Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation CERN Costs Workshop Activities and Approaches to Cost Modelling in the 4C Project 13 – 14 January 2014 Germán Cancio - CERN

The Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation (4C) project will help organisations across Europe to more effectively invest in digital curation and preservation. Organisations that understand the nature of this investment will be more able to effectively control and manage their digital assets over time, but they may also be able to create new cost-effective solutions and services for others. Where existing work is relevant, 4C will ensure that stakeholders realise and understand how to employ those resources. 4C will also examine how they might be made more fit-for-purpose, relevant and useable by a wider range of organisations. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Project Summary

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation We will identify where there are gaps in the current provision of tools, frameworks and models We will support stakeholders to better understand and articulate their requirements We will clarify some of the complexity of the relationships between cost and other factors (e.g. value, risk, benefit, trust, sustainability) We will help people to more accurately and more efficiently compare the costs of digital curation Our Objectives

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation The outputs of this project will include: events (focus groups, workshops, a conference); reports; models and specifications; a Curation Costs Exchange (CCEx); and a research and development agenda in the form of a roadmap. The Outputs

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation The digital curation community has done a lot of work on the costs and economics of digital curation over the years. So what progress has been made and what do we know about costs? One current view.... Costing digital curation is still a REALLY hard problem... lots of people have tried over the years but we haven’t really made the progress we should have...

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation We have to think carefully about what exactly is the problem that we are trying to solve... If they want to, organisations can work out how much it costs them to manage their digital assets An alternative view...

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation A Pre-Ingest Ingest Preservation Planning Data Management Archival Storage Access Administration Curation Categories Accounting Principles Time Period 2012 Total Cost €252,000

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Ingest Curation Access Curation Categories Cost Categories Time Period 2012 Total Cost €645, C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation B Accounting Principles

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Curation Categories Time Period 2012 Total Cost €15,800,000 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation C Ingest Data Management Archival Storage Preservation Planning Access Administration Common Services Curation Categories Accounting Principles 393 TB Size of Collection

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Cost Categories Product/Service Time Period ? Total Cost €349,665 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation D Cost Categories Hardware Ingest Archival Storage Metadata Management Access Administration Curation Categories

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Curation Categories 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation E Digital Archiving Cost Categories Time Period 2007 Time Period 2012 Total Cost 348,500 Total Cost 123,000

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation F Accounting Principles Development & Improvement Operation Staff Development, Technical Support Training, Communications, Public Relations Expenses Software Design Software Licenses Support External Development Hardware Purchase Hardware Operating costs Graphic Design Curation Categories Long term Digital Preservation 2 TB Size of Collection Assumption €8k per TB per year for Storage Costs Total Cost €205,000 Time Period

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation 4C Data Gathering Exercise Organisation G Curation Categories Digital Archiving Content Management Data Development Hardware Production Systems Development Delivery User Support Overhead Operations Management Total Cost € 3,130,110 Time Period

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation So... What exactly are the problems we need to tackle? The random numbers problem - How do we meaningfully compare the numbers that we end up with? Sensitivity around data - The identity of the organisation is enormously important – or at least what type of organisation it is and the context within which it works. How do we effectively anonymise the sharing of data? Describing the assets - The amount and type of data that is being looked after needs to be described Complexity - The detail builds up very quickly across different organisations and it doesn’t map together easily.

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation So... The 4C Project is aiming to: Crowd source data gathering with the Curation Costs Exchange Find a way of describing what the organisation does and what it looks after without compromising the anonymity of the organisation if it is sensitive about its costs Find some way of aligning our practice so that we (at least) have a high level approach to understanding costs (Cost Concept Model) Be very aware that the cost of curation can be something that senior managers can be negative about... so when we talk about costs – we make sure we also talk about BENEFITS! – or we talk about Managing Risks (WP4 – Report on Risks and Benefits) Promote the idea that digital curation and preservation informs the organisational strategic plan and business model (WP4 – Report on from Costs to Business Models)

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Curation Costs Exchange

Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation Please join us for the breakout group tomorrow afternoon... Thankyou