This is the presentation I gave as part of the joint UNESCO, IFLA and ICA initiative to discuss and launch a Roadmap for Digital Preservation. The meeting took place in The Hague 5-6 December 2013 and features some of the work carried out by the EC-funded 4C Project.

1. UNESCO Roadmap for Long
Term Access to Digital Heritage
Focus on the economic factors and the cost of digital
preservation
Neil Grindley
Programme Manager
&
4C Project Coordinator
Collaboration to
Clarify the
Costs of
Curation

2. 1. Use some of the work that the 4C Project is doing to
examine emerging issues and make recommendations
2. Set out where economic issues seem to overlap most
significantly with the issues and ideas set out in the
Vancouver declaration and the Roadmap position paper
and highlight some relevant areas of existing or
emerging work ... and (hopefully) suggest some topics
for discussion

3. Why is it a good idea to try and work out the costs of digital
preservation?
•
Understanding the cost of preservation may mean we can offer realistic and
cost effective curation services to others.
•
Understanding costs can support strategic planning.
•
Understanding costs can support tactical decision-making.
•
Understanding costs can provide evidence of cost-effectiveness and value.
•
Clarifying and publishing the cost of digital curation can be used to enhance
an organisation’s credibility. But this must be done along with the context of
how the costs were calculated
•
Understanding economic drivers can help to strategically align an
organisation

4. 4C Project Deliverable ...
Evaluation of Cost Models and Needs & Gaps Analysis
(based on stakeholder consultation)
•
cost models should support accounting, but more importantly they should enable
budgeting
•
they should be able to handle various types and amounts of assets and use cases
•
they should have a sound definition and breakdown of costs and enable modelling
of cost variables
•
easy to use tools, preferably with default settings, should support the models
•
there is a clear need to assess the benefits and value of digital curation
The most important gaps we discovered were:
•
poor usability
•
lack of consensus on how to define, qualify and structure cost data
•
lack of representation of the benefits of investing in digital curation

5. Recommendations for action include:
•
provision of a high-level quick entry guide to all existing models that describes
the scope and structure of the models indicating their relevance for different
stakeholders and use cases
•
provision of a standard vocabulary and conceptual description of cost benefit
models
•
provision of a common cost benefit model that can be adjusted to specific use
cases
•
provision of clearly designed and user-friendly tools with default reference
settings that can be fine-tuned to accommodate for various stakeholder
needs, and usable user-interfaces
•
provision of benefit modules in addition to the cost models

6. Indirect Economic
Determinants
authenticity
benefit
efficiency
impact
innovation
interoperability
quality
reputation
risk
sensitivity
skills
sustainability
transparency
trustworthiness
value
Economic Sustainability
Reference Model
(Brian Lavoie &
Chris Rusbridge)
The Curation Costs Exchange (CCEx)
...‘a functional framework
and platform for the
exchange of curation costsrelated information’.
http://4cproject.eu/
€

7. Issues declared in the UNESCO Vancouver Declaration & the Digital Roadmap
Position Paper that have specific & significant economic implications
Development
Public-private
Partnerships
Risk & Threats
Education &
Training
Open Data & Open
Government
Skills Acquisition
Establishing
Infrastructure

8. Some issues ...
• Authenticity of information and keeping things honest
• Making diverse content widely available and keeping it accessible
• Having appropriate expectations about the availability of
equipment, infrastructure and skills
Development
Some challenges ...
• Fragile, uncertain economies and low incomes
• Vulnerability to natural disasters and social upheaval
How might digital preservation help ...?
• Distributed Digital Preservation Networks (DDP’s)
o Keeps content locally (or can fetch it again from a distributed
location)
o Will automatically check and fix broken content
o Can support a range of governance models
o Can be achieved with a relatively small investment

9. There is scope for a great deal more creativity between different
types of organisations. Transparency around cost will help ...
Public-private
Partnerships

10. There is scope for a great deal more creativity between different
types of organisations. Transparency around costs will help ...
Public-private
Partnerships

11. Education &
Training
The challenge for educators is to turn out graduates with the right
knowledge and skills to do the types of work that actually need to
be undertaken in the work place.
The challenge for trainers is to design and deliver precisely the right
level of course, for the right audience, in the right format
Practitioners need chances to be exposed to other practitioners and
to acquire new skills in a creative and supportive peer environment.
Skills Acquisition
SPRUCE Project
http://wiki.opflabs.org/display/SP
R/Home

12. We need to recognise what we already have in order to cost-effectively
make our infrastructure more effective.
www.thekeepers.org
Establishing
Infrastructure
http://netpreserve.org/
http://coptr.digipres.org/Main_Page
And keep abreast of initiatives that are emerging ...
Virtual Centre of
Excellence (VCoE)
The NSLA Technical Registry

13. Some of the more contentious issues around ‘openness’ involve
economic perspectives.
Publishing has changed irrevocably and new competitive
advantages for businesses must be developed by careful
identification of (and creative responses to) emerging customer
demand
Open Data & Open
Government
Research and data that is publicly funded (scientific or
governmental) must logically be made freely available to those
who have provided the funding. It is then up to researchers and
businesses to exploit the openness of that data in the most
creative and effective way possible.
It starts simple – it becomes complicated ...!
Continued investment is required in Web Archiving and supporting
people to ensure their data is ‘preservable’

14. There is a very large body of literature on the topic of risk and risk
management and the digital preservation community has developed
some tools and approaches.
•
•
•
•
Risk identification
Risk analysis
Risk evaluation
Treatment of risk
Risk & Threats
We must make sufficient investment into systems and processes so
that we trust them to withstand threats and to effectively mitigate
the risks we identify.
A more sure-footed and decisive approach to digital preservation will
foster additional positive mindsets ...
•
•
•
More emphasis on selection and appraisal
Less unmanaged persistence of digital materials
A much clearer view of the value of digital assets

15. Some final thoughts ...
‘Digital Asset’ is a good term. It sets up an expectation that the digital object in question
has value and therefore requires curation. It is an asset not a liability ...
But the analogy with financial investment doesn’t follow through and we shouldn’t
expect it to.
International collaboration intuitively seems like a good idea – and should realise
benefits. But is that only at the operational level? At the management level is there
always going to be economic competitiveness between organisations?
Are we talking about two different economies ?
Have we got a clear idea of actually what the hardest problem is?
Perhaps getting costs from organisations isn’t THE problem. The problem is
motivating them to calculate them. Or ensuring that we can effectively anonymise
the data.