Adherence to laws, regulations, guidelines and specifications relevant to an organization’s business processes and operational area.
What are the Risks of not preserving digital materials?
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Organization Type |
Risk |
Potential Consequences |
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Data safety and security are compromised. |
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Technologies used become obsolete; this may apply to elements such as hardware, software and file formats. |
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The bits and bytes making up the digital information degrade over time. |
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Insufficient contextual information (metadata) to understand the information and for it to be useful. |
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Lack of supporting legislation to facilitate preservation, particularly relating to copyright/IPR, privacy and legal deposit. |
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Rate of data creation outstrips capacity for storage, processing and preservation. |
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Insufficient funding available to allow sustainable preservation procedures and systems to be established. |
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Insufficient staffing/skills to be able to carry out successful preservation. |
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Executive level support for digital preservation is not persistent |
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Existing storage systems do not protect records from unauthorised change or corruption |
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Staff fail to comply with organizational policy and processes in relation to management of records (reliability, authenticity, usability etc.), |
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Inability to provide evidence of compliance with regulations |
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Inability to produce reliable and authentic records necessary to pursue or defend legal claims |
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Volume of data continues to grow without action being taken |
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Litigation from consumers if data made available is not reliable and trustworthy |
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No active programme/processes aimed at acquiring digital objects/collections |
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What Opportunities do preserved digital materials create?
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Organization Type |
Digital Preservation can… |
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protect investment by maintaining clear audit trails |
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hold governments to account by maintaining a clear and permanent audit trail |
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demonstrate a commitment to core statutory function for collection, for present and future generations |
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enable better cooperation with regulatory bodies by sustaining access to reliable records as evidence of actions. |
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allow an organization to defend decisions and attribute responsibility by sustaining access to reliable records as evidence of actions for legal, regulatory and IPR cases |
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enable the organization to respond more efficiently to legal holds by sustaining access to reliable records |
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protect against financial losses by enabling the provision of evidence for legal and regulatory cases |
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demonstrate compliance with institutional and funder policies on data management policies |
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demonstrate long term vision and planning |
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demonstrate greater transparency through documented audit trails |
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demonstrate that the organization is meeting its obligations and mandate through documentary evidence of compliance to legislation |
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enable robust and trusted iterations and audit trails, review and update to remain in line with the latest standards and best practices, safeguarding organizational reputation. |