6.5 Data Management and Administration
6.5.1.1 Data Management, in the OAIS, is the services and functions for populating, maintaining, and accessing both descriptive information which identifies and documents archive holdings and administrative data used to manage the archive, in other words the catalogue of content and the statistical record of data content.
6.5.1.2 Administration, in the OAIS, is the services and functions for managing system configuration, monitoring operation, providing customer service and updating archival information. It is also responsible for management processes such as negotiating submission agreement with producer, auditing submission, control physical access, establishing and maintaining archive standards.
6.5.1.3 The management and administration of the digital repository and archival system provides services that allow the sustainability of the system and the preservation of the content stored therein. A requirement of an archival digital storage system would include the ability to interrogate the system to produce result sets of holdings, access usage statistics, contents summaries including sizes and other necessary technical and management information. The data management and administration is critical to a sustainable archival system because this functionality ensures that files preserved and accessed are properly found and identified.
6.5.1.4 It is within this section of the digital storage and preservation system that control over access to content, or security control, is implemented. Many repository software systems incorporate approaches to implementing policies which are stored and managed by the system. It is important to recognise that the rights management information, like the audio content itself, must outlast the system used to store it, and so be transferable to any future replacement preservation and storage system. Information which is encoded in XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) for example, is both more universally enforceable, and transferable to other systems. XACML is a declarative access control policy language implemented in XML and a processing model, describing how to interpret the policies. XACML is managed by the OASIS standards group (https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xacml).
6.5.1.5 When selecting, establishing and installing a digital preservation system one of the critical tests should be to determine if the administration of the proposed system is within the capabilities of the host institution. The capability and breadth of functions of a system is often linked with the complexity of use and installation. A system which cannot be adequately managed and maintained is a major risk to the content it manages. It is therefore important that the long term management of a system take account of the available technical expertise required to sustain its use.
