Digital Preservation Coalition Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM)
2021
Revision of DPC RAM after community feedback OverviewThe Digital Preservation Coalition Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) is a maturity modelling tool that has been designed to enable a rapid benchmarking of an organization's digital preservation capability whilst remaining agnostic to solutions and strategy.The model provides a set of organizational and service level capabilities that are rated on a simple and consistent set of maturity levels.It will enable organizations to monitor their progress as they develop and improve their preservation capability and infrastructure and to set future maturity goals.Digital preservation is defined as the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary.It refers to all of the actions required to maintain access to digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological and organizational change. 1 The model is freely available for anyone to use, but DPC Members will also be offered the opportunity to share their results and compare their progress with other members of the Coalition.This process will also help facilitate DPC Member Support activities, providing DPC staff with an efficient, continuous and standardized approach to capturing information on member needs and issues. Origins and AcknowledgementsThe model draws from an array of existing maturity models, and is primarily based on Adrian Brown's Digital Preservation Maturity Model 2 .It was also informed by the NDSA Levels of Preservation 3 , the Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model (DPCMM) 4 , the Assessing Organisational Readiness (AOR) Toolkit and the CoreTrustSeal 5 .This wealth of existing work has provided reference points to ensure broad coverage for assessment of digital preservation capability.The model has been developed, tested and refined with input from DPC Members including those who make up the Research and Practice Sub-Committee.Particular thanks go to 1 Definition adapted from the Digital Preservation Handbook: https://www.dpconline.org/handbook/glossary#D 2 Brown, A (2013) Practical Digital Preservation: a how-to guide for organizations of any size, Facet Publishing