Enhancing professionalism - progressing the career development sector

Much has changed in the career development sector since the launch of the Careers Profession Task Force report, ‘Towards a Strong Careers Profession’ in 2010. The report made recommendations for enhancing the professionalism of the career sector including the establishment of an overarching professional body, new qualification levels and common professional standards. The Careers Profession Alliance (CPA) and then the Career Development Institute (CDI), launched in April 2013 have striven to facilitate the sector to be stronger and more cohesive by addressing these recommendations. This article explores what was needed, what has been achieved and plans for the future

Professionalism in Careers

This briefing paper sets out the background, evidence and key issues relating to professionalism in careers work in England. The work is produced on behalf of Careers England and the Career Development Institute (CDI), but the paper does not represent the policy of either organisations

Digital Preservation as an Albatross

‘Digital Preservation’ as a concept is an albatross. The complex and somewhat arcane nature of the practice has kept it from being embraced by those that perhaps need it most. Changes in terminology, misunderstandings of meanings and a lack of direct business planning have brought about a state of affairs that has the digital preservation community fighting the problem of technological obsolescence without sustained support from organisations that supposedly need it most. Organisations care about ensuring their continued existence and profitability. Investment is only undertaken after reflection on business cases. In creating a business case most people focus primarily on cost, but there must be a counter-veiling focus on value. There is no point in making an investment unless it has worth to the investor. A good business case will display a strong understanding of the value of information objects that organisations create. Information professionals must ensure that their desire to ensure longevity of information is tied coherently and explicitly to that of the organisation’s future and detail why the digital materials are of value to it. Exploring value in this way allows engagement with senior management as it wraps the need for action in the terminology of their strategic vision and allows for a strong and successful business case to be made

The world is all grown digital.... How shall a man persuade management what to do in such times?

Understanding and communicating the cost and value of digital curation activities has now been recognised by a number of projects and initiatives as a very important factor in ensuring the longterm survival of digital assets. A number of projects have developed costing models for digital preservation but there remains a major problem with information assets (digital or otherwise) in that their value is difficult to express in terms that are readily understood by all the stakeholders, especially those who might fund their preservation. This paper introduces a range of issues concerning information value and business models for sustained funding of digital preservation, with particular reference to the espida Project recently completed at the University of Glasgow. This project has developed a model of information value that builds on the Balanced Scorecard approach to business performance developed by Kaplan and Norton. This model casts information curation as an investment where current and ongoing expenditure is incurred in order to produce future returns, benefiting a range of stakeholders. In this formulation, value is seen as multifaceted and, from the point of view of the individual or organisation funding the curation, explicitly related to the funder’s strategic goals. It also recognises that benefits may only accrue over the long term and that there is a risk that information that is preserved may fail to deliver any return. Examples discussed in the paper concern the establishment of an institutional repository and the establishment of an e-thesis service for an educational institution. It concludes that a deconstruction of benefits of this kind can be more quickly and fully understood even by stakeholders not necessarily expert in the curation field. This facilitates the production of a well-constructed case that clearly articulates information value and the benefit that accrues from its curation, which in turn allows senior management or other funders to make funding decisions based on understandable information: the basic premise of good practice in management. This is a commonly understood idea and one that the espida methodology helps fulfil