E-ARK: Harmonising pan-European archival processes to ensure continuous access to e-government records and information

There has been a widespread shift to electronic ways of conducting business that has transformed existing relationships between governments, governments and citizens, and governments and business. This move to electronic interactions is supported by new busi- ness systems that streamline and automate transactions, enable integration of information and service delivery and enhance collaboration between participants. Such changes in the way government business is carried out have significant implications for how public ad- ministrations document their activities and make that information available to both gov- ernment and citizens to aid future decision making and accountability. Because digital rec- ords are particularly vulnerable to technological obsolescence and media decay, ensuring future access to the information created by government is a challenging issue for all juris- dictions. This paper focus on the E-ARK project, a European endeavour to standardise and create tools for consistently transferring digital records between business systems and digi- tal archives. The E-ARK approach has the potential to simplify and make consistent diverse approaches to solving the issue of how to transfer information between the ICT systems in use in government, and the archives charged with the responsibility for ongoing and man- agement of the information considered to be of long-term significance.This work was co-funded by KEEP SOLUTIONS, LDA

European Cultural Preservation in a Changing Legislative Landscape

The main part of this report covers the requirements of Directive 95/46/EC, which have been implemented by Member States in a variety of legislative instruments since the adoption of the Directive in 1995. These are set alongside the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) proposals currently under discussion between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament

An Initial Maturity Model for Information Governance

This report details the maturity model for information governance which will be used to assess the E-ARK Project use cases. The method that guides the application of this maturity model will then be detailed in deliverable 7.5, A Maturity Model consists of a number of entities, including “maturity levels” (often six) which are, from the lowest to the highest, (0) Non Existent, (1) Initial, (2) Basic, (3) Intermediate, (4) Advanced and (5) Optimizing. Each process can have its own Maturity Model, which expresses quantitatively the maturity level of an organization regarding a certain process. A Maturity Model provides also a way for organizations to see clearly what they must accomplish in order to pass to the next maturity level. The use of maturity models is wide spread and accepted, both in industry and academia. There are numerous maturity models, at least one for each of the most trending topics in such areas as Information Technology or Information Systems. Maturity Models are widely used and accepted because of their simplicity and effectiveness. They can easily help understanding the current level of maturity of a certain aspect in a meaningful way, so that stakeholders can clearly identify strengths and weaknesses requiring improvement, and thus prioritise what must be done in order to reach a higher level. This can be used to show the outcomes that will result from that effort, enabling stakeholders to decide if the outcomes justify the effort

Archival Information Package (AIP) Pilot Specification

This report presents the E-ARK AIP format specification as it will be used by the pilots (implementations in pilot organizations). The deliverable is a follow-up version of E-ARK deliverable D4.2. The report describes the structure, metadata, and physical container format of the E-ARK AIP, a container which is the result of converting an E-ARK Submission Information Package (SIP) into the E-ARK Archival Information Package (AIP). The conversion will be implemented in the Integrated Platform as part of the component earkweb

Technical documentation of the infrastructure supporting the E-ARK Faceted Query Interface and Application Programming Interface (API)

The E-ARK Work package 6 (WP6) - Archival Storage, Services, and Integration, is developing a scalable open-source reference implementation for ingesting, searching, and accessing E-ARK information packages. A major task in this context is the development of a faceted query interface for searching archived content which can be utilized by end-users as well as external software components. The reference implementation aims at providing an archiving and search prototype that is flexible in regard to the type and volume of the ingested payloads. The reference implementation is designed to scale from a single host out to a cluster deployment by employing technologies like Apache Hadoop, Solr, and the Lily repository, supporting different types of input data ranging from text-based files and structured records to office documents and binary content. This report provides technical documentation of the infrastructure supporting the E-ARK Faceted Query Interface and Application Programming Interface (API). It provides a description of the underlying software components utilized for the development of the search functionality of the E-ARK reference implementation and discusses the required interactions to work as an integrated solution. Furthermore, technical documentation of the developed software and system configuration is provided. The document describes also methods to customize the faceted query interface and provides examples for its utilization

The E-ARK Dissemination Strategy:Year 1

This Project Dissemination Strategy sets out the strategy for achieving the communications objectives for Project E-ARK. The over-riding principle behind this Plan is to raise awareness of and promote access to the archiving tools and knowledge base produced by the project to encourage adoption by both end-users and archiving systems manufacturer

Archival Information Package (AIP) Draft Specification

This report builds on the overview of existing solutions for AIPs given in D4.1. It describes a blueprint for the structure of an AIP format following from the state of the art described there. As an AIP has a potentially unlimited life span, however, we augment the presentation of the format of the physical file representing the AIP by a discussion of how such an AIP may keep an unchanged identity, while its physical representation may change over time. A “Pan-European AIP format” is supposed to handle essentially each type of digital content a user may want it to contain. It is obviously impossible, to describe in a format document, how content not yet known will be handled. The document, therefore, also contains a chapter on the way in which this format is embedded into the technical workflow within which an AIP exists

A Knowledge Centre Service Aggregator Prototype

This report details the Knowledge Centre Prototype - an aggregator of services developed under the scope of the E-ARK Project and available at http://kc.dlmforum.eu. These services aim to provide a comprehensive, but simple and easily understood, set of services that allow to understand, contribute and validate Information Governance good practices