Introduction

This is the section of DPC RAM that DPC Members tend to be best at! We believe that working together as a community is hugely beneficial. No one organization can solve the digital preservation challenge alone. Community involvement as articulated in this section of DPC RAM includes both being able to access information shared by others, and at the higher levels, being able to share your own experiences for the benefit of others. 

“By getting to the basic level of RAM and beyond you are just making your job easier. You are learning new things. You are having your questions answered. This stuff is essential - it can only help you, and it should be part of your work to engage with the community” - Kieran O’Leary, National Library of Ireland

Tips

• If there is not a culture of community engagement within your organization, you may need to do some advocacy work to sell the benefits and ensure that time (and funding) is allocated to network and engage with others. Being able to attend events and read conference papers, blogs, Twitter threads in work time is an important aspect of staying up to date with an evolving field.

• Try and include some objectives relating to community in your annual objectives or plan for continuing professional development. Keeping up to date with the field of digital preservation and sharing your own work are important and should be flagged up as such with your managers.

• Make sure you can articulate the tangible benefits of engaging with the digital preservation community - can you demonstrate you are applying the learnings, following up on the contacts or improving the reputation of your organization?

• There is a large digital preservation community on X (formerly Twitter) and many knowledgeable people out there who may be able to help answer any questions you have. William Kilbride’s #ff Follow Friday is a good place to start if you are not sure who to follow. If you want DPC staff to help amplify a question you may have or some work you would like to promote, do let us know.

• Think about who else within your organization could benefit from community engagement. If it is just you, that is fine, but the impact might be greater if you shared the knowledge and opportunities with your colleagues.

• You may feel you don’t (yet) have much to share with the community but that’s OK. Listening and asking questions will help move the conversation along for others. You may also find you can become an expert in one specific area of digital preservation - by working with one obscure file format and reporting back on what you have discovered. This will make things easier for others who come to work with this file format in the future.

• Take advantage of the increase in online events (rather than face-to-face) to expand and broaden the community that you work with. The move to online working has to a certain extent increased the size of the community you can network with and you are no longer restricted to chatting to those only in your country or region.

• The DPC organizes regular events, such as drop-in DPConnect sessions and monthly DPClinics which are open to anyone interested in digital preservation. Details of forthcoming and previous events are available on the DPC's Events page.

• Think about how you can contribute to the digital preservation community. Even if you are new to the field you can play a valuable role in moving our collective knowledge forward. Perhaps you could

  • Submit file format information to PRONOM 

  • Add a useful tool to COPTR: Community Owned Digital Preservation Tool Registry (or update an existing entry)

  • Submit a workflow to COW: Community Owned Workflows

  • Blog about how you have used DPC RAM in your organization. We have a number of helpful case studies here but would love to add to it!

• DPC Members are in the ideal position to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of the wider community:

  • If you are struggling to work out who can help you with a particular issue or who is working in a particular field, do contact us. We might be able to connect you with another community member who we think can help. Further information on getting help and advice can be found here.

  • The DPC can also facilitate useful conversations with digital preservation solution providers through our Supporter Programme.

  • Full Members of the DPC are able to benefit from a small amount of direct support from DPC staff - find out more here. 

  • If you would like to share information about your own work, do let us know. There is an open invitation to blog on the DPC blogging platform, and we may also have other ideas about promoting your work to a wider audience at a forthcoming webinar or event.

  • Look out for a call for new DPC sub-committee members annually (in January). A DPC sub-committee exists for each strategic area of the DPC and meetings are held quarterly. Sub-committee members get an insight into current and ongoing work at the DPC and steer the DPC’s activities. Joining a sub-committee is a great way to find out what is going on and become more closely involved with the community.

  • The DPC-DISCUSSION mailing list is a platform to network with other members of the DPC. It can be useful if you want to share your work or ask a question and is also a great way of keeping in touch with publications, events and other updates from the DPC. Contact us if you want to be added to this list. 

  • The DPC has a number of task forces and working groups that provide opportunities to discuss and share experiences with other members of the community. Find out more and get involved here.

Helpful resources

• DPC events - the DPC runs numerous webinars, workshops, and events over the course of the year. Members can access these events at no cost. In particular Digital Preservationists Anonymous is a great event that allows Members to chat informally about things that haven’t gone to plan and to share their experiences and lessons learned with others. #DPConnect is an informal networking opportunity every Friday that is open to the whole community and is a great way to get started, ask questions and make a few contacts. Keep an eye on our events programme for more information.

• Communities - there are various relevant communities you may want to engage with or become an active part of, for example the Digital Curation Centre, NDSA, Australasia Preserves, the Open Preservation Foundation, content specific user groups, software or system specific user groups (BitCurator Consortium) (and of course the DPC!). Many of these communities have mailing lists you can join. 

• World Digital Preservation Day - held on the first Thursday of November every year, this is the perfect opportunity to shout about your digital preservation work and also to find out what the rest of the community is up to. Make sure you set aside some time to plan some advocacy and outreach activities of your own and perhaps even more time to absorb all the content from the wider community. 

• Digital Preservation Awards - this is the ultimate platform to promote and share the good work you have done or simply to sit back and find out about the progress that has been made by others within the community.

• Digipres Commons - this site details an array of collaborative approaches and community driven resources for digital preservation. 

• Get help with digital preservation - there is a large community of digital preservation experts out there, but how can you get help? The DPC has some advice here.

Case studies

• On Gardening and Digital Preservation… A year of reflection and better engagement - Garth Stewart of the National Records of Scotland reflects on a year of virtual connections to the wider community 

• Leaning on community resources to build audiovisual transfer capacity at the Borthwick - Mark Hayden from the Borthwick Institute for Archive talks about how community resources have helped them move forward with audiovisual transfer workflows

• Starting with 3D Data: A 3D Data Book Sprint - a great example from the University of Bristol showing how a small community collaboration can produce a resource that can benefit the wider digital preservation community.  

• Community is at the heart of iPres - this blog post from Brendan Power of Trinity College Library Dublin highlights the value of conferences for engaging with the wider digital preservation community. 

• Tapping the (Open) Source – No Time To Wait 2022 - in this blog post, Nigel Bryant from the University of Bristol summarizes some highlights from the No Time To Wait 2022 symposium and talks about the value of meeting this audiovisual community face to face.  

Introduction

This is one of the areas of RAM that it is easiest to progress with. It is slightly self-referential, in that the act of carrying out an assessment using DPC RAM, selecting target levels and devising a plan for moving forward, actually helps you reach a certain level of this section. DPC Members are also able to benefit from the opportunity to benchmark with others on an annual basis.

“Deciding where to start was definitely the biggest challenge with continuous improvement - DPC RAM has helped with prioritizing. It has also demonstrated the value of our work because other people within the library who perhaps don’t know so much about digital preservation can understand numbers that change on a spreadsheet and see where you're progressing. It has made digital preservation a bit more visible for staff in our department and beyond.” - Laura Peaurt, University of Nottingham

Tips

• Consider what other certification or maturity modeling frameworks you might use. DPC RAM is a good place to start but other models (for example the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation, DLF Levels of Born Digital Access and CoreTrustSeal) may also be used.

• Remember that assessment and benchmarking is best carried out as a continuous process not a one-off exercise. DPC recommends that its Members carry out an annual DPC RAM assessment to check in on progress and reset goals.

• Create a forward plan for improvement and consider what time frame it makes most sense to work to. Moving up the levels of DPC RAM is typically not a quick and easy task so creating a 5 year plan may be more realistic than expecting substantial progress in one year.

• Remember that demonstrable progress with DPC RAM or another framework can be a useful way of showing the value of digital preservation work and encouraging buy-in from colleagues and managers. 

• Recognise that it might not be realistic to work on all sections of RAM at once. Good forward planning should allow you to prioritize and focus on one or two areas. Having an agreed forward plan in place will also give you the authority and backing to explain why you are not moving forward in other lower priority areas.

• DPC Members are encouraged to share a DPC RAM assessment with the DPC annually and can make use of benchmarking information from across the membership. All members are also entitled to help with their RAM assessments from the DPC. Find out more about how the DPC uses RAM with its Members.

• Create a forward plan for improvement and consider what time frame it makes most sense to work to.  A template based on DPC RAM can be used for this purpose. Moving up the levels of DPC RAM is typically not a quick and easy task so creating a 5 year plan may be more realistic than expecting substantial progress in one year.

Helpful resources

• DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) - this maturity model from the DPC is a helpful tool for encouraging continuous improvement in all areas of digital preservation.

• NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation - a quick, simple and effective method for measuring digital preservation capabilities. It focuses specifically on the technical aspects of digital preservation.

• DLF Levels of Born Digital Access - a set of actionable recommendations that individual institutions can consider implementing to establish access to born digital collections. 

• CoreTrustSeal - a certification standard for digital preservation. Applications for CoreTrustSeal are peer reviewed. 

• ISO16363:2012 - Space data and information transfer systems — Audit and certification of trustworthy digital repositories - a rigorous certification standard for digital repositories which is based heavily on the OAIS Reference Model. 

• DPC RAM template for a forward plan – the DPC provides a template that can be used to develop a forward plan based on gaps highlighted through a DPC RAM assessment. Use and adapt this template to meet the needs of your organization.

Case studies

• Applying for CoreTrustSeal: Part 1 - Lee Hibberd from the National Library of Scotland describes the first half of their journey to gain CoreTrustSeal certification and some of the benefits they have already seen.

• DPC RAM case studies - there are several case studies on the DPC blog showing how practitioners have used DPC RAM for self assessment and to check in on progress. 

• A long, arduous journey to the starting line The EU Publications Office discusses and celebrates some milestones and talks about improvements that they will make going forward (including plans for ISO16363 certification). 

• Building and Sustaining a Digital Preservation Program at NARA - Elizabeth England and Leslie Johnston describe a gap analysis that was carried out at NARA to establish areas for improvement in their digital preservation program.

• A Decade of Trustworthy Digital Repository Certification: Yet There Was One - this paper from iPres 2022 by Jessica Tieman, David Walls and Lisa LaPlant describes the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s approach to certification, using both ISO16363 and CoreTrustSeal 

• Going for Gold or Good Enough? Observations on three years of benchmarking with DPC RAM - this paper from iPres 2022 by Jenny Mitcham and Paul Wheatley discusses learnings from working with the digital preservation community with the DPC RAM model over the last three years 

Introduction

This section of DPC RAM is as much about people and relationship building as it is about technology and systems. It is also about having access to digital preservation tools and having appropriate support to use them. A low score for this section can pose a barrier for moving forward with other elements of DPC RAM, particularly the service capabilities (sections G-K) so time spent on this section is always time well spent.

“Focus on your own unique needs when procuring a system … There is a lot of generic functionality that probably all systems would have and I think it is best if you can focus on what’s unique to you - for example if there are other systems you need to integrate with or specific metadata requirements you have.” - Laura Peaurt, University of Nottingham

Tips

• Build relationships with IT colleagues and system owners. If they know who you are and what you are trying to achieve they will be more amenable to helping you reach your goals.

• Present digital preservation as a novel challenge to IT colleagues. Much IT work is routine and you have the opportunity to get them enthused and engaged with something that is not a solved problem.

• Invite involvement from IT colleagues when procuring a digital preservation system. They will be better able to help if onboard from the start.

• Where IT staff are involved in procuring and configuring a digital preservation system, try to ensure that this is seen as an ongoing commitment rather than a project with an end point. Particularly where local integrations are needed, this work will be an ongoing concern whenever upgrades of either system occur. Similarly, if taking an open source approach to digital preservation, recognise that a considerable amount of support will be needed from local IT colleagues to make this work.

• Share your DPC RAM assessment with IT colleagues and invite comments and feedback. Better still, involve them in a collaborative assessment. This will enable them to see digital preservation as a shared challenge and understand where their input might be needed.

• Try and get a seat at the table when new IT systems that will hold data or records with long term value are being procured. Ensure that digital preservation considerations are kept in mind. The DPC's IT System Procurement guide can be a good resource for this.

• Create a list of IT systems within your organization that contain valuable digital content that may have long term value. 

• Consider whether digital preservation can be aligned with a wider IT project or initiative, for example around digital transformation or cloud services. It may be easier to get buy-in for digital preservation work if it aligns with other IT priorities.

• Remember that it may take substantial effort just to maintain a particular level of RAM for this section - a single IT upgrade can easily lead to disrupted digital preservation workflows, and if the necessary support isn’t available to fix any issues that emerge, this can rapidly lead to an inability to continue to ingest and process digital content.

• Although IT security issues are outside the scope of DPC RAM, it is always worth remembering that adopting sound digital preservation practices might help mitigate the consequences of a future cybersecurity breech.

Helpful resources

• ‘How to Talk to IT about Digital Preservation’ - an article by Scott Prater of the University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Digital Preservation Procurement Toolkit - a guide to procuring digital preservation systems and services. Includes a set of guiding principles on how to approach the procurement process. Much of the content is based on tips from members that we have collated over the years. Also includes:

  • Digital preservation system requirements - a set of standard digital preservation requirements which could be used as a starting point by those who are setting out to procure a digital preservation system.

  • Digital preservation requirements for procuring IT systems - a helpful set of digital preservation principles and requirements that could be fed into system procurement of any IT system that may contain records for retention beyond the life of the system itself.

• Cyber Security and Digital Preservation - this DPC event held in December 2022 contains a wealth of information about working with colleagues in IT. In particular David Clipsham’s presentation on Working constructively with corporate IT and Jeanne Kramer-Smyth’s tips on winning tech allies may be helpful (DPC Members login to see event recordings) 

• Good Migrations Checklist - a helpful checklist from the NDSA of things to think about before and after moving digital materials and metadata forward to new digital preservation systems/infrastructures

• “So I’ve finally procured a digital preservation system, now what?”: Takeaways from DPC Supporter panel - a blog post from Jenny Mitcham of the DPC which summarises advice from DPC supporters on how to get started with a new digital preservation system.

Case studies

• 'Digital Preservation and Enterprise Architecture Collaboration at the University of Melbourne: A Meeting of Mindsets' - a paper from iPRES2019 in which Jaye Weatherburn, Lyle Winton and Sean Turner from the University of Melbourne describe how to involve enterprise systems architects in the challenge of digital preservation: 

• Two Approaches to Protecting Bits - Jeanne Kramer-Smyth from the World Bank Group provided a helpful case study at the DPC’s Cyber Security and Digital Preservation event  (DPC Members login to see event recordings)  

• Dream big and ‘do different’: Digital Preservation Comes to Norfolk - Helen Busby from the University of East Anglia talks about first steps in implementing a digital preservation system

• The first six months... - Helen Dafter from the Postal Museum details the first six months of having a new digital preservation system and the steps that have been taken so far to move it towards business as usual

Introduction

Many organizations already have solid processes in place for the legal management of analogue content which can be translated into the digital realm. However additional thought will need to be given to areas specific to digital content.

“Context is key and for the type of service that we are, there is a level at which it is appropriate for us as archivists to use our judgement as informed by our archival education and professional experience …but then there is a further level at which it is completely appropriate for us to look outside the immediate team for guidance. That guidance exists and is accessible and ultimately forms part of our organization.” - Laura Giles, University of Hull

Tips

• Understand existing processes that are in place within your organization and consider whether they are applicable for digital content.

• Consider who within your organization can help you. Cross team collaboration with legal, information governance and IT security teams may be helpful. It is not feasible for digital archivists to be experts in everything, but it is important to be able to access appropriate advice when you need it.

• Review the existing agreements that you have with donors and depositors.

• Ensure the right questions are asked when collecting new digital content.

• Make use of licences (such as Creative Commons) and ensure end-users understand what they can and cannot do with the content.

• Make sure you know where relevant documentation is stored, and ensure it can be effectively maintained and retrieved - a legal agreement hidden in an email thread is not going to be very helpful going forward!

• You may be able to amend template donor and depositor agreements provided by other organizations (see below).

• Taking the time to gradually build trusted relationships is often key for an archive working with indigenous or other community groups. DPC RAM places the establishment of “Trusted and collaborative relationships” at the Optimized level for this very reason.

• Be respectful of any material that has cultural restrictions (e.g. only technicians of the appropriate gender should be involved in handling or processing). Consider cultural competency training for staff.

Helpful resources

• Digital Preservation Handbook: Legal Compliance - this section of the Digital Preservation Handbook includes relevant information and resources relating to legal issues

• Intellectual Property Rights for Digital Preservation - a DPC Technology Watch Report by Andrew Charlesworth.

• Creative Commons licences - a helpful and easy to use set of licences that permit certain uses of digital content.

• Sample deposit agreements - some organizations make sample agreements and other documentation available for others to access. See for example CANMORE

• Legal and Ethical Considerations for Born-Digital Access - a comprehensive report on this topic from DLF which focuses on considerations for practitioners working in the US. 

• Naomi Korn Associates - training provided on a variety of topics such as copyright, GDPR and a range of free resources, checklists and templates (UK based)

• Icepops (International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars) - this is an annual international event and presentations from previous conferences are available online. 

• CILIP training - information, news and events relevant to copyright aimed at the UK library sector.

• Code of Ethics for the Digital Repository of Ireland (2023) – a short statement of the ethical principles adopted by the DRI which may provide a useful model.

• Exploring ethical considerations for providing access to digital heritage collections – a DPC guidance note by Lisa Smith, Jenny Wood, Greg Oakes, and Madalyn Grant (2021)

• CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance – drafted at the International Data Week and Research Data Alliance Plenary in November 2018, to complement the existing FAIR principles.

• Tandanya Declaration – developed by the International Council on Archives (ICA) to promote “…a respectful and ethical relationship between archival institutions and Indigenous communities”.

• Indigenous Archives Collective – “Indigenous archives collective position statement on the right of reply to indigenous knowledges and information held in archives”. 

• Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services – developed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Library, Information and Resource Network (ATSILIRN). 

• Culturally Safe Libraries: Working With Indigenous Collections – developed by the National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA), 2018.

• Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Protocol – produced by the Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Government, Australia (2023).

Case studies

• Rethinking our RAM - Legal basis - Laura Giles blogs about the University of Hull's approach to the Legal Basis section of RAM.

• Curating Collections as Data – A blog post from the Digital Repository of Ireland from June 2023 which details a conversation with Mikala Narlock, Director of the Data Curation Network (DCN) and Beth Knazook, DRI’s Research Data Project Manager and discusses among other things how curation provides an opportunity to make data more ethical.

• “Using FAIR with CARE” and other thoughts on sharing cultural heritage images as data in South Africa - Another blog post from the Digital Repository of Ireland (September 2023), this time a conversation with Josiline Chigwada, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of South Africa and Beth Knazook, DRI’s Research Data Project Manager on how the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance can be used alongside the FAIR principles for data curation.

• “Community Archives at the Digital Repository of Ireland” – a paper by Lisa Griffith and Kevin Long, presented at iPRES 2023.

Introduction

Both high level strategic documentation and practical procedures and workflows are required to implement digital preservation successfully. 

“When writing a preservation policy, don’t start from scratch, use what is out there already. For us this included the DPC Preservation Policy Toolkit (focusing in particular on the required elements) and digital preservation policies from other organizations which were available online. The time we have taken to write our policy has been well spent - it demonstrates why we are doing what we are doing.” -  Samantha Case, Barcardi

Tips

• Writing a digital preservation policy is one of the key requirements for moving up the levels of DPC RAM and can be a valuable advocacy exercise in its own right. As described in the DPC’s Preservation Policy Toolkit, writing a policy generally involves many different stakeholders and will need to be read and signed off at a high level. 

• Writing a policy can be a daunting task, so start off small and simple. As a minimum you should explain what digital content you are keeping and why. Write a short draft to circulate and get reactions early on. It is important to get colleagues engaged and talking and feedback received will help to frame the direction of travel.

• Start with an aspirational policy - this can be helpful in pushing things forward and reaching agreement of what you should be doing (even if the reality is quite different).

• Schedule in regular reviews of your policy, particularly if it is aspirational in the first instance. As your digital preservation programme moves from theory to practice, check back on your policy frequently to make sure it accurately reflects what you are doing.

• If your organization needs persuading that a digital preservation policy is needed, consider what drivers you can use to change their mind - for example a preservation policy may be needed if your organization would like to apply for digital preservation certification or accreditation in the future.

• Consider what other policies your organization has that relate to digital preservation. Can you build on these or further develop them?

• Consider how you will communicate any policy, strategy or procedure that is created. Consider who needs to know about it and what they need to know. It may be helpful to have a clear idea of any action or behaviour change you might be looking for. It is one thing to encourage people to read and understand a document, but a more impactful outcome is to encourage them to take steps to put it into action. 

• Document any digital preservation procedures and workflows that are in place and ensure staff are aware of them as appropriate.

Helpful resources

• Digital Preservation Policy Toolkit - this toolkit from the DPC is designed to help you write your own digital preservation policy.

• DPC Member support - DPC staff are available to provide a brief review of digital preservation policy documents from DPC Members. Full Members of the DPC are entitled to a higher level of support and this may involve more detailed review and feedback of any policy, strategy or procedure documentation or other tasks as appropriate.

• Understanding User Needs - this Technology Watch Guidance Note by Sharon McMeekin provides advice and guidance on methodologies for understanding user needs. An understanding of user needs should inform the development of policy and procedure documentation within an organization.

• DOCUMENT THIS. And this. And this - a blog post from Amy Rudersdorf on the importance of documentation.

• Devising Your Digital Preservation Policy: Learnings from the Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge (DPOC) project - slides from a preservation policy event held in December 2018.

• Write the docs - this resource is focused specifically on software documentation, and provides some useful tips on writing technical documentation. 

• Community Owned Workflows (COW) - this resource provides a forum for sharing your digital preservation workflows with others in the digital preservation community and for exploring workflows that have been shared by others.

• OSSArcFlow Guide to Documenting Born-Digital Archival Workflows - this helpful resource describes the process of creating text-based documentation and diagrams to describe digital preservation workflows.

• Exploring ethical considerations for providing access to digital heritage collections - this Technology Watch Guidance Note by Lisa Smith, Jenny Wood, Greg Oakes and Madalyn Grant covers some of the ethical issues to consider when planning for access to digital content

Case studies

• Digital Preservation Policy Toolkit: University of Bristol Case Study - Emma Hancox provides a case study of a collaborative approach to preservation policy development

• Developing a Digital Preservation Programme at the British Geological Survey - Jaana Pinnick touches on the importance of developing a policy as part of a wider programme of digital preservation activities

• Reviving Digital Preservation Policies at National Library of New Zealand - Martin Gengenbach focuses on the important, but sometimes underrated, activity of policy revision

• Understanding user needs: a case study from the National Library of Scotland - this Technology Watch Guidance Note from Chris Fleet provides a good example of how user feedback can provide information to inform decisions around preservation and access.

• ADS Deaccession policy – this policy from the Archaeology Data Service includes a nice example of how a request to return data would be handled (see section 7 – complete removal of a dataset). Olivia Foster of the ADS gave a presentation on this topic at the DPClinic on 23^rd February 2024, which DPC Members can access via this link.

Introduction

If you are just starting out in digital preservation and only have time to move forward in one area, organizational viability is probably the area you should tackle first as the requirements within this section set the foundations for further digital preservation work, and help ensure that you have the necessary support, staffing, skills and budget to make progress. 

“Be visible! Take any opportunity you can in your organizations to talk about your digital collections and digital preservation! I mean...any opportunity!” - Fabiana Barticioti, London School of Economics and Political Science

Tips

• Recruit a member of staff with a remit to lead on digital preservation. Simply having a member of staff in place with a job title of Digital Preservation Manager (or similar) will be an important step in the right direction. Once in post, they will be able to help advocate for digital preservation and also to share the knowledge more widely across the organization. Employing a consultant to carry out a specific set of tasks related to digital preservation may be appropriate in some situations, but consider whether it would be more beneficial to invest in staff, thus ensuring that the knowledge and experience is retained within the organization.

• Get senior managers on board with digital preservation, but be aware that advocacy takes time and isn’t a one off activity. Long periods of internal advocacy may be required to raise awareness and lead to change. 

• Find a senior champion for digital preservation. Is there someone at a senior level who understands what you are trying to do and is supportive of the work? Keep them briefed on your progress and be honest with them when things aren’t going to plan. It is important they understand what is really happening if they are to support you.

• Consider what levels of digital preservation knowledge would be appropriate for colleagues. It is not sustainable to have only one member of staff within an organization who understands digital preservation, so you might want to recommend a training course to give colleagues a good overview of digital preservation. Consider supplementing this with your own internal training or knowledge sharing event to focus on local policies and practices. 

• If designing your own training session for colleagues, consider the most appropriate delivery method to enable better engagement. If you have staff in your organization whose primary focus is on training, ask their advice.

• Allow people to learn at a speed they are comfortable with and consider how to build their confidence. Recognise that digital preservation may be seen as a daunting challenge and represent an unwelcome change to some of your colleagues who are more familiar with working with analogue content. 

• Consider what messages about digital preservation can be shared with those who are creating or managing digital content within your organization (for example researchers or records managers). Are there things that can be done now to ensure the content is easier to preserve when it eventually comes to the digital archive? 

• Try and get digital preservation mentioned in your organization’s strategy (or even mission statement). If it isn’t referenced directly, find a useful hook for it to hang on - think about how digital preservation is relevant to, or supports your organization’s mission.

• Get digital preservation on your organization’s risk register. If this risk is owned (and understood) by a senior member of staff this may be hugely beneficial in moving digital preservation forward.

• Consider whether a business case for digital preservation is needed to secure the necessary staffing, budget and/or infrastructure to move forward with digital preservation. Invest time and effort in writing a business case if appropriate and keep it close to hand as work progresses (or perhaps even when work stalls).

• Share your RAM assessment with colleagues and senior managers within your organization. A copy of the assessment can be used to kick start a conversation about where you are now and what areas would benefit from improvement.

 Helpful resources

• Advocacy training - the DPC runs annual training on advocacy for digital preservation. Topics covered include how to align advocacy messages with organizational priorities, how to identify the audiences and how to demonstrate ways of identifying the value and relevance of digital preservation. Keep an eye out for our next course on our Events page, or check back on the slides from a previous event here. 

• DPC RAM - use the results of your self-assessment as an advocacy and communication tool. Share your assessment with colleagues and discuss the gaps and areas for improvement. DPC Members also have access to anonymised benchmarking information which is collated by the DPC annually. 

• Business Case Toolkit - a comprehensive toolkit to help practitioners build a business case to fund digital preservation activities.This is an important tool for internal advocacy with senior managers. Note also that DPC RAM results could fit neatly into a business case as a way of visualizing where you are and where you would like to be.

• Executive Guide on Digital Preservation - this guide is designed to help you to communicate the value of digital preservation with senior executives and budget holders. It includes downloadable PowerPoint and Word templates to update with the statements that meet your own organizational priorities.

• Career Development Fund - this funding opportunity (for DPC Members) offers an on-going programme of grants for relevant training and development opportunities. Funding for self identified training opportunities is also available.

• Novice to Know-How - this online training course aims to provide beginners with the skills required to develop and implement simple digital preservation workflows within their organization.

• Competency Framework and Audit Toolkit - this resource can be used to demonstrate where there are gaps in capabilities and skill sets and provide evidence for the need for additional staff capacity and training.

• The ‘Bit List’ of Endangered Digital Species - this resource documents the categories of digital content that are considered by the community to be at greatest risk of loss. Use it to find out if there is content in the ‘Bit List’ that is of importance to your organization. Referencing the ‘Bit List’ when advocating for digital preservation with colleagues may increase the impact of your communications.

• DiAGRAM tool - this tool created by The National Archives UK and the University of Warwick is designed to quantify risk and inform decision making. It can be used to provide evidence for the impact of different actions to mitigate digital preservation risk and in this way can help influence and inform budget holders and decision makers within an organization.

• DPC Member support - Full Members of the DPC are able to benefit from tailored support from DPC staff. This can take any number of different forms, but could for example focus on advocacy or training.

 Case studies

• Being brave and making connections at the University of Hull - Laura Giles blogs about how she shoe-horns digital preservation and data management into conversations

• Developing a Digital Preservation Training Plan at NARA - a great example of building internal awareness of digital preservation from Leslie Johnson and Elizabeth England of NARA

• Building and Sustaining a Digital Preservation Program at NARA - Elizabeth England and Leslie Johnston blog about their agency-wide Digital Preservation Group that helps to guide digital preservation activities at NARA and also acknowledge how digital preservation effort is distributed across different teams

• Sharing the load - Helen Dafter discusses how she has created knowledge sharing opportunities around digital preservation within the Postal Museum 

• Using the Digital Preservation Competency Framework While Building a New Program - John Dewees and Pauline Schwartzman blog about how they used the DPC's Competency Framework at the University of Rochester Libraries.

• What's new DPC CAT? - Helen Dafter reports on how she used the DPC Competency Audit Toolkit alongside the Rapid Assessment Model at the Postal Museum to highlight gaps and staff development needs.

• Level Up! Lessons Learned from Six Years of Collaborative Technical Skills Development - In this article in The American Archivist, Max Eckard, Elizabeth Gadelha and Mike Shallcross share their experiences with, and lessons learned from, a series of four collaborative technical skills development initiatives

This section of the Procurement Toolkit proposes the requirements that should be considered when procuring an IT system (for example, an EDRMS, DAMS or GIS), that may ultimately contain at least some records or digital content that need to be retained beyond the life of the system.

The aim of this work is to provide typical requirements relating to digital preservation that practitioners can contribute to procurement exercises for non-digital preservation systems at their organization. These requirements relate primarily to ensuring that digital content can be extracted from the IT system in question, along with necessary metadata, in a form that can be reused without dependence on that system. Justification is included to show why these requirements are important. Ultimately this work is about ensuring that IT systems purchased today have a digital content exit strategy and do not lock-in data when the system reaches end of life. Note that these requirements may need to be adapted to your local context. 

• Digital preservation requirements for procuring IT systems (download )

A summary of hints and tips on writing business cases and selling your proposal to your organization. Use this to ensure you create a positive and convincing business case.

• Prepare. Before you start your business case, make sure you know exactly what you are asking for, then do your groundwork to introduce the idea before making a formal proposal. This can involve activities like running workshops with a view to gaining staff agreement on areas such as scope, benefits and values. This will help you pitch your business case at the right level (budget, resource, language etc.) as well as gaining engagement and buy-in for the work with key stakeholders.

• Know your audience. Understand the audience to whom you will be making your business case and tailor your language and messages to suit them personally, whilst also appealing to organizational drivers! Also consider institutional sensitivities (e.g. other organizations they compare themselves with) which could act as a motivator or a deterrent, as well as any external contexts (e.g. the 'digital shift' post covid) which might influence decision making.

• Use the right language. Talking or writing about digital preservation can involve the use of some technical terms. Try to talk about digital preservation in ways that your target audience can relate to. (e.g. Digital preservation is 'gold standard' information management) and avoid scaring people off with jargon. Consider whether you should even use the term "digital preservation" at all. Discover how your audience describes it and mirror their terminology.

• Keep it focused and relevant. For those unfamiliar with digital preservation, it may seem intangible, long term and even a bit boring(!) when, in fact, digital preservation can support all parts of a business process. Therefore, use careful definitions which are relevant to your audience. It can be helpful to make use of diagrams or visualizations for expressing complex information and you should aim to describe issues in a way that will have the broadest appeal. If you discover that a single large business case is not within scope, consider breaking your business case into multiple projects which may have a better chance of being accepted.

• Network. Once you know your audience, take every opportunity before, during and on completion of the business case to make your case personally to key people. Your aim is to win over key decision makers before your business case is even formally assessed. If you are not able to communicate with the decision makers directly, it can help to get other members of senior management on board to convey the message for you. And, make sure anyone mentioned in the business case knows about it in advance of reading it!

• Stay positive. Take care to focus on what will change or be better as a result of the investment you are asking for; rather than trying to sell "digital preservation" itself. Equally, try and gain a balance between the benefits and the risks, don't be too alarmist or focus too much on a negative vision e.g. 'digital black hole'. And carefully explain context to avoid the accusation that you are creating a problem to solve.

• Make your costing realistic. Despite all of your best efforts to point out the benefits of your digital preservation activity, for many organizations the most critical factor is the COST. This needs to be acceptable to the organization. Do your preparation to make sure you are making realistic demands.

• Use evidence. Make sure you can back up any claims that you make using examples from within your organization, case studies from other organizations, authoritative sources and hard data.

• Learn from others. Work with (or at least consult with) someone who has worked on other successful business cases at your institution. Once you have drafted your business case, test it on them before you submit it, and be open to suggestions and feedback.

• Practice. Part of the business case submission process is likely to include a presentation. Use clear concise slides and practice your pitch on your experienced business case colleague (see tip above) to make sure your messages are clear and understandable. 

• Play the long game. Be prepared to re-submit (or for it to take a long time before you gain approval). Your business case might be perfectly good, but there may be other competing priorities at the time you submit. In many cases you will be able to resubmit your business case again, and you can use the additional time to do further research and refinements, but be aware that some organizations limit the number of submissions. Do your homework to find this out.

A list of additional guidance materials relating to business cases. Use this as a reference point for further reading on the subject.

• What has been found to be the most effective alternate term for “digital preservation” when communicating beyond the library and archives community? (Stack Exchange). A discussion on what alternative terms to “digital preservation” have been most effective.

• Writing a Good Business Case (The Royal College of Radiologists). Guidance on business case writing from outside of the digital preservation field.

• Digital Preservation Series. Part 1: Making the Case (APAC). Section 7 outlines key steps for writing a business case including suggested document headings.

• A Guide to Making the Business Case for Digital Preservation (Preservica). All round guidance on making the case for digital preservation.

• Producing a business case for digital preservation and long-term access. A how-to-guide for heritage and higher education (Arkivum). Guidance on making the case, with suggested benefits.

This section provides guidance on the content that will be useful to include in your business case, but it will likely need to be adapted to the structure used in your organization’s template.

Executive Summary

A concise and persuasive summary of the rationale for undertaking the proposed digital preservation work.

The Executive Summary highlights key elements of the longer business case, ensuring that the reader is made aware of the high-level aims and benefits of the work as well as outlining who is requesting the work. An effective Executive Summary should present this information in a clear and concise manner. 

The Executive Summary is often called the most important part of a business case, so time invested in crafting and reviewing this section will be well spent. The Executive Summary sets the tone and should entice the reader to actively engage with the rest of the business case. When writing an Executive Summary, keep the intended audience in mind at all times. Consider what background knowledge the reader already has and what you will need to explain to get your message across. 

Further considerations:

• Before submitting, do a final check to ensure that your Executive Summary accurately reflects the full business case. There should be no surprises for readers when they scrutinize the rest of the proposal. It may be easier to write the Executive Summary after writing the other sections of the business case. 

• Developing an elevator pitch can help you to identify the main messages which you want to convey in the Executive Summary. See these example pitches from digital preservation practitioners at the SPRUCE mashup events.

• You may also want to create a separate slide deck of the Executive Summary section that can be used when presenting to stakeholders. 

Problem Statement

A description of the issue, challenge or situation that the business case seeks to address.

The problem statement should outline the challenging aspects of the current situation and address why it is important that change is enacted (this will also feature in the section on risks). It should be written with the perspectives and concerns of those key stakeholders, and/or from the point of view of the beneficiaries of whatever investment is being proposed. To generate ideas for this section, it may be beneficial to brainstorm with a small group of engaged colleagues or stakeholders (4-6 people) with each person writing down what they perceive to be the problems that need addressing. This can then be used to identify common themes or forms of wording. 

The focus should be on existing and demonstrable problems. Ideally the problems should be quantifiable and it should be possible to describe a timeframe over which they have been occurring. It should be possible to identify:

• Who is experiencing the problem? 

• What is the nature of the problem?

• Where is the problem occurring?

• When (for how long) has it been problematic?

• Why is it a problem (what impact is it having)?

At this point, it is not necessary to recommend a solution. This will be introduced and considered in the options section below.

Background and Context

The organizational context that provides a relevant background and supporting evidence to your business case.

The readers of your business case may have a partial, out of date, or incorrect understanding of the relevant context and background to the business case – it may be useful to include this information to ensure everyone is working from the same page. This is also an opportunity to demonstrate that you have properly researched and understood your organizational setting before asking for investment and change. The Understand your digital preservation readiness and early stages described in the Step-by-step guide to building a business case provide thoughts on how to research and capture useful contextual information.

A background and context section may include:

• A description of current digital preservation capabilities. This may be qualitative or quantitative, or both. It could include details around staffing, systems, training, membership of professional organizations, accreditation and certification.

• Work to date. This may include a description of previous relevant business cases, projects, policies, strategies, delivery of training and guidance, implementation of systems and workflows. Acknowledge what has worked well, what has not, and lessons learned. Highlight where investments in this area have seen good returns.

• Scope of digital content. Explain at a high level what digital content is in scope and a summary of key characteristics. It may also be useful to explain what is not in scope, and why. This section could take the form of an appended table or diagram. Consider including:

  • what digital content is in scope for discussion

  • how it has changed and is projected to change over time (e.g. in format, scale, complexity)

  • what systems are used to create, manage and store the content

  • who creates it

  • who owns it - the "custodian"

  • how long it must be kept for

  • any relevant governance in place

• Summary of a maturity modeling exercise. Identify your organization’s digital preservation maturity using the DPC Rapid Assessment Model. This data can also be used as a baseline for establishing or measuring changes in capacity or maturity post implementation of the business case.

• Explain how digital preservation relates to your existing mission, strategy, and policy documents. This will help to demonstrate that you understand your organization’s responsibilities, requirements and drivers. Establishing that these implicitly or explicitly require an improvement in digital preservation capacity/maturity will be useful in making your case.

• Identification of key stakeholders. Describe the key staff, committees/groups, users/customers, and other stakeholders who will be affected by your business case. This could include digital preservation specialists, IT staff, project management staff, procurement staff, steering groups, creators and users of digital content, and partner institutions. This could take the form of a diagram or table.

• Describe headline disasters, risks, and missed opportunities relating to digital content at your organization. The risks and missed opportunities may have already been identified by colleagues, external audits, customers/users, and other stakeholders. These could include previous data loss, reputational damage or legal damage due to poor digital preservation practice at your institution. There may also be examples where good digital preservation practice has previously “saved the day”, minimized the impact of a risk or issue, or protected your organization’s reputation. Note any changes in the external context of your digital preservation work, such as changing stakeholder expectations, societal shifts, or national and international developments. 

Options

A careful assessment of the potential approaches for addressing the problem statement, with a recommendation for the best option.

The amount of detail to include will depend on the size of the proposed project and the level of information typically expected within a business case at your organization. Some organizations use an explicit methodology for options appraisal, which may for example involve assessing implementation costs, ongoing costs and savings resulting from the investment. Some costs and benefits might be easier to identify than others (e.g. financial savings vs. a cultural change within the organization) but it is helpful to describe how any costs and benefits will be measured and assessed. As a minimum it will be useful to outline different costed options and provide evidence as to why one of the options has been selected as the best way forward. Costs will be addressed in more detail in subsequent sections, but it might be useful to provide broad cost categories of low, medium or high investment for each option. If appropriate, more detail could be provided as outlined below:

• A high level description of requirements for the work that the business case seeks to address. These requirements will act as the criteria upon which the different options can be evaluated.

• A description of the different options that are to be considered for solving the problem statement. This should include a "Do nothing" option that can be compared with the proposed solution upon which your business case is focused. 

• An assessment of the different options against the requirements. Costs, risks and benefits of your preferred option will be described in more detail below, but this is a useful opportunity to show what benefits your preferred option offers compared to inaction and/or any other alternative options.

• A recommendation for which option is to be pursued. An honest and fair evaluation of the options, based upon clear evidence, will increase the chances of your business case being accepted. This analysis might be covered in a dedicated section. See Cost/benefit analysis, below.

Implementation Plan

A description of the activities that will be undertaken if your business case is successful.

The necessity for an implementation plan will greatly depend on the format of your business case and the level of detail required by stakeholders. A plan can simply be an outline of the activities (which will ensure your proposal is implemented successfully) through to an in depth description of execution such as specific milestones, deadlines and targets. Your background research should reveal what level of detail is expected for a business case of the scope you are considering at your organization. You may find that other aspects of your business case (such as the resourcing/ financial analysis) will be important in supporting your business case plan.  Note that if your organization uses a particular project planning process or standard, it may be important to align your implementation plan with it.

Your implementation plan may include:

• Outline of Scope. Providing initial detail of the scope which is encompassed by your business case plan will help you with the entire planning process. Providing this information will also make it easier for stakeholders to understand what your business case will and will not achieve and how it will link with your aims and objectives. Larger projects will potentially change as they progress from start to finish. This could be the result of a change in circumstances, budget, availability of resources etc. Ensuring that the scope of your implementation plan has been outlined in the first instance will help to avoid scope creep (where one or more aspects of a project require additional time, resource or budget due to poor planning). However, it can also make it easier to ensure that informed and necessary changes can be approved by the relevant stakeholders if needed. Outlining the scope of your business case does not need to be daunting, you simply need to set out the boundaries.

• Objectives. It is important to clearly outline what your business case will achieve. Including a brief set of objectives can make it clear to stakeholders what will be accomplished. These objectives should be measurable. Below are a few ways in which your objectives could be presented:

  • SMART Objectives. ‘SMART’ stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. These prompts can help you to develop attainable goals and objectives for your business case plan. 

  • Targets. Details of the business case targets would include a set of fixed goals which would be reached during the course of implementing your business case.

  • Milestones. Objectives can be broken down into a number of milestones, which are a specific point in time that is used to measure the progress of your implementation.

  • Timeline. Presenting the main objectives of your plan on a timeline will allow you to show key dates alongside the relevant target. A timeline can be more easy to digest, as long as you do not have a particularly complex plan (in which case something like a Gantt chart would be more beneficial in helping you to lay out each aspect individually).

• Dependencies and Assumptions. Dependencies relate to other organizational activities, elements of infrastructure, or other factors external to the activities described in the business case but on which success of the plan is dependent. Assumptions refer to elements of the plan where there are expectations about issues such as decisions that will be made, elements of work that will be carried out, or resources that will be made available. The dependencies and assumptions made during the planning stages can be closely linked to the risks of a business case. If there are heavy assumptions made in the early stages of a plan, this can lead to issues during execution. For this reason, it is important to consider how these decisions made can affect the viability of the business case as a whole.

• Roles and Responsibilities. Providing a list of roles and responsibilities will help you to identify the resourcing levels needed in order for your business case to be implemented successfully. These will depend on the number of people who are involved with executing your plan and what is expected of each person. A list of roles accompanied by bullet points describing the activities each role is responsible for can be an easy way to show this information. Defining roles and responsibilities at an early stage can help to avoid confusion when executing the plan. You may find that roles and responsibilities may develop and change multiple times during the planning stages, however, you should be able to avoid adding to or changing them during the execution of your plan.

• Project Governance. Consideration of project governance should accompany planning of your roles and responsibilities. The two aspects are closely linked and it is important to think about how each of the roles should feed into the other and whether there is a need for a decision making hierarchy, escalation routes, a steering group, or similar.

• Fix Forward Planning. Thinking about a "fix forward" for your business case is crucial in ensuring that whatever you implement can be updated, utilized and maintained following the initial launch or implementation. Whatever you plan to do, this may cause changes in basal costs for your organization. Any changes to this need to be discussed in your risks or benefits. You should aim to avoid a situation where time and resources are spent implementing a new system or process only for it to fall into disuse. For example, if a business case seeks to establish a new digital preservation system, then considerations should be made for:

  • Use. Who will use the new system? Have they been trained to a competent level such that the system will be used and updated? If this has not been considered, it would be beneficial to check this before submitting the plan or budget estimate.

  • Resourcing. Who will keep it updated? Does this require the creation of a new permanent position within the organisation?

  • Maintenance. Will there be any ongoing or regular costs associated with maintaining the system that you have implemented? If so, this would need to be factored into the basic running costs of the organisation.

  • Licencing/leasing. This is detailed further in the Resourcing/Financial Analysis section and could be related to licensing of software or leasing of specific equipment etc.

  • Exit strategy. Planning for the end of life for a new system will prevent costly digital preservation issues. See the DPC Digital Preservation Procurement Toolkit.

Benefits

The benefits that will be delivered by the work outlined in your Implementation Plan.

The benefits section of your business case should identify and describe the financial and non-financial benefits of your digital preservation proposal that will justify the investment. A benefit is a measurable outcome of an action or decision that contributes towards reaching one or more of your organization’s objectives. Benefits can be described or categorized by the timescale with which they will be realized.

By researching and understanding your organization’s Strategic Plan, you can make sure the benefits you include align with the organization’s objectives and selling points or with issues that will strike a chord with the reviewers of your case. They could include:

• Accountability and transparency

• Authenticity of records and holdings

• Business continuity/management of operational risk

• Compliance with legal regulations, best practice guidelines and specifications

• Cost efficiencies and/or avoidance of penalties

• Enabling research

• Information security

• Integrity and operation of systems and/or technology

• Managing and maintaining a good reputation

• Increased revenue

• Safeguarding the corporate or cultural memory

• Service improvements

• Reduced carbon footprint

• Meeting funder requirements

• Protection of past investments

The next section of this toolkit, Example benefits and risks for typical digital preservation business cases, provides benefit and risk statements for the following scenarios:

• Developing a digital preservation strategy/roadmap

• Increasing staffing complement

• Repository migration to cloud

• Procuring a new digital preservation system

For further examples of selling points to include in your business case benefits, see:

• The Executive Guide on Digital Preservation with benefit statements which relate to different organization types.

• The Keeping Research Data Safe project, Benefits Framework and Benefits Analysis Toolkit.

• Preservica’s A Guide to Making the Business Case for Digital Preservation.

• Arkivum’s Producing a business case for digital preservation and long-term access.

If you have used a maturity modeling tool like the DPC Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) earlier in your Business Case to demonstrate the need for investment, you can use the stages or steps within this to develop a Benefits Realization Plan which identifies how and when the benefits will begin to be realized.

Risks

The risks associated with the execution of the implementation plan if the case is funded and the risks faced by the organization if the case is not funded.

Identifying and understanding risks should be an important part of any organizational activity. Mitigating the risks identified through proactive management reduces the likelihood of them occurring and/or reduces their impact when issues do occur. As it is a process that is commonly used across many types of activities, it is a useful tool for sharing information in a format familiar to people working across different disciplines or areas of an organization. An assessment of the risks faced is, therefore, an essential part of any business case as it helps those evaluating the business case to understand the potential impact of the work even if they are unfamiliar with the details of digital preservation.

There are two groups of risk that you may wish to discuss within your business case:

1. Risks associated with the execution of the Implementation plan, should the business case be funded.

2. Risks faced by the organization if the business case is not funded.

A description of the risks that would be faced during the execution of the options set out in the business case will allow those assessing the business case to compare the potential negative impacts of the work with the benefits that will be accrued. The risks included here should align with the implementation plan as described in a previous section. The risks covered might include problems occurring that would cause delays, how staffing changes might affect progress, or technological risks faced.

Setting out the risks faced by an organization if the business case is not funded can be a particularly persuasive part of making your case if the risks faced are significant (e.g. they affect revenue streams or may result in the failure to meet legal obligations) or your organization is particularly risk averse (e.g. the risk of data loss might result in harm to a organization’s reputation which could in turn affect funding). If you plan to include such risks, it is important to ensure the risks described are realistic and relevant and to avoid an approach that might be described as “scare-mongering”. Note that it may be more suitable to include these kinds of risks as “dis-benefits” in the benefits section of your business case. 

Depending on the organization or project in question the business case may only need high-level risks to be identified, whereas others may require a full, detailed risk assessment to be carried out. A more in depth risk assessment exercise might identify the likelihood and impact of each identified risk. Scoring and multiplying together the likelihood and impact will give a raw risk score. Risk mitigation activities may then reduce these scores, providing an indication of most significant risks for further consideration.

Resourcing/Financial Analysis

A budget for implementing the activity outlined in the Implementation Plan.

Completing a project within the proposed budget is often regarded as one of the key success factors. So it is important to ensure that any financial information included in your business case is as accurate as possible, and that any proposed costs can be explained and justified.

Before you begin, make sure you know who is financially sponsoring your proposal and who will control any financial decisions about the project. Setting a clear budget will also help manage stakeholder expectations, and identify when key expenditure is likely to take place (this is especially important in organizations where resources are shared between several activities that are taking place simultaneously).

Developing the budget for your business plan is likely to be an iterative process, and you should be prepared to seek out advice from colleagues if possible. You should also be aware of any organizational policies or constraints on how proposals should be costed, when and by whom financial figures need to be approved and what are acceptable levels of contingencies.

Your budget should be comprehensive and realistic. The activity described in your Implementation Plan may depend upon resources from elsewhere in your organization. This should be identified and costed, even if direct funding is not being sought as part of your proposal. This will reduce the possibility of these resources being over-allocated and impacting on the success of your project.

Typical costs to include are:

• Staff. Include costs for each person/role (make sure you follow your organization’s guidelines on costing salaries, for example, how any salary increments during the lifetime of the project will be reflected). Find out if new roles, consultancy services, or contractors need to be costed for, according to particular metrics. For fixed-term contracts you may need to factor-in the cost of redundancy payments.

• Equipment. If your proposal will require the purchase of new equipment, seek advice on any organizational guidelines around procurement. Find out how you should identify capital expenditure, maintenance costs, depreciation etc.

• Materials/consumables. Include the costs of anything which will be consumed by the work of your project.

• Licences and fees. The costs of acquiring software and any support/maintenance fees throughout the lifetime of the project. If these costs will continue beyond the timeframe of your proposal this should be made clear.

• Training. Include the cost of any additional training that staff might need to undertake the work outlined in your proposal. You may also want to include provision for any training that your project will need to deliver/offer to others to ensure that the outputs of the work can be successfully adopted.

• Travel. Include estimates for the full travel and subsistence costs that might be incurred by staff during the lifetime of the project. Organizational guidelines and constraints may apply to levels of funding that are permitted for certain activities.

• Overheads. Find out if your organization will expect to see a contribution towards any overhead costs (e.g. administration costs, IT, facilities) and how these should be shown in your budget. Some organizations apply a predetermined percentage amount for overheads.

• Contingency. Most organizations will have clear guidelines on acceptable levels of contingency funding (e.g. to take into account any unidentified work or currency fluctuations). If you need to diverge from these guidelines, perhaps because you have identified particular risk factors, this should be clearly justified.

Bear in mind that the list above is not exhaustive. Looking at previous (successful!) business cases and consulting with colleagues within your organization can be extremely helpful in making sure that you have covered all the right costs in a way that is likely to be acceptable to the decision-makers within your organization.

Typical reasons for budgets being judged inadequate, or for shortfalls occurring during the lifetime of your project include:

• Poor estimates of the resources required for the work, or lack of justification for the costs that have been included.

• Missing costs. Again, consulting with colleagues and learning from previous proposals and projects is the best way to ensure that you do not overlook any costs which might impact the work or overall success of your proposal.

• Failing to take into account resources that are shared, or dependencies on other parts of the organization.

Consideration should also be made regarding any ongoing costs which would result from implementing your business case. As already mentioned, there may be ongoing licencing or lease costs which extend past the deadline of your execution plan. These costs would most likely arise from implementing new software or equipment which is acquired on a lease basis. Other costs which may carry over include additional staffing required to update or maintain a new system or the need for additional support from existing IT teams for example. If this is the case, then it should be outlined in the business case so that stakeholders and decision makers can be made aware. 

The authors of some business cases choose to include a short statement of the “costs of inaction”, reflecting the impact on the organization if the work outlined in the proposal is not undertaken. This can be a persuasive strategy, but risks the accusation that any costs outlined in this way are merely hypothetical – so if you decide to include a section along these lines make sure that as far as possible you can justify any claims that you make (e.g. by pointing to evidence of previous costs incurred as a result of inaction).

Cost/Benefit Analysis

An analysis of the benefits of each option minus the costs, indicating the best option to implement.

The purpose of including a cost/benefits analysis section is to demonstrate that sufficient consideration has been given either to alternative ways forward, or to taking no action at all. In previous sections, the costs and resourcing for the proposal have been set out, and the likely benefits have been itemized. From an organizational point of view, what this does not make clear are the opportunity costs. In other words, what alternative benefits might be realized, and what opportunities could be exploited, if the same level of focus and investment that the business case proposes is deployed elsewhere.

It is unlikely in a digital preservation business case that a simple calculation is possible whereby the costs of action can be set against a quantifiable financial figure for the benefits that may be realized. Calculating the cost of a digital preservation system implementation project should be possible, but understanding all of the ongoing recurring costs is very challenging. Meaningfully comparing those costs with other organizations is extremely difficult. Quantifying tangible benefits is hard, but applying metrics to intangible benefits is impossible.

A balanced narrative is required that acknowledges some of the complexities of coming to a decision. There may well be more indirect costs involved for the organization that are not listed in the section above, such as the effort required across the organization to engage with digital preservation, or the overhead required for successful collaboration. This can be offset with the tangible and intangible benefits, but also some further elaboration of how the proposal positions and enables the organization to succeed.

A cost/benefit analysis should consider how strategically or tactically important it is for the organization to take the steps proposed. It is a chance to reflect, reiterate and summarize the overall short, medium and long-term value of the proposed activity.