It’s a fact of (digital preservation) life that anyone attempting to implement digital preservation or actively engaged in digital preservation will experience problems—pain points.

We here at Jisc can help relieve your pain!

How? Well we have two core overlapping offers that address these digital preservation pain points, Advice & Guidance, and Consultancy. The former is less structured, more ad hoc and free. The latter—the consultancy—is more formalised, tends to take longer and is a paid for service.

Before I go too far it’s worth pointing out that digital preservation pain points and digital preservation solutions almost never occur in isolation from other institutional systems and processes. So, whatever path we’re going down with you, we always start by delving a little into background and circumstances surrounding the issue at hand asking questions such as

How many files?
What’s your policy?
Who or what is driving the case?

And so on

Let’s start with Advice & Guidance.

Pain points can occur at any level of digital preservation maturity. Unsurprisingly, Advice & Guidance is appropriate at any maturity level as well. As I often state, we take an holistic approach and try and surface all of the underlying pain points as well as seeing how they fit into your wider institutional landscape. If you come to us saying you need a particular solution or product, we’re very likely to start by asking “why?”.

In general, advice and guidance will take the form of a few on-line meetings (sometimes face to face) where we explore the problem space and provide pointers to additional resources, possible aspects of the problem space you may not have considered, and potential next steps. We tend to have a few different specialists attending from our side and it’s not unusual for attendees to go away with a LOT to think about… … and then come back to talk to us again after re-evaluating their approach and goals.

We’re always happy to take on an advocacy role as well. If you need help making the case in a meeting give your relationship manager a call and we’ll see if we can help.

Occasionally we will comment on partially prepared documentation (bid documents, policies, business cases and so on). On rare occasions we may run a mini workshop to help you understand what it is you really need to achieve.

Onto Consultancy.

If you and your institution need something a little more in-depth, we have a mature digital product development process.

This Jisc process draws on techniques used at Jisc to develop digital products. The method emphasises the importance of establishing a clear idea of the problem to be solved before determining a solution. The approach places users and stakeholders at the heart of the process of identifying needs and requirements.

As well as being extensively used within Jisc, the consultancy team have used this approach to help institutions develop requirements for procurement of digital preservation systems, research systems and for other projects requiring consultation with an institutions staff.

There are four stages to the Jisc process framework when utilised for the acquisition of a new system.

1The consultancy process

Understand the problem – a multi part stage that involves a scoping exercise, empathy interviews with stakeholders and interview response analysis to identify stakeholder needs. We run a series of workshops to help you understand the scope of the problem, the stakeholders who are involved (and those who should be involved). Key outputs from this stage will often be problem statements (an overall problem statement and a focused problem statement), a stakeholder registry, and a focus area to start developing.
Know the environment—mapping the existing process, policies and systems and identifying gaps.
Create requirements – using stakeholder needs to create a set of specifications for a minimum viable product (MVP) and a road map for further phased development. This frequently involves the generation of personas and a prioritised list of user stories.
Get procurement ready – getting the requirements ready for a procurement exercise including additional prioritisation and feature weighting.

The fifth stage (I know I said four, but indulge me).

Procurement—We can also help you with procurement, identifying potential suppliers and even helping you run the process.

Complementary to this acquisition focused process we also undertake consultancy around Policy, strategy, mandates and business cases, the drivers that ultimately underpin any procurement process. The process is similar, scoping, engaging stakeholders, and so on, but without the procurement at the end.

Likewise, we can help guide you through a number of maturity models to help you set a benchmark and focus your ambitions in the digital preservation space. The Digital Preservation Coalition has many resources that cover off on maturity and self-audit (and signposts to many more). These two the DPS Competency Audit Toolkit (DOC CAT) and the DPS Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) are particularly useful.

It’s probably worth mentioning that a key aspect of our process is that we not only pass on the outputs, we also empower your staff to undertake similar exercises in the future.

Each consultancy project will be different, and we put together a bespoke team of subject matter experts from across Jisc to match your requirements.

If you’re a Jisc member and you’d like to know more, contact your relationship manager. If you’re not a member, then you can start the conversation by emailing me or help@jisc.ac.uk

FAQ

I’ve no doubt you’ve got a lot of questions at this point. So here are a few I’ve been asked before.

What is the difference between Advice & Guidance and Consultancy?

Broadly the objectives ae similar—imparting knowledge and outlining ways forward—and there is an overlap, but if I had to differentiate…. Advice & Guidance would generally be one or more informal meetings with subject matter experts on our side and engaged stakeholders on your side. Typical objectives would be signposting to resources, developing a brief for further work and perhaps a little advocacy. There would be no cost to you and no formal outputs.

Consultancy, on the other hand, would normally have a well-developed brief before start with identified objectives and itemised outputs. The participating stakeholder group would usually be more comprehensive and the processes (workshops, interviews, etc.) more formalised. It’s also a paid for activity.

Advice & Guidance frequently leads through to consultancy further down the line.

Is Advice & Guidance available for both members and non-members?

In the case of members, Advice & Guidance is available through your Relationship Manager (if you don’t know who they are check out the look-up page on our web site.

As for non-members… the short answer is… “it depends” (doesn’t it always?). Advice & Guidance is potentially available for non-members to a limited extent, particularly where it relates to getting started with Digital Preservation and the future use of Jisc products and resources. We’re always keen to spread the word about digital preservation (it’s difficult to stop me). Non-members will also have a relationship manager. A message to help@jisc.ac.uk referencing digital preservation in the subject or body will get the ball rolling.

Of course, in all cases, you can also initiate a conversation by sending me an email.

Can non-members access consultancy?

Short answer is yes. We can (and do) provide consultancy to non-members. If you’re interested in this, send me an email.

Where does free Advice & Guidance end and paid Consultancy begin?

Again… it depends. There are no hard and fast rules and it depends on many factors. For example, members versus non-members, where you are in your digital preservation journey, what it is you’re asking for, how much you’re asking for and so on. Again, contact me or your relationship manager if you’d like to explore options.

How much is it?

You know what I’m going to say here don’t you… It depends. Every brief is different. We will provide you with a proposal before we start outlining the resources we intend to deploy, the number of days, outputs deliverables and so on. These will usually be a fixed price (or a maximum price), but in some cases we can deploy call down contracts—an agreed number of days over a given period at an agreed rate to be used and billed for as and when they’re used.

You mentioned outputs and deliverables. Are these private and confidential?

Our default position is always that the outputs and deliverables are confidential. No names, no pack drill. We only share outputs for the benefit of the community if you give us explicit permission to do so. We may also ask for quotes or a case study we can use for the benefit of our members, but these are never mandatory or expected.

What’s Jisc’s Unique Selling Point (USP)?

When you speak to us you’ll find that we “speak many languages”. As well as Digital Preservation, we speak Archive, Research, Finance, Procurement, Record Management and so on. We’re not a one trick pony and have a comprehensive overview of the wider problem and solution space. We have expertise way beyond just digital preservation and as a result we can offer an integrated, holistic approach.

What’s more, we’re a Trusted third party. We’re not tied into a single product or solution (no solution looking for a problem here). We tell it like it is and make recommendations based around the best fit for any problems you need to solve.

Is consultancy worth it?

Is it worth it? Well obviously I think so, but you don’t just have to take my word for it. You can ask people who’ve been on the receiving end. There are a few testimonials on the digital preservation consultancy page.

One of my favourite quotes is this one from Maria Follett, the researcher engagement and collections manager at Liverpool John Moores University. She said

“We could never have achieved the same outcomes and outputs working on our own, the project was a huge success for us”

(brings a tear to my eye)

We have also published a member story just in time for today’s webinar—you can find it at the link at the end. This story recounts how the University of Aberdeen utilised a Jisc consultancy project to help them move their digital preservation project from concept to the next stage—preparation to procure.

I’m not quite sure what I need? Where do I start?

You know what I’m going to say here. Contact your Relationship manager or bung off an email to me. We’ll arrange an exploratory call to see if we can tease things out.

HAPPY WORLD DIGITAL PRESERVATION DAY