AS&RU researchers, Dr Martine Barons, Dr Thais Fonseca and Prof Jim Smith have developed a decision support system (DiAGRAM) in collaboration with The National Archive (TNA) for the digital archiving community. The project – called “Safeguarding the nation’s digital memory” built on research by Prof Smith, Dr Manuele Leonelli and Dr Martine Barons to develop a probabilistic model to allow archives of different sizes and structures to assess risk levels for their digital collections and how the risk levels change under proposed interventions. TNA states that the nation’s digital heritage is rich, complex and fragile. This material – born-digital records (in a variety of formats), web archives, digitised archival materials – is under threat from rapidly evolving technology, outdated policies and a skills gap across the archives sector. To preserve this heritage for future generations, we must understand and navigate a vast and ever-shifting risk landscape. This tool, launched in November 2020, was developed with input with a number of partner archives and with input from archives across the world, including Brazil, USA, Australia and more. It was shortlisted as a finalist in the worldwide Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) Awards and has already received a request to translate into Turkish!

There were nominations from 14 countries for the DPC Awards. The winners in the research & innovation category were ‘Introducing levels of born digital’ https://www.dpconline.org/blog/introducing-levels-born-digital-access .
 
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/manage-information/preserving-digital-records/research-collaboration/safeguarding-the-nations-digital-memory/ https://nationalarchives.shinyapps.io/DiAGRAM-dev/