E-ARK/eArchiving Building Block in Germany – Workshop Report
Source: Bundesarchiv / Dahlmanns, Tim
On 25 April 2019, experts from national archives and the European Commission held a workshop entitled "E-ARK/eArchiving Building Block — also for us in Germany?” on the topic of Information Packages, an important element of digital archiving. The workshop was held in Berlin, Germany.
The continuous production of data means interoperable digital archiving becomes a greater necessity for all EU Member States. This workshop presented the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eArchiving Building Block and EARK4ALL specifications for digital archiving to German archiving institutions.
The CEF eArchiving Building Block, built on the specifications developed through the E-ARK project, supports long-term information assurance, meaning that digital preservation, records management, and digital archives in general are recognised as critical pillars for the Digital Single Market.
The organisers of the workshop asked if the Information Packages developed in the E-ARK project are available for archival institutions in Germany, especially with regard to the eIDAS Regulation (on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market) and the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).
The EU project E-ARK (since 2018, E-ARK4ALL) developed specifications for OAIS compliant Information Packages, which are freely available to all. However, these specifications are less known in Germany.
Participants discussed the rationale, sustainability, and the risks of standardisation, as well as the pros and cons of the possible use of E-ARK information packages. It emerged that all participants would be in favour of a stronger harmonisation of the acceptance packages (SIPs) in order to make the underlying workflows easier and more efficient. The participants concluded that the same should apply to the Information Packages for User Purposes (DIPs), in order to facilitate the exchange of data in this area.
The workshop included the following presentations:
- Dr. Sebastian Gleixner (Bundesarchive): Volume as challenge. An overview of the Federal archives digital archiving efforts;
- Dr. Ulrike Korte (Bundesamt für die Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik): Introduction to eIDAS, ETSI LONG-TERM PReservation (LTP) and BSI TR.03125 (TR-ESOR);
- Sandro Hardy (Federarchive): The Federal digital in-between archive and the user opportunity of the E-ARK SIPs;
- Sophia Bünemann (CEF eArchiving team of the European Commission): Introduction to the Building Blocks of the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Commission;
- Janet Anderson (Danish National Archives): E-ARK4ALL - the project that created the eArchiving building block;
- Karin Bredenberg (Swedish National Archives): The eArchiving Building Block core specifications for filling up the European fridges;
The workshop concluded with a panel discussion on the ‘Possible usage of E-ARK information packages in German archiving institutions’. The panel included:
- Karin Bredenberg (Swedish National Archives)
- Prof. Dr. Christian Keitel (Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg)
- Dr. Ulrike Korte (Bundesamt für die Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik)
- Steffen Schwalm (msg systems ag)
- Sandro Hardy (Bundesarchiv)
- Rainer Jacobs (Bundesarchiv)
- Moderation: Dr. Sina Westphal / Dr. Sebastian Gleixner (Bundesarchiv)
(For non-German speakers working in a public administration in Europe, the CEF eTranslation Building Block allows you to translate the text into the 24 official EU languages plus Icelandic and Norwegian).
The CEF eArchiving Building Block provides long-term information assurance by providing specifications, reference software, training and service desk support for digital archiving, including digital preservation. This benefits both the design and implementation of repositories and enables business systems to send data to those repositories. Information Package specifications are the foundation of eArchiving and describe platform-independent formats to structure information assets as bulk data and metadata that remains authentic and understandable over time.