International Conference on Digital Preservation iPRES 2021 is this year held as a hybrid event at the National Science Library in Beijing and on Zoom. It is co-hosted by the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) and the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSL).

Intact Digital paper on Executable Archives has been included in the main programme as part of the Paper Session 4 on Wednesday, 20 October 2021. The presentation discusses data integrity and software integrity requirements for the long-term preservation and use of archived research studies.

During the presentation, Natasa Milic-Frayling introduced the Executable Archive Framework and demonstrated how it informed the design of the INTACT Software Library, a software hosting platform and services that complement electronic data archives by providing validated installations of software for reliable readability of data and research study reconstruction.

On 21 October 2021, Members of the UNESCO MoW Preservation Sub-Committee, Ms Lai Tee Phang (Chair), Ms Natasa Milic-Frayling, Mr Robert Buckley and Mr Kevin Bradley are coordinating a panel on the “Digital Documenter Heritage: Securing Reliable and Sustainable Access”.

The panel is moderated by Ms Lai-Tee Phang, the Chair of the UNESCO MoW Preservation Sub-Committee, and includes experts in digital preservation and long-term access to documentary heritage:

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• Natasa Milic-Frayling, Member of the UNECO MoW Preservation Sub-Committee, Intact Digital Ltd
• Peter Doorn, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), Netherlands    
• Tobias Steinke, German National Library    
• Ryder Kouba, UNESCO PERSIST, American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan
• Eric CHIN, the National Library Board, Singapore.

With this iPRES panel, UNESCO MoW Programme continues a policy dialogue with the preservation community, focusing on issues of long-term and sustainable access to digital content. There are many challenges to safeguarding digitized and born digital content, including the continuous and rapid obsolescence of digital technologies. The issues are considered with the aim to identify policy interventions that UNESCO can facilitate.

In October 2020, UNESCO held a two-session Virtual Policy Dialogue (Programme) and in September 2020 released a report with main outcomes. Video recordings of the sessions are available on the UNESCOPERSIST Web site.