Italy’s Central State Archives (ACS) has been looking after the country's most important documents for the last 150 years. To make this precious heritage accessible to future generations, ACS was tasked with building a digital national platform. After looking for solutions both in and outside Italy, ACS found in eArchiving the answers it was looking for.
Italy’s digital preservation strategy
Italy’s archiving responsibilities are shared among the ACS and a provincial State Archives network. The ACS has always enjoyed a special role in preserving historical documents produced by Central State Administrations. In 2008, however, an internal regulation determined that the ACS would be the principal agency in charge of keeping a historical digital archive. In 2019, the ACS was instructed to build a national platform to preserve the Central State Administrations’s digital archives.
Starting from scratch
The ACS started by creating an internal service dedicated to permanent preservation, called the ‘Digital Archive of the Italian State.’ Before that, there was no merged concept for permanent preservation, which tackles a whole unique set of challenges than short and medium-term archiving.
While short and medium-term archiving is simply about saving information on a hard disk, long-term archiving takes constant software and hardware upgrades and system migration and integration.
In the absence of a single, coherent solution for long-term digital archiving, the ACS searched for applicable European standards, specifications, and open-source software. One such initiative is the eArchiving Building Block provided by the European Commission's Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). This digital solution is based on the E-ARK consortium's work, developed by the Open Archival Information System Reference Model (OAIS).
The ACS chose eArchiving because its specifications and open-source software are based on real-life experiences contributed by members of a stable and active community. The Building Block does not impose a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, it provides a simple method to guide the way forward in building a suitable digital archiving solution from modular components.
After participating in the ‘Meet CEF eArchiving’ workshop held in Brussels in December 2019, the ACS decided eArchiving was the best way forward for setting up its initial project.
“Without eArchiving specifications, documentation and methods, the first prototype would have taken the ACS team 3-4 months longer to reach the same result. This is confirmation of the importance of the European Commission and its actions,” says Stefano Vitali, superintendent Italy’s Central State Archives.
Implementation
Contrary to a common misconception, the major challenge in permanent digital preservation is not technological but conceptual and functional.
The ACS did not use the eArchiving digital tools. Instead, they opted to use the specifications in building their own system, which is one option offered. In the platform's prototype, the ACS focused on the middleware component to submit information into the archiving system. This process is also known as data ingestion. They adopted common specifications for making and submitting information packages, and the content information type specifications from Electronic Records Management Systems, such as Share Point:
- Common Specification for Information Packages
- Specification for Submission Information Packages (SIPs)
- Electronic Record Management System-ERMS
Over the course of the project, the ACS team has also taken the opportunity to help further develop eArchiving by contributing back to the community with their own experiences.
In this process, the eArchiving Reference Architecture workgroup provided some valuable insights. During these workgroups, trustworthiness, interoperability, sustainability, and accessibility, were all mentioned as key factors for an effective digital archiving system.
The first component of the ACS digital preservation system: the ingest process
The ACS digital preservation system's prototype component focuses on a specific acquisition type, namely the ‘accession.’ In the Italian juridical context, accession refers to permanently transferring legal and physical custody of the Central State Administrations digital archives to the ACS digital preservation system.
The second characteristic of the ACS prototype concerns the typology of content information, the ‘Electronic file.’
The last essential feature concerns the format of the archival and non-archival digital objects that involved in the ingest process, which could be in the textual format and, of course, in the ‘future-proof’ format (standard de iure, open, non-proprietary, independent of the device, extensible, etc.).
Taking into consideration the circumstances stated above, the ACS ingest process is characterised by the specific high-level ‘entities’ which regard the Agents (organisations and persons that represent them and software program/system), Events, and digital Objects (archival and non-archival).
The central ingest Event is the Data Submission Session by which more SIPs are simultaneously transferred to the ACS digital preservation system; the SIPs that belong to the single Data Submission Session have to contain the electronic files that apply to the same higher archival aggregation (e.g., fonts, series, sub-series). The Data Submission Session and each SIP transfer are recorded into the Data Submission Session Report and the Submission Report. Because of the accession act's importance, the former Report has to be digitally signed by the Producer and the ACS upon reaching a successful validation phase.
The ongoing experimentation will allow the ACS SIP-Version 0.5, which was built adhering to the E-ARK core specifications: e.g., self-consistent, structured into logical and physical components (clearly and uniquely identified and defined), and composed of the archival and non-archival Digital Objects. These Objects have different natures and aims. However, both will have to be subjected to reliable preservation processes that guarantee their long-term accessibility, finding, and reusing to support ACS activity and prove its trustworthiness.
As noted above, the primary archival digital Object is the electronic file that can be articulated into subfiles and composed of digital items. These items can be composed of subitems (primary record and secondary record (s), like attachment, annex, and so on). They must be placed into the folder ‘Representations’ and each item included inside a sub-folder. ‘Representation.’
The non-archival Objects are:
- The documents METS (physical and logical structural map of the SIP), EAD (principally for the logical archival digital Objects description), and PREMIS (logical structural map of the SIP); the latter two must be included in the folder named ‘Metadata.’
- METS, EAD, and PREMIS schemas customised according to the needs of the ACS accession process (. xd), their original schemas (.xml) and, finally, the eventual rendering schemas (.xls); all of these metadata files are in the ‘Schemas’ folder
- It places all the other documentation about the transferred electronic file into the ‘Documentation’ folder
- For reasons already outlined, in the lack of a current Italian digital preservation model, the ACS SIP has to contain the Producer Juridical Declaration and the Submitting Organisation Technical Declaration (both digitally signed and put in the ‘Compliance Declarations’ folder while their. xsd and. It inserts xl in the ‘Schemas’ folder). Indeed, the first represents a formal responsibility for the authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability of the archival digital Objects being transferred; the second one records a formal responsibility for the technical compliance on the transfer process with the agreements established between the Producer and the ACS.
Next Steps
Testing the accession process's functionality, the ACS is now working on defining the Archival storage process and delineating other SIP types concerning the different juridical ingest processes and the diversified archival content.
The ACS is also interested in other CEF Building Blocks, eID, and eDelivery, to implement secure user access management and document exchange.
How can CEF help you?
At the Connecting Europe Facility, we give you access to free tools, support, and funding to build your digital services. Here are some other Building Blocks you might be interested in.
Supports EU-wide cross-border public services using blockchain technology
Facilitates the preservation, migration, reuse, and trust of your information
Exchanges data and documents securely and reliably.