Research Data Shared Service for Higher Education - Arkivum and Jisc put the platform in place

LONDON – 22nd August 2017 – Arkivum Ltd, a leading provider of long-term data safeguarding solutions, announced today its participation in Jisc’s Research Data Shared Service (RDSS) pilot for UK Higher Education institutions.

Providing IT services in today’s security- and cost-conscious environment can prove a major headache for IT procurement staff. A shared service for depositing and curating research data is designed to provide efficiencies and interoperability benefits for research institutions, whilst also meeting their policy requirements. Arkivum, in partnership with Jisc (and other organisations involved with the RDSS), will focus on providing the digital preservation elements of the service.

Arkivum’s solution incorporates key technology elements from Artefactual, the lead developer of the open-source Archivematica digital preservation tool. The system will provide long-term accessibility and usability of data in academic research and elsewhere. The end-to-end security and data integrity requirements are taken care of by design.

Arkivum CTO, Dr. Matthew Addis, said: “Arkivum is very excited to be part of this collaborative effort with Jisc. We have worked closely with the UK Higher Education community for over 5 years on long-term data archiving of research datasets. Our work with Artefactual to provide open-source digital preservation technology within the Jisc RDSS platform will now enable institutions to make sure their datasets are more than just safely stored, and will remain accessible and usable well into the future.”

With the advent of stricter data governance regimes brought about either by external regulators or internal standards being raised to manage entire data lifecycles, IT departments can struggle to manage these specialist tasks alongside performing primary IT duties. Arkivum’s digital asset safeguarding service provides a guarantee of 100% data integrity over the entire lifecycle of the data - as well as controlling access and preserving data usability.

“Arkivum will play a crucial part in our collaborative approach to creating the Research Data Shared Service framework.” says John Kaye, Senior Co-Design Manager at Jisc. “Arkivum are part the fabric of UK Universities’ digital preservation landscape, and have the experience necessary to understand what features and performance higher education institutions truly require so we’re really pleased to be announcing this collaboration.”

About Jisc

Jisc is the UK higher, further education and skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions.

Jisc:
• operate shared digital infrastructure and services
• negotiate sector-wide deals with IT vendors and commercial publishers and
• provide trusted advice and practical assistance for universities, colleges and learning providers.
For more information, contact the press team: press@jisc.ac.uk

About Arkivum

Arkivum provides data safeguarding and long-term archiving solutions, with a 100% data integrity guarantee, to organisations in sectors spanning financial services, healthcare, pharma and life sciences, digital heritage, and higher education. These solutions assure the authenticity and availability of data regardless of scale or when it needs to be accessed, while mitigating risk and ensuring organisations’ compliance with regulations or long-term data lifecycle management requirements.

For more information go to www.arkivum.com or email info@arkivum.com