Digital Preservation System for Derbyshire County Council Derbyshire Record Office

Derbyshire Record Office is responsible for preserving the historic archives of the county, including records of Derbyshire County Council, local public record creating bodies such as hospitals and courts, the Diocese of Derby, as well as numerous organisations, businesses, families and individuals. The authority has over 100 years' experience of caring for paper-based records, but digital archives have significantly different preservation requirements, such as appropriate hardware and software to render the data readable, secure long-term storage which guarantees authenticity and legal admissibility of records.

Currently, the authority does not have the infrastructure, skills, or knowledge to comply with its own Corporate Digital Preservation Policy, as is partly acknowledged in the Invitation to Quote for Consultancy - Data Management Strategy and GAP Analysis (Nov 2019). The digital preservation application should: Protect the data; Know the data; Monitor the data; Repair the data; Facilitate access to the data; Dispose of the data.

The cloud-hosted solution should be able to deal with records throughout their lifetime (from creation to disposal). Being cloud based, it will not interact with any council IT systems.

During the three-year contract, digital data already held by Derbyshire Record Office and acquired in line with Corporate Retention Schedules and Derbyshire Record Office Management Policy will be ingested into the system. This excludes any digital records containing personal data or corporate records not requiring permanent retention.

The preservation of both these categories will need to be addressed in the future. The contract should include initial user training and support, as well as ongoing customer support.