Catherine Jones Science and Technology Facilities Council

SCAPE Training Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus, 13-14 November 2013

Control Policy formulation The why and how

Format of this session

• 11:15 – 11:40 Presentation on creating control policies

• 11:40 – 12:25 Practical Exercise (small groups) • 12:25 - 12:45 Discussion about the practical exercise

and the topic of policy in general

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What is digital preservation policy about?

• The organisation’s aims and objectives about the long term care of digital objects: • Preservation strategies and acceptable actions • Decision about the digital objects (formats, significant

properties etc) • Who the material is being preserved for • Resourcing • Responsibilities

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The role of policy in planning and watch

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SCAPE Policy Levels - recap

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Guidance

High level

General objectives

Applies to all parts of the organisation and

collections

Written in natural language to be read by a human being

Preservation Procedure

More detailed level

General approaches

Written in natural language to be read by a human being

Control

Specific, measurable objectives

Applies to specific collections or formats

In two forms: natural language and

machine readable form (RDF)

Why two forms of control policies?

• Natural language policy needed for humans and may (should) already exist – in procedures/collection management policy/implicit understanding etc.

• Need machine understandable form to use automated tools

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What is special about SCAPE machine understandable control policies?

• Related to a specific set of circumstances – the collection of digital objects; the people who will use them and a purpose. Known as a preservation case

• Need to be specific so that they can be measured or assessed. • File format must be TIFF • There must be 3 copies of each object

• Not all control policies may be machine actionable • There must be 3 members of staff who have qualification X

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SCAPE Control Policy model

links a particular content set (collection) with a particular user community (specific requirements) with specific measurable objectives which can be tested automatically

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Some examples

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What do you need to create machine understandable control policies?

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• Some written policy – either at the Preservation Procedure level, or at the more detailed control level.

• An understanding of the goals of preservation • Knowledge of the collection and who uses it &

manages it & any procedures in place. • Some appreciation of what topics you are likely to

need Planning & Watch activities for

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Creating Control policy statements

Stage 1: Whole policy activities

Stage 2: Policy statements within the whole policy

Stage 3: Review and rationalise

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These are activities considering the policy as a whole 1. Identify the content set the policy addresses

• What type of material is being preserved in this case?

2. Identify the user communities/roles required by the policy • Who will be using the material or interacting with the material?

3. Map policy statements to high level concepts. • In general what type of activities are the statements referring to?

Creating Control policy statements Stage 1: Whole policy activities

For each statement or section in the policy undertake: 1. Clarification of implicit meaning

• Are there hidden meanings/context that needs to be stated explicitly?

2. Identification of control policy preservation case • What issue is the statement addressing?

3. Identification of objectives • What are the measureable statements which embody the policy

statement?

4. Generate control statements • Use of a tool or knowledge of RDF to create machine understandable

statements

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Creating Control policy statements Stage 2: Policy statements within the whole policy

For preservation cases and associated objectives review: 1. Are there any objectives which are in every preservation

case? • These are candidates for organisation related objectives

2. Do some of the preservation cases overlap/are the same? • You need to consider whether fewer but broader preservation cases or

multiple specific ones is the most appropriate. This depends on what you intend to use them for, and what overheads there are in maintaining the optimal number

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Creating Control policy statements Stage 3: Review & Rationalise

Worked Example

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“3.1.1 All raw data will be curated in well-defined formats for which the means of reading the data will be made available by the Facility” Express some of the implicit information and rewrite to: • “All data curated will be in well-defined formats” • “Approved well-defined formats will be able to be read” • “The reader will be supplied by at least the ISIS Facility” Also need to express what “curated” means

Goals/Objectives: 1. File format must be of an approved format for the contentset 2. The file format should have documentation 3. Any instrument specific schema should be documented 4. There should be at least one piece of software which can read the files 5. This file reader should be available from the organisation holding the data 6. This file reader should be able to be used by the designated user

community 7. The file format should be able to be validated 8. Fixity checks should be undertaken

Using the contentset 2011 LET Calibration and a user community of domain specific researchers

i. The file reader MUST be available to the designated user community

Using the contentset 2011 LET Calibration and a user community of ISIS data managers

i. File format MUST be NeXus ii. The file format MUST have documentation iii. Any instrument specific schema MUST be documented iv. Nexus File reader software available > 1 v. NeXus file reader MUST be located at STFC vi. The file format MUST be able to be validated vii. Fixity checks MUST be able to be undertaken

Conclusion

• Having explicit policy in natural language is important • Expressing policy in machine testable ways is more

complex but can bring benefit through use of tools • Natural language policy defines statements of acceptable

states; machine understandable control level asks measureable questions

• Implicit information understood by human audience which needs explicitly expressing for computers

• Written policy is at a fairly abstract level and practicalities may be addressed in implementation plan/job procedure document or one-off project plan

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Next – a practical exercise

• You should have: • The example scenario • Sheets with possible attributes and measures • Control Policy worksheets

• In pairs or small groups try converting the scenario into control policy statements

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