DANS Certification Efforts Use Case Ingrid Dillo DANS, The Netherlands Session Auditing of Trustworthy Data Repositories SciDataCon16, Denver, September 2016

DANS in a nutshell Mission: Main tasks and services: Data service provider (50 colleagues); institute of KNAW and NWO; 2005 and 1964 Mission to promote permanent access to digital research data Focus on social sciences and humanities Main tasks and services: Archiving: EASY, DataverseNL Reuse: NARCIS Training and Consultancy: RDM, digital curation, certification Research: sustained access

Certification at DANS Founding father of DSA, handed over to an international board Involved in the development of other standards (DIN/Nestor, WDS) Involved in certification activities within RDA Certification of the DANS repository DANS is an organisation that has a very specific long term mission. Therefore we believed that we had to make certification one of our main goals for 2015. Not as a goal in itself but as a means to provide trust to the users of our repository and to our funders. We hope it will show them that we take this trustworthiness very seriously.

Certification of the DANS repository: what have we done? 2011: certification of the DANS repository becomes an important target in long term policy strategy 2011: DSA seal 2011: ISO test audit 2013: renewal DSA seal 2014-2015: nestorSeal, WDS accreditation

Certification in practice: broad scope Broad range of topics: organizational, staffing, financial and legal aspects, archival workflows, IT-infrastructure, risk management, etc. Properly describing policies, processes, etc. Development of missing policies, processes, IT- and infrastructural elements, etc. What does the actual work consist of?

Certification in practice: organizational aspects Responsibility for achieving the target on management level Core certification team: planning, discussing, monitoring and partly executing the work Many colleagues within DANS with specific expertise temporarily involved in the actual work Now, let us look at the certification work in practice. First the organisational arrangements

Certification in practice: the effort involved Highly dependent on your level of entry DSA: if you meet all 16 guidelines at the required level -> 2 weeks for the self assessment, but: The effort will rise, if you still need to do real work in order to comply with the guidelines The effort will rise when you climb the certification stairs to an extended and formal certification level

Effort: DANS DSA renewal (goal 2013) DSA has a two year life cycle: you do not certify for life, you have to pass the test regularly Back to the first DSA self assessment Revisiting the descriptions based on: the revised guidelines the comments and recommendations in the self assessment the present situation of our institute

Effort: DANS DSA renewal In total around 250 hours of work: policies 26 hours technical development 106 hours writing of the self-assessment 98 hours Projectmanagement 16 hours

Effort: nestorSeal (goal 2014) Extended self assessment based on the 34 criteria of DIN 31644 Procedures defined by the German NESTOR group Review of self assessment by two NESTOR reviewers End result = nestorSeal

Effort: nestorSeal The criteria build on the DSA guidelines Required a big effort Around 1500 hours of work Around half of all DANS colleagues involved in some way at some point

311 272 474 289 209 Total 1555 Activities related to DANS’s policies regarding the repository regarding the organisation Activities related to workflows associated with the repository human workflows automated workflows documentation internal consultation Activities related to the technical infrastructure of the repository internal consultation and design of new/ improved archival functionality development Activities related to the text for the self-assessment writing, reviewing and discussing documents in support of the self-assessment internal consultations about these texts Project management, including meetings of the core team and administration 311 272 474 289 209 Total 1555 NB: met zulke precieze uren ziet het eruit als harde wetenschap. Dat is het natuurlijk niet: Van sommige personen zijn gewoon alle uren aan 1 activiteit toegeschreven Van andere is het proportioneel gebeurd Er is geschat dat er in ‘Ontwikkeling EASY’ (apart project) 200 uur is gewerkt; die vallen onder de 474.

Why do repositories invest in certification efforts? Builds stakeholder confidence in the repository Improves communication within the repository Improves repository processes Ensures transparency Differentiates the repository from others

Why do we do this at DANS? Certification as a means to build trust in our repository with our clients, both depositors and users of data, with our partner organizations and with research funders Certification as a ‘big stick’ to further develop and professionalize our core services, workflows and our organization as a whole

What do we show our stakeholders?

What do we show our stakeholders?

Certification in practice: lessons learned Commitment from the top is crucial Broad support within the organization is needed Use the framework: do not aim to high at once Finally, what lessons have we learnt at DANS so far? I think there are three important observations to be made: Why? In order to keep the long term certification process on the agenda and not to be faded away by other urgent priorities; how do we commit the top? By making certification one of our targets and by incorporating it in our policy cycle. Why? Certification leads to lots of extra work that sometimes does not seem to deliver added value at once; chance of resistance; how? Internal communication (lunch meetings) is important. It is also important to apply a practical approach; start with topics that are already on the agenda form a different perspective: work you have to do in the framework of a project, etc. Speaks for itsef..

Thank you for listening! www.dans.knaw.nl ingrid.dillo@dans.knaw.nl