digital continuity | The National Archives blog

Posts tagged 'digital continuity'

Wed Apr

2013

It’s not just about the technology…

Posted by Jo Moorshead in Managing information

Dear Information Agony Aunt

Help! I’ve recently been given the task of managing digital continuity within my organisation. The thing is I haven’t got a clue where to start. My organisation holds 15+ years’ worth of digital information across a range of different systems (some current and some legacy). I don’t think we have officially deleted anything. Isn’t there a whizzy piece of software that can solve our problems for us?

Your agony aunt at work (catalogue reference DEFE 1/322)

Confused

Dear Confused

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard someone say that software could solve all their ills, I’d be a very rich agony aunt! The bad news is that I am not aware of such a system.

The good news is that there are a number of steps that you can take to start getting a handle on this within your organisation:

Continue reading »

Fri Mar

2013

Dastardly Digital Dilemmas: 6) Heresy

Posted by Mark Merifield in Managing information

OK, let’s get it out there.

I don’t want to manage information.

I really don’t.

And I’m sure many of you out there will agree with me.

I support government in managing information and ensuring the historical record, so I’m an information creator and user and an information professional. I exist in a world of perpetual contradiction…

I’m busy. I spend my days creating, processing, using, sharing, storing and talking information. My team has a way of working, a shared space to capture our work, and delivery channels through which to share it. I know what we’re working on, where it is and what it means to us. It works. For us. Sometimes I want to work on the move, drafting blog posts like this on a mobile device on a train. Sometimes I want remote access to our network so I can access the information my team are working on.

Fri Feb

2013

Dastardly Digital Dilemmas: 5) Losing your supplier

Posted by Mark Merifield in Managing information, Technology and innovation

Server room On our Digital Continuity training course we cover a situation where the supplier of your records management system withdraws support. Yesterday the administrators of 2e2, who supply the Wisdom EDRM product, announced that that business operation had ceased following an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer.

So what do you do in such circumstances? The Information Management Services team here at The National Archives have the following advice drawn from our Digital Continuity guidance: Continue reading »

Fri Jan

2013

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon and information management

Posted by Rob Johnson in Managing information

Information management is all about understanding connections.

Web browsing, search engines, metadata, hyperlinks, embedded content, attachments, tag clouds – data rarely exists in isolation anymore, and it’s the job of information managers to ensure that during times of change information assets retain their context and accessibility.

Bacon to information management in six steps (ref. CO 1069/295/88)

Which brings me to the ‘six degrees of separation’: the concept that you are only ever six steps of ‘connection’ from anyone else in the world. A recent TV advert plays on this idea by linking their 4G mobile phone company to actor Kevin Bacon in under 30 seconds, using a series of tenuous connections.

This, of course, gave me an idea… if Kevin Bacon could link himself to mobile phones, can I link him to good digital information management in six steps? And what ‘cautionary tales’ can I bring in along the way?

Let’s find out:

Continue reading »

Fri Nov

2012

The drive less shared

Posted by Tim Callister in Managing information

Despite over a decade in helping users understand information management and getting them to accept that shaping information in the way you need to use it can actually make them happier… it doesn’t matter. The only time I’ve ever seen users not default to a shared drive is if they are less than ten feet from a printer.

Applications have become richer in their functionality and what they can interoperate with to deliver ever more developed workflows and case management. There are tools which provide an entire platform that can let you do just about anything with information, from web publishing to day-to-day processing.

Still it doesn’t matter; shared drives trump everything, all the time, everywhere in the world. This blog post isn’t big enough to explore all the reasons why users do this (and there are many). But what I do have space for is this; two challenges – one for us and one for developers.

Challenge 1 – Us

Turning off the shared drive! ¹ I mean the complete shut down of the NTFS – no corporate drive and no user drives… nothing. Could it be done without risking information management and digital continuity? Would users spontaneously combust?

Notes:

1. This is a hypothetical challenge. Please don’t go to your ICT department demanding the shared drive be shut off this afternoon! ^

Wed Nov

2012

Dastardly Digital Dilemmas: 4) Perfect circle(s)

Posted by Mark Merifield in Managing information, Technology and innovation

We have the answer.

The answer to how to effectively manage your digital information.

And the answer is in the questions.

Three questions.

It’s that easy.

Seriously.

OK, bear with me a moment. At its most basic level, managing digital information is about making the appropriate decisions as to what level of time, resource and cost you’re going to spend to ensure you have the right technology supporting the right information in delivering the right business requirements. Once you know what that is, you can apply the people you need to work together using the tools they need to deliver the outcomes you need. See? Easy. And that’s the message at the heart of our rather excellent Digital Continuity training course.

Thu Jul

2012

An introduction to the PRONOM contribution model and the Signature Developer role

Posted by David Clipsham in Technology and innovation

My name is David Clipsham and I have been employed as the File Format Signature Developer for a month, having previously worked as Customer Service Manager for the cross-government social collaboration tool, Civil Pages. My role is to improve the coverage of The National Archives’ PRONOM file format registry. The internal and external signature information contained in the PRONOM registry is utilised by our file format identification tool DROID, which is used to identify file formats so we can make informed decisions about the long term preservation of digital records.

The PRONOM contribution model

My day is typically spent researching obscure and not-so-obscure file formats, picking through the internal code of each format and identifying the key characteristics that make the file format what it is, as described in Ross Spencer’s recent blog post. I then recreate the key byte sequences, test them against sample files and upload them to PRONOM, ready for our bi-monthly signature release.

How do I focus my research?

Fri May

2012