Getting “Digi” with itat the Digital Archives

Adam Jansen

Deputy State Archivist

Washington State Archives

What is ‘Archiving’ in the Electronic Age?

Protecting machine readable records of enduring legal, historical or fiscal value from loss, alteration, deterioration and technological obsolescence in a environment independent from that which produced the record.

Mission of the Digital Archives

• Collect electronic records of enduring legal, historical or fiscal value

• Maintain these records in perpetuity in a useable state for the good of the public

• Make records that are discloseable accessible to the public

Public Records

As defined in RCW 40.14

ANY records that have been made by or received by any agency of the state of Washington in connection with the transaction of public business

Redefining Public• Avg over 650 researchers per day• Avg length of stay over 6 minutes• 6% .gov - 4% .edu - 1% .org• 13% came from Internet Search (Google,

MSN, Yahoo)• Researchers from 131 foreign countriesResearchers from:Canada, US Military, Romania, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, UK,

Netherlands, Russia, Thailand, Portugal, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Indonesia, Singapore, Sweden, Mexico, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Hungary, Brazil, Norway, Columbia, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, China, Yugoslavia, Philippines, Spain, South Korea, Denmark, Oman, Pakistan, South Africa, Jamaica, Switzerland

Records and Informationor, Why we do what we do

If - Information is power…

And - Records are storage of information

Then – Records must be preserved for future generations

Why?

The foundation of democracy in America is government accountability to the people

What are the challenges (or why is it so hard!?!?!?)

• Socio-political– Resistance to change– Inability to keep pace

• Technology– Ever upwards and onwards– Little thought on looking back

New Federal Mandates to Manage Certain Electronic Records

As electronic records become more integrated into society, producers of those records will be held to higher standards of conduct

• Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)

• Gramm-Leach-Billey Act of 1999

• Patriot Act of 2001

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

• Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA)

• More mandates to come

Records must be managed and destroyed methodically in normal course of business

Shifting Media• Historically records were stored on paper, kept in filing

cabinets– When the cabinet was full, records sent to file room

• Now records stored electronically on computers– When the computer is ‘full’ – add more hard drives

Basic skills to manage and maintain records has been lost, replaced by infinite storage

So the question becomes… who takes care of the

records, and do they have the knowledge?

Why a Digital Archives?• Comply with statutory & regulatory mandates.

– The Law requires preservation of certain public records – it doesn’t

specify whether those records are paper or electronic. All records

must be given the same care.

• Avoid loss of legal & historical records

– As technology changes, the older media (5 ¼” floppy disks, for

instance) become harder to read.

• Preserve rare and ‘at-risk’ paper records

• Centralize Records

– Centralization means uniformity in maintenance

– ‘Trained professionals’ serve as caretakers

• Improved access for citizens

– By centralizing historical electronic records in one location, ‘one-stop

shopping’ will provide the information quicker and easier

What the Digital Archives is not

• Not mass storage for active business applications & data

• Not remote back-up for state & local government networks & data

The Digital Archives will:

• Preserve electronic records with long-term legal, historical and/or fiscal significance

• Assure platform-neutral retrieval 50, 100, or more years from now

• Provide security back-up of certain permanent electronic legal records (courts, vital records, land records, etc.)

8 Requirements for Preservation• Readable• Retrievable• Intelligible• Encapsulated• Reconstructible• Identifiable• Understandable• Authentic

* From Authentic Electronic Records by Charles Dollar

}Hardware

} File Format

} Content Management

Hardware• File Room of the 21st century• Capacity and Speed double every 18 months• Many choices

– Tape– Optical– Hard Drives

First Immutable Law of Digital Archiving

“What hardware you use today will be obsolete within four years”

Archival Software Formats

• Native• ASCII• TIF• PDF/A• XML

Whenever possible seek the open standard solution!

Remember WordStar and DBase II ???

Content Management• Essential to maintain control of the information

explosion• Allows hard coded rules and information

exchange• BUT still requires a strong knowledge,

understanding and implementation of basic records management

Second Immutable Law of Digital Archiving:

“Data is Data, a Record is a Record, It is the content that drives retention, not the media”

The Digital Archives Experience

Standards Driven

• Open Archival Information System – ISO Standard for electronic records archiving

• DOD 5015.2 – ISO Standard for Records Management Applications

• InterPARES – International effort to define requirements for e-archiving

Protection from ObsolescenceDigital Archives Multi-pronged approach:

Stored as BLOBs in DB with metadata:• Maintain native format• Create open file format version• Render XML formatted version, wrapped

• Acquire original hardware and software

Ingestion Process• MUST be flexible

– No Mandate and 3300 agencies

• Microsoft BizTalk 2004

• Transforms, adds metadata based on business rules

• Creates ‘deep storage’ copy wrapping original file in XML, with Hash

• Creates ‘web’ version of original file

Data Ingestion

• How we use it– Design XML/Flat-file schemas for all incoming

data– Use “Maps” to convert from external formats

to internal formats– Build Orchestrations to move the data from

the data files to the database– Image conversion– Generate Deep Storage XML file

fnamefirstname

Fst_namefirst

06/07/05

Jun-07-0507-Jun-05

06/07/2005

Predefined

Pipelines

First_Name

06/07/2005

Deep Storage XML SchemaRecord Common

•Who

•What

•When

•Where

•Original File

•‘web’ file

•Security

•Fixity

Vital Records• Type

Birth• Date of

• Father, Mother

• Hospital

Data Security

• Encrypted SSH FTP transmission

• Issue Digital Certificate

• Verify IP and computer information

• MD5 Hash on all original files

• Copy of FTP on tape prior to ingestion

• DB backups on tape

• Record Level Security for confidential Info

Record Level Security• Restrict records at item, field or series

level

• Restrict to individual, dept, office or global

• Uses authenticated login to reveal fields

• Anonymous users see ‘Restricted’

Digital Archives New Projects

Capturing the Web

• Web pages are how we ‘do business’

• Universally accessible to public, 24x7

• Information repository

• Captures history, business of agency

• Important to ‘archive’ news, forms

Web Archiving• Custom Built Solution• Multiple streams, Assist with Archiving• Stores all web content in database, full text

searchable• Allows predefining of internal fragments, levels,

maximum file size, secure authentication• Web Services allows use of current architecture

for retrieval

• Cannot capture ‘deep web’ content

Email Archiving

• Permanent, executive level correspondence

• Sent as .pst, .msg

• Store ALL email, even the ‘junk’

• Transfer from proprietary into database

• Full text search

• Attachments stored separately, migratable

Maps and Photos

• Stores oversized maps and high resolution photos

• Converts images to compressed format for viewing over the web

• Provides thumbnails for searching

• Uses LoC metadata indexing standards

• Search on title, description

• E-commerce to order photo-reproductions

Third Immutable Law

“Anything that you do today, will need major overhaul in two years”

Technology and industry changing at unprecedented rates… But, more records are ‘lost’ every day!

– Key is to be flexible and attack with forethought

Digital Archives @ Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Washington

Questions?Questions?

Adam JansenAdam JansenDeputy State ArchivistDeputy State Archivistajansen@secstate.wa.govajansen@secstate.wa.gov