The AIDA toolkit: Assessing Institutional Digital Assets

Ed Pinsent, ULCC

Aims of the module

• What is AIDA?

• How it can help you

• How it’s relevant to repository management

• How you can use it

• An exercise

• Background, other tools, future outcomes

What AIDA is

• Maturity model• Audit tool• Paper exercise• Assesses the Institution

– Not the assets, file formats, software or repository• Looks at Organisation, Technology and Resources• Gets you to do the work• Shows strengths and weaknesses• Examines many areas• Encourages collaboration between disciplines• Helps with asset management

(and preservation)

Relevance to this Course

• AIDA can…– Measure your ability to manage digital content

effectively– Show how good you are sustaining continued

access– Be directly relevant to managing a repository

(access, sharing, and usage)– Helps you find out where you are – Help you decide what to do next

Basis of AIDA

• Based on the Cornell maturity model for describing institutional readiness and capabilities for digital preservation

• Five Stages and Three Legs

AIDA scope – organisation leg

• Policies and mission statement

• Sharing and continuity

• Audit and monitoring

• Metadata management

• Contractual agreements

• IPR and rights management

• Disaster planning

AIDA scope – technology leg

• IT environment / infrastructure• Appropriate technologies in place• Storage, backup, security mechanisms• Integrity, data corruption• Obsolescence, format management• Critical processes• Security of environment• Institutional repository management

AIDA scope – resources leg

• Business planning

• Resource allocation

• Risk analysis

• Business transparency

• Sustainability of funding

• Staff skills, numbers and training

Methodology

• Profile your organisation• Look at the stages• Identify where you think you are• Position yourself• Do it at two levels• Record your decisions• Tick boxes• Submit form for scoring

AIDA weighted scorecard

Overall score

0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0

Resources

Technology

Organisation

Le

gs

Stages

Your score

Control score

Planning

• Scope the AIDA exercise carefully, especially for the second tier– You can target one project, one department,

or one collection

• Agree roles of contributors and collaborators early on

• Don't treat it as an audit• Don't spend too long looking for

documentary evidence

Execution

• Start to evolve agreement about marking the Stages (people may have different perceptions)

• Don't assess or inventory individual assets or data - that's the job of DAF!

• Get collaborators in the frame. IT input is essential!

• Record your decisions methodically• Keep all notes of interviews, deliberations, etc.

even if not used entered in the AIDA submission (they may tell you something useful now and later)

Exercise

• Divide into four teams• One element from each leg, relating to one activity• Agree on the scope of what you will assess - work on a

single Institution (real or imaginary)• Assess the capacity for this activity• Expected results:

– A score for the element in each leg and at each level (6 scores in all)

– Explain why you arrived at that decision– Roles / job titles of people consulted– Outline evidentiary sources that might help

Exercise feedback

• Was it a straightforward exercise?

• Could you understand what the process was trying to do?

• Did AIDA omit anything important?

• Were you able to 'recognise' yourself in the indicators?

• Were any of the elements not a good fit for what you are actually doing?

What the test cases said

• Why not just do it as an interview?• Doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know already• Should be better integrated as a toolkit• Terminology confusing• Difficult to apply to digital assets in practice• Not all questions relate to digital assets• Digital assets shouldn’t be considered in isolation from

other assets• Lot of repetition• Jumps between stages are not consistent• A subjective process• Needs several people to arrive at a decision

How AIDA was built

1. An Audit Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories. This is the document originally produced by RLG-NARA, which later became Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist

2. The Cornell University Survey of Institutional Readiness

3. Summary of RLG-OCLC Framework Component Characteristics

4. Network of Expertise in long-term STORage (NESTOR)

DRAMBORA and DAF

• DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment)– Requires much self-insight and preparedness– Sees everything as risk management– Predicated on TDR– A bit complex

• DAF (Data Audit Framework)– Concerned with one asset type (research data)– Aims to improve management– Helps to measure value of research data

AIDA Self-Help Guide

• How to move forward• Implies there is no moving forward to

Stage 1 (Acknowledge)• Advice and guidelines• Not yet released• Not yet validated• A toolkit of toolkits• Tools aren’t always software

AIDA wiki

• http://aida.da.ulcc.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Asset management is more than preservation

• Storage issues, de-duplication

• Stop wasting money on creating (and storing) expensive assets we don't need

• Share these useful assets which we do need

• Throw away those assets which have expired

• Make money from our assets

Future use

• AIDA could work for any organisation with digital assets

• Could work alongside records management

• Results may help you make a case for more resource

Links / contact

• AIDA website http://aida.jiscinvolve.org/

• Toolkithttp://aida.jiscinvolve.org/toolkit/

• Ed Pinsent e.pinsent@ulcc.ac.uk