1. PASIG Webinar: Implementing Sustainable Digital Preservation
Tuesday, October 22, 2013, 11:30am-12:30pm (EDT)
Neil Grindley
Programme Manager – Digital Infrastructure, Digital Preservation, Curation and Archiving
Project Coordinator – A Collaboration to Clarify the Cost of Curation (The 4C Project)
Programme Committee – Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation (ANADP II)

2.
ANADP II differs in intent and structure from other digital preservation conferences and meetings. Its primary purpose is not to encourage information sharing, but rather to foster and support sustained global networks of influence and action.
The Action Assembly includes four main components:
Panel Discussions
Action Sessions
Patio Perspectives Sessions
Future Opportunities for Collaboration
+ Keynote Presentations + Poster Session

3.
The Panel Discussions ...
Community Alignment – What makes a community work?
Resource Alignment - How can we employ the resources we have available to us most economically to achieve our digital preservation objectives?
Capacity Alignment - How can consistency in capacity building promote digital curation excellence?
Alignment Exemplars and Current Opportunities for Collaboration
Future Opportunities for Collaboration

4.
The Action Sessions ...
Creating a Community Driven Tools Registry
Applying the OAIS Framework to Distributed Digital Preservation
Case Studies and Quantitative Data from the 4C project
Towards a Cost Spectrum
Creating an International Education and Training Catalogue
Testing the Community Capacity Model Framework
Developing and Sharing Teaching Infrastructure

5. ... judging by the changing tone of conferences over the years, the community has come a long way.
So where are we now?
And by the way ... what do you mean by “the community”

6. Digital Preservation Specialist
Digital Asset Management / Preservation Planning
Why is your organisation interested in preserving digital assets? Are they assets or liabilities?
What are the defining features of the digital assets that you want to preserve?
Who will be given responsibility for digital preservation and how can they best be supported?
When do you expect the digital assets to realise value?
How are you going to technically organise the preservation of the assets?
Management
Digital Preservation Specialist
IT Specialist
Content Specialist

7. What might organisations need in terms of preservation services?

8. Service Funder £ Sustainability is not a ‘tick-box’ exercise VFM ??
Effectiveness ??
Impact
Expertise
Service
Funder

9. Possibly a JISC-centric view of services and sustainability!
Activity = You do something
Objective = You aim to achieve something
Vision = You aim to change something
Benefit = You’ve helped somebody
Impact = You’ve made a difference
Activity
Objective
Vision
Benefit
Impact
Project
Service
Funder
Possibly a JISC-centric view of services and sustainability!

10. Empower leadership to define the mission and take action
Ithaka S+R and the Strategic Content Alliance (JISC)
Investigating ‘Sustainability’
Empower leadership to define the mission and take action
Create a strong value proposition
Creatively manage costs
Cultivate diverse sources of revenue
Establish realistic goals and a system of accountability

11. Ithaka/SCA Revenue Models Blue Ribbon Task Force
Subscription
Endowment
Membership
Author pays
Licensing
Institutional subsidy
Government support
Public/private partnerships
Non-profit partnerships
Blue Ribbon Task Force
Common Funding Models for DP
Internal Budgeting
Public Funding
Voluntary Contributions
Fees for Preservation
Fees for Access

12. Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation & Access
Final report (February 2010)
Three principal actions are required for sustainability:
Articulate a compelling value proposition
Provide clear incentives to preserve in the public interest
Define roles and responsibilities among stakeholders to ensure an ongoing and efficient flow of resources to preservation throughout the digital lifecycle

13. Trust Value Sustainability Stewardship Business Model
For both service provider and service user, the attributes of the service must be understood
Stewardship
Ethics
Responsibility
Willingness
Business Model
Ambition
Risk
Appetite
Solvency
Affordabilty
Value
Importance
Awareness
Knowledge
Judgement
Trust
Credibility
Capability
Capacity
Collaboration
Sustainability

15. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Engagement
Tasks
Engage stakeholders
Raise awareness
Organise meetings
Promote Research & Innovation
Build community network
Collaboration to Clarify the
Costs of
Curation
Assessment
Tasks
Assess cost models & strategies
Examine good practice
Analyse requirements
Integrate components
Produce guidance & briefing materials
Setup costs exchange
Networking & Coordination
Outputs
Events, Workshops, Meetings & Reports
Affiliate Partners & Stakeholders
Reports for General Dissemination
Curation Costs
Exchange
Enhancement
Tasks
Examine and refine related concepts
Value
Risk
Benefits
Sustainability
Economic Reference Model
Project Coordination
Tasks
Project meetings
Project reporting
EC liaison
Budget oversight
Outputs QA
Reports for European Commission
Submission of Roadmap to the EC

16. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
What is the 4C Project hoping to achieve?
... Or go back a step
What problem
is it trying to solve?

17. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
What people were saying about the costs issue as the 4C project was coming together ...
“There is a lack of information on the costs of digital preservation and its benefits (both tangible and intangible) which makes it hard to put together a convincing business case”
An Emerging Market, Planets White Paper, July 2010
“I think there is indeed interest in the digital preservation community in the question of cost prediction, but there are many unknowns so perhaps people have just decided it is a difficult problem and tackled simpler ones instead!”
Bill Roberts, National Archives of the Netherlands, OPF Wiki, 4 August 2011
“The bad news is that deciding what to keep and what to throw away isn't free either. Ignoring the problem incurs the costs of keeping the data; dealing with the problem incurs the costs of deciding what to throw away. We may be in the bad situation of being unable to afford either to keep or to throw away the data we generate”
David Rosenthal, DSHR’s Blog, December 2012

18. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Sanity check
It is generally not a big problem for large memory institutions (particularly national scale libraries and archives) to make the case for digital preservation.
But we need a wide range of organisations to engage with digital preservation. And if it’s not their core business, they will struggle to make the case.

19. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Digital Curation is best done collaboratively
It’s a big and complicated task and there is wide scope for duplicated and unnecessary effort
To work collaboratively requires a shared understanding of concepts and processes and principles
Having a clear view of the organisational mission and a strategic understanding of the future increasingly means knowing how you are going to handle your digital assets
Even to hand things on effectively and efficiently, some knowledge of curation is required ... and curation most effectively happens as early as possible in the digital object lifecycle
Understanding whether your digital objects really are assets or whether they are liabilities requires some engagement with curation concepts and preservation planning issues
Ultimately ... It’s about understanding the business case for preservation

20. What are the components of a business case?
The SPRUCE Project
What are the components of a business case?

21. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
A DRAFT Economic Sustainability Reference Model (ESRM)
Brian Lavoie
(OCLC)
Chris Rusbridge

22. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
What is the point of a Reference Model?
Reality
New Reality
Reference Model
Model
Model

23. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Who is the ESRM aimed at?
Operational Staff
Operational Managers
Senior Managers
Funders & Investors

24. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Operational Staff
Operational Managers
Perspective ...
Senior Managers
Funders & Investors
Focusing on ...
Digital Assets
Value & Benefits
Activity and Process
Time and Effort
Black
Box
Curation as ...

25. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
COSTS MODEL
BENEFITS MODEL
Digital Assets
Value & Benefits
Activity and Process
Time and Effort
Time and Effort
Curation as Black Box

26. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Operational Managers
Senior Managers
Funders & Investors
ECONOMIC MODEL
Maintaining stakeholder incentives and the flow of resources to sustain assets
Economic Sustainability Reference Model
COSTS MODEL
BENEFITS MODEL
Digital Assets
Value & Benefits
Activity and Process
Time and Effort
Time and Effort
Curation as Black Box

27. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
Components of a Sustainability Strategy
Economic lifecycle: the dynamic pattern, or sequence of events, against which the sustainability strategy operates;
Sustainability conditions: the conditions the sustainability strategy must address in order to achieve sustainability;
Key entities: the key elements of the economic environment – digital assets, the curation process, and stakeholders – whose properties and relationships shape the circumstances in which the sustainability strategy operates;
Economic uncertainties: frictions and obstacles that may potentially act to impede the ability of a repository to achieve economic sustainability; the sustainability strategy must anticipate these uncertainties and if necessary, mitigate them.

28. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation

29. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
The ESRM as it appears within the 4C Report on this topic ...

30. The 4C ESRM Questionnaire (Appendix 1)
Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
The 4C ESRM Questionnaire (Appendix 1)

31. The project runs until January 2015
Please go to the community resources section of the 4C project website and let us know what you think of the outputs from the project.
The project runs until January 2015

32. Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation
BENEFITS
INCENTIVES
SUSTAINABILITY
One of the big drivers for looking into the cost of preservation is to be able to offer realistic and cost effective preservation 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

33. Budgets are hard to secure and digital preservation remains a difficult case to argue so collaboration with like-minded organisations and the establishment of shared services should support the arguments and drive down the cost.
See you in Barcelona ...?
18-20 November 2013
Registration open until November 18th
“One of the greatest risks we run in not preserving our own digital assets for ourselves is that we simultaneously cease to preserve our own viability as institutions.”
K. Skinner and M. Schultz, A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation
(Atlanta, GA: Educopia Institute, 2010)
Photo credit: Trent Strohm, FlickR