Consortial Certification Processes: the Goportis Digital Archive: a Case Study

Consortial Certification Processes: the Goportis Digital Archive—a Case Study. Franziska Schwab, Yvonne Tunnat, and Dr. Thomas Gerdes. bloggERS! February 7, 2017.
     Another blog post on the international perspectives on digital preservation and about digital preservation in Germany and repository certification . The certification of their digital archive is part of the quality management and all workflows are evaluated. The certification process shows that the long-term availability of the data is ensured, and the digital archive is trustworthy. They have completed the certification processes for the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) which took over six months. They are working on the application for the nestor Seal which is much more complex and requires more detailed information.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Trustworthiness: Self-assessment of an Institutional Repository against ISO 16363-2012

Trustworthiness: Self-assessment of an Institutional Repository against ISO 16363-2012. Bernadette Houghton. D-Lib Magazine. March/April 2015.
Digital preservation is a relatively young field, but progress has been made for developing tools and standards to better support preservation efforts. There is increased interest in standards for the audit and certification of digital repositories because researchers want to know they can trust digital repositories. Digital preservation is a long-term issue. The Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC) checklist has been widely used as the basis of the activities. It later became ISO 16363 (based on the OAIS model) which contains 105 criteria in 3 areas:

1. Organizational infrastructure (governance, structure and viability, staffing, accountability, policies, financial sustainability and legal issues)
2. Digital object management (acquisition and ingest of content, preservation planning and procedures, information management and access)
3. Infrastructure and security risk management (technical infrastructure and security issues)

 "Undertaking a self-assessment against ISO 16363 is not a trivial task, and is likely to be beyond the ability of smaller repositories to manage." An audit is an arms-length review of the repository, requiring evidence of compliance and testing to see that the repository is functioning as a Trusted Digital Repository.  Most repositories at this time are in an ad hoc, still-evolving situation. That is appropriate at this time, but a more mature approach should be taken in the future. The assessment process would rate features for: Full Compliance, Part Compliance, Not Compliant. The conclusions in the article include:

• Self-assessment is time-consuming and resource-heavy, but a beneficial exercise
• Self-assessment is needed before considering external certification. 
• Certification is expensive.
• Get senior management on board. Their support is essential.
• Consider doing an assessment first against NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation  
• Repository software may be OAIS-compliant, but it doesn't mean your repository is also
• Not all ISO 16363 criteria have the same importance. Assess each criteria accordingly
• ISO 16363 is based on a conceptual model and may not fit your exact situation
• Determine in advance how deep the assessment will go.
• Document the self-assessment from the start on a wiki and record your findings  

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation Coalition publishes ‘OAIS Introductory Guide (2nd Edition)’ Technology Watch Report

Digital Preservation Coalition publishes ‘OAIS Introductory Guide (2nd Edition)’ Technology Watch Report. Brian Lavoie.  Digital Preservation Coalition. Watch Report. October, 2014. [PDF]

The report describes the OAIS, its core principles and functional elements, as well as the information model which support long-term preservation, access and understandability of data. The OAIS reference model was approved in 2002 and revised and updated in 2012. Perhaps “the most important achievement of the OAIS is that it has become almost universally accepted as the lingua franca of digital preservation”.

The central concept in the reference model is that of an open archival information system. An OAIS-type archive must meet a set of six minimum responsibilities to do with the ingest, preservation, and dissemination of archived materials: Ingest, Archival Storage, Data Management, Preservation Planning, Access, and Administration. There are also Common Services, which consist of basic computing and networking resources.

An OAIS-type archive references three types of entities: Management, Producer, and Consumer, which includes the Designated Community: consumers expected to independently understand the archived information in the form in which it is preserved and made available by the OAIS. This is a  framework to encourage dialogue and collaboration among participants in standards-building activities, as well as identifying areas most likely to benefit from standards development.

An OAIS-type archive is expected to:

• Negotiate for and accept appropriate information from information producers;
• Obtain sufficient control of the information in order to meet long-term preservation objectives;
• Determine the scope of the archive’s user community;
• Ensure the preserved information is independently understandable to the user community
• Follow documented policies and procedures to ensure the information is preserved against all reasonable contingencies
• Make the preserved information available to the user community, and enable dissemination of authenticated

An OAIS should be committed to making the contents of its archival store available to its intended user community, through access mechanisms and services which support users’ needs and requirements. Such requirements may include preferred medium, access channels, and any access restrictions should be clearly documented.

 The OAIS information model is built around the concept of an information package, which includes: the Submission Information Package, the Archival Information Package, and the Dissemination Information Package. Preservation requires metadata to support and document the OAIS’s preservation processes, called Preservation Description Information, which ‘is specifically focused on describing the past and present states of the Content Information, ensuring that it is uniquely identifiable, and ensuring it has not been unknowingly altered’. The information consists of:

• Reference Information (identifiers)
• Context Information (describes relationships among information and objects)
• Provenance Information (history of the content over time)
• Fixity Information (verifying authenticity)
• Access Rights Information (conditions or restrictions)

OAIS is a model and not an implementation. It does not address system architectures, storage or processing technologies, database design, computing platforms, or other technical details of setting up a functioning archival system. But it has been used as a foundation or starting point. Efforts, such as TRAC, have been made to put the attributes of a trusted digital archive into a ‘checklist’ that could be used to support a certification process. PREMIS is a preservation metadata initiative that has emerged as the de facto standard. METS, and XML based  document form, has become widely used for encoding OAIS archival information packages.

The ‘OAIS reference model provides a solid theoretical basis for digital preservation efforts, though theory and practice can sometimes have an uneasy fit.’

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Audio Preservation at MIT: an NDSR Project Update.

Digital Audio Preservation at MIT: an NDSR Project Update. Susan Manus, Tricia Patterson. Library of Congress; The Signal. January 16, 2015.
Report of the residency position, in which Tricia is primarily tasked with: completing a gap analysis of the digital preservation workflows currently in place for audio streaming and preservation, and developing lower-level diagrammatic and narrative workflows. [Workflow images are in the article.] Workflow documentation is receiving increased acknowledgement and appreciation in the preservation environment. The reasons:

• tested, repeatable road map allows processing of larger projects with efficiency and security
• detailed workflows show redundancies and deficiencies in processes across departments
• workflow documents clarify roles and accountability within the chain of custody.

The benefits include getting a better idea of what digitization project documentation is generated and that the documentation needs to be preserved as well. It has also helped identify steps that would benefit from automation.The process started with itemizing 50-60 delivery requirements, including relevant TRAC requirements (PDF), covering display and interface, search and discovery, accessibility, ingest and export, metadata, content management, permissions, documentation and other considerations. From there requirements were prioritized on a scale from “might be nice” to “must-have.” The next step is to measure options against our prioritized requirements to determine the needs of the Libraries now. An important part is to provide meaningful access to the audio treasures in the library.

Digital Preservation Matters.

GPO Prepares To Become First Federal Agency Named As Trustworthy Digital Repository For Government Information

GPO Prepares To Become First Federal Agency Named As Trustworthy Digital Repository For Government Information. U.S. Government Publishing Office. Press Release. December 18, 2014.
The GPO is preparing to become the first Federal agency to be named as a Trustworthy Digital Repository for Government information through certification under ISO 16363, which defines a recommended practice for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories. The Audit and Certification checklist will be used by an accredited outside organization. This would be the first Federal agency to be certified.

To begin the audit process, GPO will be one of 5 institutions to receive a resident through the National Digital Stewardship Residency program to work for one year on preparation for the audit and certification of FDsys as an ISO 16363 Trustworthy Digital Repository.

The GPO has also recently changed its name to the Government Publishing Office.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories.

Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories. CCSDS. September 2011. [PDF, 77pp.]

The Management Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) has published this manual of recommended practices. It is based on the 2003 version from RLG. “The purpose of this document is to define a CCSDS Recommended Practice on which to base an audit and certification process for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories. The scope of application of this document is the entire range of digital repositories.”

The document addresses audit and certification criteria, organizational infrastructure, digital object management, and risk management.  It is a standard for those who audit repositories; and, for those who are responsible for the repositories, it is an objective tool they can use to evaluate the trustworthiness of the repository.

ADS and the Data Seal of Approval – case study for the DCC.

The ADS and the Data Seal of Approval – case study for the DCC.  Jenny Mitcham and Catherine Hardman. Digital Curation Centre website. 2010.  

This page describes the experience of Archaeology Data Service in applying for the Data Seal of Approval (DSA). It provides some practical information about the DSA application process and outlines issues the ADS faced in undertaking the process, and several potential benefits they see from the self-certification.

“When undertaking to curate data for the foreseeable future (and beyond) the concept of ‘trust’ is of paramount importance. Yet in a young discipline such as digital archiving, it is very difficult to demonstrate the potential for longevity of curation.”

The Assessment Manual can be downloaded from the DSA website, which includes details of the 16 guidelines, the minimum requirements, and some guidance notes.  In the spirit of the openness the DSA recommends that the main policy and procedure documents should be accessible the world at large.  One of the benefits mention is it shows to users and depositors that the archive has a set of standards is meeting them.

Criteria for the Trustworthiness of Data Centres

Criteria for the Trustworthiness of Data Centres. Jens Klump. D-Lib Magazine. January/February 2011.
The rapid decay of URLs for research resources is an important reason to use persistent identifiers. The use of persistent identifiers implies that the data objects are persistent themselves. The rapid obsolescence of the technology to read the information, along with the physical decay of the media, represents a serious threat to preservation of the content. Since research projects only run for a relatively short time, it is advisable to shift the responsibility for long-term data curation from the individual researcher to a trusted data repository or archive.

We need criteria for the assessment of trustworthiness of digital archives. Some of the methods presented have been:

•     Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC)
•     Catalogue of Criteria for Trusted Digital Repositories (nestor Catalogue)
•     DCC and DPE Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA)
•     DINI-Certificate Document and Publication Services
•     Data Seal of Approval (Sesink et al., 2008)

These provide useful feedback on developing additional criteria and auditing procedures to certify  trusted digital archives.