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Other approaches
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•
•
•
•
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Gather statistics and other evidence
Consider alternatives
Investigate legal mandate
Incentives
Use cost models
Measure yourself
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Statistics
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•
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Usage of digital assets
Web traffic
Occupancy of disk space
Numbers of unsupported file formats in
use
• Other evidence, such as location of
dispersed assets
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Alternatives
• Before you speak to your HOD or
Business Manager, convince them that
you have looked into all the other options
and costed them out.
• Some organisations will still think it's
cheapest (and best) to just keep buying
local hard drives to store their materials,
instead of building a repository.
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Legal mandate
• National Archives and Libraries will have
guaranteed inscribed legal reasons to
collect and preserve
• Your organisation may have other
compelling legal drivers
• Explore all of them and find what will
enable digital preservation to take place
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Incentives
• What do you think they are?
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Cost models
• How much it costs to preserve X digital objects
over time, the implications of inaction
• Important to get concrete cost figures since no
senior management will be prepared to write a
blank cheque
– Staff costs
– Hidden costs (See The arXiv.org archive)
• Models
– LIFE
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Measure yourself
• Use measurement tools
– E.g. AIDA based on five stages/3 legs – selfassessment for the Institution
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Resources
• ESPIDA: http://www.gla.ac.uk/espida/
• PrestoSpace: Deliverable D12.7, The
Case for Investment in Digital Archives
• DRAMBORA toolkit:
www.repositoryaudit.eu
• PLANETS: http://www.planetsproject.eu/software/
• BS 31100 Code of practice for risk
management
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