Friday 5th July saw the last #DPClinic session before we take an extended break over the (northern-hemisphere) summer. The speaker was Dr Maureen Pennock (Head of Digital Collection Management at the British Library) who presented an overview of her recent work to develop the CHARM reference model for digital preservation risk, as part of her PhD thesis at the University of Dundee.
The research question that Maureen set out to address was: “How can the nature and complexity of digital preservation risk be more thoroughly and consistently represented so as to support the foundations for a more flexible yet comprehensive preservation planning risk response?”. Inspired by risk science, CHARM offers a new perspective on digital preservation risk that distinguishes between the conceptualisation of risk and its subsequent characterisation or measurement. It can be used to help produce scenario-based and holistic risk assessments that incorporate different types of characterised risks, rather than focusing on one type alone.
Maureen began by asserting that “the way in which a risk is described invariably influences how it is assessed, understood, and mitigated”, and explained how she had looked to the discipline of Risk Science to find a better way to model digital preservation risk. Maureen then discussed how Risk Science identifies three components that are key to a risk definition:
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An undesirable outcome (‘loss in a given context’)
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Target values (‘contextually stated…’)
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Potential causes (‘uncertain developments and triggering events’)
…which in turn led her to propose her own conceptual definition of Digital Preservation Risk, namely: “….the potential for complete or partial loss of digital collection content in terms of its target values of retrievability, authenticity, integrity, accessibility, and longevity, arising from sub-optimised risk sources within the managed organisational and technological environment in which the content should otherwise be preserved”. Building on this definition, Maureen has developed a formal framework for modelling sources of digital preservation risk, in a way that enables sources of risk to be identified, described, grouped and discussed using precise and unambiguous terminology.
Aware that The CHARM Reference Model for Digital Preservation Risk is necessarily quite abstract and complex (it is, after all, a reference model), Maureen has also developed A How-To Guide for the CHARM Digital Preservation Risk Reference Model – which outlines three methods to support the Risk Assessment Stage of the ISO 31000 Risk Management Process, and is accompanied by the CHARM Risk Assessment Template (developed in Excel).
Defining the scenario and scoping the situation is a fundamental first step for each of the three methods. The first method outlines a simple, conversational process, designed to be used in the Risk Identification stage. The second, enables a more comprehensive exploration of the Risk Identification stage, in which “each class and factor is translated into a question, accompanied by an explanation to help clarify the purpose of the question and its relevance to target values”. Whilst the third method builds on the outputs of the first two, “…and integrates them into a full assessment process to demonstrate how risks can be consistently described, analysed, and evaluated”. The How-To Guide explains how the details of each of these methods can be captured in the Risk Assessment Template.
During the discussion which followed Maureen’s talk, one attendee observed that they felt much of the approach developed for the CHARM Reference Model might be equally applicable to discussions of risk in non-digital archives, and that this might be worthy of further consideration.
Maureen closed the session by noting that one of the most valuable lessons she had learned during the development of the CHARM Reference Model was the importance of taking time out from day-to-day tasks to think and read about new topics, and to reflect on how they might be applied in her own practice.
The slides from Maureen’s talk are freely available on the event web-page, and a short blog post about CHARM can be found here. Full details of the CHARM Reference Model, Maureen’s thesis, the How-To Guide, and other supporting resources are all available from the University of Dundee site. Maureen’s work has also been nominated for a Digital Preservation Award, and she will be speaking at the forthcoming iPres 2024 conference, 16-20 September 2024 in Ghent and Flanders (a pre-print of her paper is available here).
#DPClinic will return in September, and we hope you’ll join us!
Comments
Well done on all the hard work!