Dr Natasa Milic-Frayling, Founder & CEO at Intact Digital and Cate Ovington, Director of The Knowlogy are featured in the SelectScience Editorial Article: Digital obsolescence: Is your research data at risk?, discussing how rapid technological innovation results in a ‘graveyard of software’ and how to mitigate digital obsolescence risks to valuable digital data. They focus on key challenges that organisations and scientific labs face due to rapid aging of software and discuss how INTACT Software Library and INTACT Digital Continuity Services help overcome these challenges.

Natasa points to advances in IT and computing as essential for safeguarding vital data: “Our expertise is in computing and IT, and we use state-of-the-art techniques to handle problems with aging technologies.  We provide a solution that enables researchers to read their data for as long as they need it. It doesn't matter how old the data is, it doesn't matter how old the software is — researchers can access and process the data safely and reliably.”  

Cate highlighted the regulatory concerns that organizations and labs have due to digital obsolescence. They often resort to practices that are not compliant with the ALCOA+ principles for long-term retention of data. She explains: “There is a regulatory requirement to make sure that the digital data is enduring, available, and complete for as long as it is required. For that one needs software but, as we can see, technology is moving at such a fast pace that this is a challenge for research. As a quality assurance auditor, I have not observed a long-term solution. It is great that we now have a plausible solution. With the Intact Digital approach, data is used in its original electronic form which ensures it stays dynamic and complete. People can go back and review it in the future. And it's also helpful for auditors and regulators to know that the data is still available.”

The editorial article “Digital obsolescence: Is your research data at risk?” is available on the SelectScience portal.

The annual EBF Open Symposium is held online this year. The EBF community will connect and discuss important topics during sessions, workshops and sponsor presentations.

Intact Digital contributed a novel, systematic and principled approach to long-term reproducibility of scientific studies through legacy software virtualization. The method enables organizations to stay compliant with GLP regulations (No. 17 Application of GLP Principles to Computerized Systems long-term readability of raw data. Section 3.2 point 75).

EBF Symposium Day 3, Poster session 16:00-17:30 CET, 19 November  2020 .

"Long-term readability of data: Legacy software virtualization case study", presented by Natasa Milic-Frayling, CEO, Intact Digital.

Feel free send email to contact@intact.digital to share your thoughts on the data and software integrity issues and long-term reproducibility of studies.

Two sessions of the UNESCO Virtual Policy Dialogue on Documentary Heritage at Risk on 27 October 2020 consider Policy Gaps in Digital Preservation. By focusing on four areas: Technology, Sustainability, Legal Framework and practices that include Cultural Heritage at risk, the dialogue aims to highlight the challenges that require formulation of a comprehensive international agenda on digital preservation.

The Preservation Subcommittee of the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) programme International Advisory Committee is tasked with working with the digital preservation community and other stakeholders to identify policy gaps and ways to address them. The Policy Dialogue is organized in partnership with with the Information for All (IFAP) Information Preservation Working Group. It is associated with the celebration of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

UNESCO Deputy Director General provided welcoming remarks.

Intact Digital founder, Natasa Milic-Frayling, server on the Preservation Subcommittee as Chair of UNESCO PERSIST Technology and Research working group. She is hosting Session 2 and providing the Virtual Policy Dialogue (VPD) concluding remarks.

Recordings of the sessions are available on YouTube

Session 1: English and French Translation (2 hour each)

‍Session 2: English and 2 French Translation (2 hour each)

Detailed programme is available online and linked to the video recordings of individual topic discussions.