A centre of expertise in data curation and preservation National FoI Group Birmingham07 March 2007 Funded by: This work is licensed under the Creative

a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation

National FoI Group Birmingham 07 March 2007

Funded by:This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/ ; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

E-mail Curation and FoI

Maureen Pennock

Digital Curation Centre, UKOLN, University of Bath



Today’s talk• The DCC

• Background & context

• DCC aims & objectives

• Freedom of Information and E-mails

• Digital Curation & E-mails• Why curate e-mails?

• Life-cycle perspective

• Roles & Responsibilities



The DCC• Established in 2004 to help solve the extensive

challenges of digital preservation and curation, and to provide research, advice and support services to UK institutions

• Funded by JISC & the e-Science Core Programme

• Impetus to action• Growth in e-Science activity and data creation

• Recognition that continuing access to digital information is needed



DCC Objective

• “The purpose of our centre is to provide a national focus for research and development into curation issues and to promote expertise and good practice […] for the management of all research outputs in digital format.”

• Both national and international



What is Digital Curation?• Maintaining and adding value to a trusted

body of digital information for current and future use; the active management and appraisal of data over the entire life-cycle.

• Enables organisations to address the many challenges of effectively managing, preserving, and re-using digital materials

• A challenge best tackled collaboratively



Organisation to Engage & Collaborate

Industry

research collaborators

standards bodies

testbeds& tools

communities of practice: users

Community Development

Research Agenda

Tools and infrastructure

User services

management & admin support

Collaborative Associates Network of DataOrganisations

curation organisations eg DPC



Community Development



User Services



Tools & Development• DCC Approach to Digital Curation (white paper) –

sets out the path for development activities:• Monitoring international standards• Developing a Representation Information

Registry/Repository (DCC RIR)

• Developing recommendations for tools and methods for generating Representation Information

• Creating auditing and certification processes for trusted repositories



DCC Research• Annotation in Databases• Data archiving• Socio-economic and legal issues• Metadata extraction and curation• Provenance and databases• Data transformation, integration and publishing• Security• Supporting technologies• Organisational and cultural challenges to digital

curation• Cooperative & distributed infrastructures



DCC summary• Support and promote continuing improvement

in the quality of data curation and preservation activity

• Nurture strong community relationships between practitioners, researchers, and curators

• Address digital curation from all aspects of the records life-cycle

• Develop and promote curation knowledge, tools and techniques

• Identify and research new organisational, technical, and supporting curation challenges



Freedom of Information Act & E-mails



FoI and E-mails: Relevancy• FoI Act provides

‘general right of access to information held by public authorities’ (with exceptions)

• Information – not just records

• E-mails not specified in Act• BUT… e-mail messages are information• E-mails therefore susceptible to FoI

requests



FoI & E-mails: Issues (I)• Unclear responsibilities:

• Email as personal domain, not organisational property

• User reluctance to ‘manage’ inbox• Clash between IT and RM policies (if any)

• Enforcement problems• Inappropriate content• Undesirable content• Embarrassing content



FoI & E-mails: Issues (II)• E-mail discovery carries inherent

problems…• Dispersed locations: IMAP; POP; Forwarded

messages; mailbox; shared drive; ERMS; EDMS…

• Some may be inaccessible to systems admin or records managers

• Relevant data may (or may not) be • In subject line• In message content• In message attachment (difficult to search)

• Sheer scale of challenge• Not indexed for fast searching

• … high discovery costs



FoI & E-mails: Issues (III)• Coherence of message threads• Admissibility of printed versions of e-

mails?• Improper deletion/destruction

procedures

• This is not just an issue for FoI• Information (mis)management • Risk (mis)management

• Can lead to all sorts of problems...





E-mail Curation



Problem: From Analogue to Digital• Digital

communications now increasingly common

• Management and preservation has not kept pace with implementation and rollout

• E-mail remains a common and pervasive problem

… to this

from this…



Best current solution: Curation• E-mail curation:

• Encourages more efficient use of e-mail as a business tool

• Enables shared and efficient access to organisational information

• Facilitates compliance with legal requirements• Provides framework for addressing risks of e-mail

usage• Addresses both disposal and preservation

• Is the best framework for good e-mail management across entire life-cycle



Storage & Preserv-

ation

Transfer

Active Use

Appraisal &

Selection

Access & Re-use

Creation

Life-cycle model

• Generic model• Takes control over the

records throughout lifetime• Meaningful chain of

custody• Requires compatibility of

different stages• Requires input from range

of stakeholders

Records

Disposal?

Disposal?



Stakeholders & Roles• The range of stakeholders that affect the

survival of digital material cuts across the whole lifecycle; everyone plays an important role• Management & policy-makers• Users - creators & receivers of e-mail messages• Records Managers• IT staff

• System & mail-server administration• LAN Manager

• Archivists • Re-users

'Curators'



Issues for Creators & Recipients • E-mails must be:

• Well-formed• Well-managed (even sent items!)• Accessible

• Important elements:• Good creation/response practices

• Inserting metadata• Headers – subject line, addresses• Message body - context

• Message formats• Attachments• Complying with house-style

• Good inbox management• Compliance with organisational policy



Issues for Curators• E-mails must be:

• Whole - comprising message body, headers & attachments• Captured as appropriate into organisational

document/records/archives management system• Destroyed as appropriate

• Important policy and practical elements:• Identifying e-mail records from non-records• Organisational retention & legal requirements• Proper filing of e-mail records• Deletion of transient/unnecessary e-mails• Saving e-mail records independently of e-mail client

• Guidance and Training for users ( at all levels)



Issues for Re-users• E-mails must be:

• Accessible for appropriate re-users• Exported in an appropriate and usable format

• Legal access and re-use restrictions must be observed

• Re-use software may be needed• Different re-users may have different re-use

requirements• E-mails can be re-used for very different purposes

to why they were originally created



Conclusions• Curation is the key to good e-mail

management and meeting legal – including FoI - obligations

• Policy and training are key elements of curation

• Communication between stakeholder groups is essential to achieve successful curation

• See DCC website for resources



Thank you.

Questions?

Maureen [email protected]

(Join the DCC Associates Network at http://www.dcc.ac.uk)

Documents

A centre of expertise in data curation and preservation National FoI Group Birmingham07 March 2007 Funded by: This work is licensed under the Creative