Building a Business Case: or, why

undertake digital preservation?

Patricia SleemanArchivist

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• 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

• Phasing

• Raise awareness

• Survey colleagues

• Scope

• Technology

• Digital Life Cycle

Beagrie, Digital Preservation Policies Study (2008)

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Other approaches

• Gather statistics and other evidence

• Consider alternatives

• Investigate legal mandate

• Incentives

• Use cost models

• Measure yourself

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Statistics

• 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 – self-

assessment 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.planets-project.eu/software/• BS 31100 Code of practice for risk

management