RSS feedsThe National Archives has launched a three year “scoping exercise” to devise a pan-government service which will take on the mammoth task of all Whitehall digital preservation.
“The mass of government information that is born digital will require a
single process of preservation,” said Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of the
National Archives.
“You don’t want every government department reinventing the wheel,” she added.
“One core system makes sense.”
That leaves the National Archives well placed to be both the standard bearer for digital preservation and the developer of a detailed policy in conjunction with government departments.
“Our role is to help government make the best use it can of its information now and in the future,” said Ceeney.
But as project manager, the National Archives could meet resistance from government departments that already have policies in place. So are toes going to be stepped on when the project comes up with its recommendations?
“No-one is setting up their own digital preservation service and actually this has been quite timely,” Ceeney said of the state of digital preservation in government. “I had a meeting this morning with government officials, who said, ‘We are all waiting for you now.’”
Budget, as always, is a big driver, as departments compare the cost of doing it on their own with the cost of buying it centrally. Ceeney said the difference could be a factor of 10 or more, and was confident that government departments would buy into it.
“The fact that they have put money in to set it up at this stage has given them a stake as well.”
While the principle of preservation remains the same as the National Archives’ heritage, the task of effectively archiving government digital information is a big challenge. Information must remain accessible for future generations, be transferable to new formats or platforms, and maintain its int egrity.
“Most digital information in 30 years won’t be readable,” pointed out Ceeney.
“For example, it would be saved on a floppy disk and shelved, then 30 years
later sent to the National Archives for transfer, except by then there would be
nothing left.”
Archiving digital information is nothing new for the National Archives. In 2004,
its digital archive won the inaugural Digital Preservation Award. It also
already provides support and advice on digital preservation to government
departments through its Pronom scheme, which holds information on how to access
different file formats.
Mind the gap
These schemes were cited by the 2006
Mind
the Gap report from the
Digital Preservation
Coalition as key digital preservation initiatives alongside work
carried out by the British Library and the UK Data Archive. So the National
Archives is clearly well placed to project-manage the goliath task ahead.
However, the Mind the Gap report also identified a need for government bodies to
raise awareness and commitment from both staff and organisations to be more
active in managing digital preservation. “Organisations need to go beyond
awareness of the problem and create a proactive plan for dealing with the
issues,” said the report. “This should include appointing clear responsibilities
for each part of the plan.”
Just the once
“There has been a lot of work in UK government over the last couple of years in
shared services, as everybody in government has the same need to archive their
digital information,” Ceeney said. “We thought it was better to do it once
rather than 28 times.
“For the last 18 months we have been working with these government departments to agree principles. We then took the ideas to the permanent secretaries. What we are quite pleased about is that we found a way to get every department to put some money into the hat.”
Ceeney made the point, though, that the initiative was not a project exclusively developed by the National Archives but government-led. She added: “We are just the project managers. The board will be spread pan-government, and all the key departments will have representatives. They are essentially governance for it.”
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