DPC Competency Audit Toolkit - Digital Preservation Coalition

The DPC Competency Audit Toolkit (DPC CAT) has been developed as a companion resource to the DPC Competency Framework. DPC CAT provides users with practical, structured processes for assessing the skill levels of those undertaking digital preservation work at their organization, to assess current skills relating to the competency areas and skill elements presented in the Competency Framework.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL COMPETENCY AUDIT TOOLKIT (ZIP)

What's in the DPC CAT?

The full DPC Competency Audit Toolkit is composed of a guide and two workbooks—one for individual assessment activities and one for an organizational audit—which can be used to conduct different competency assessment activities

Download Individual Resources:

What can I use the DPC CAT for?

The full Toolkit provides guidance and processes to conduct three related competency assessment activities:

An audit of an individual’s current skill levels against those defined by the Competency Framework. This can help with identifying key gaps and facilitate professional development planning.
A comparison of an individual’s role description with the tasks and responsibilities they actually undertake. This can help identify where updates might be required to role descriptions, where workloads may need to be reassessed, and where additional staff or compensation may be required.
An audit of the skills of a group of staff members against the skill levels required to maintain and improve the organization’s digital preservation capabilities. This can identify where skills gaps exist within the organization, highlighting requirements for professional development and/or additional staff members.

The DPC CAT Guide provides step-by-step guidance on how to use accompanying Excel workbooks to undertake the activities listed above. It also includes advice on issues to consider when preparing for these activities, and suggestions for how the information gathered might be used once the assessments are complete.

Relationship to DPC RAM

DPC CAT has been designed explicitly for use with the DPC Rapid Assessment Model (RAM), requiring scores from a DPC RAM assessment to be able to complete an audit at an organizational level. As part of the toolkit, the key skill elements for each of the eleven sections of RAM have been identified as well as the skills levels required to support maturity levels for each section. DPC CAT, therefore, allows organizations to carry out a skills audit where they can input their current RAM maturity levels, and the target levels they aspire to in their next phase of development, and measure these against current skill levels across their staffing complement. For more information, please see the DPC CAT Guide.

Complementary Resources

There is a set of Example Role Descriptions that can be used with DPC CAT to help identify the skills required for different role types and different levels of seniority.

Additional guidance and use cases will be developed by the DPC.

Feedback and Review

The DPC is committed to the ongoing support and development of the Competency Framework and its complementary resources. Regular review and updates of the resources will be carried out. We welcome feedback on all DPC resources and encorporate from the digital preservation community. All feedback recieved will incorporated into the review and update process. To provide feedback on the Competency Framework and resources please use the DPC Competency Framework Feedback Form.

Acknowledgements

Development of the DPC Competency Audit Toolkit has been supported by the Nuclear Decommissiong Authority.

Reuse of DPC Competency Audit Toolkit Content

The Competency Audit Toolkit is made available for use and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. In summary, this means the toolkit can be freely shared and adapted as long as proper attribution is made, that it is for non-commercial purposes, and any resources that remix, transform, or build-upon the content carry the same license allowing reuse.

Attributions for the Competency Audit Toolkit should be as follows: