The Digital Archives Migration Methodology is a management tool to support a project-based approach for transfers of digital records that are no longer in use in agencies to State Records NSW as digital archives.
The methodology breaks migration projects up into four phases:
The Project Planning phase establishes responsibilities and sets out the scope of the project and its deliverables. The Migration Planning phase defines the processes to be undertaken in the Migration phase. The Project Closure phase closes the project and identifies any required post-project activities (such as the disposal of source records).
Activities in each phase
The first two phases of the methodology deliver two key documents: the project plan, which manages the overall migration project, and the migration plan which identifies actions to be performed during the migration phase. The key deliverables of both plans are reviewed at project closure.
The activities and actions that take place during each phase are determined based on the identified requirements of each migration project. However, in all projects the phases will include these components:
These components provide direction about what needs to occur but they are not prescriptive. This allows migration projects to be tailored to suit the requirements of particular environments and records systems. The methodology can expand or contract to adapt to the scope and complexity of different projects.
Key elements of the methodology
While all migration projects will individual project and migration plans, the activities in the below table will be common to all projects.
| Activity | Phase |
|---|---|
| Overall project planning to determine roles and responsibilities, project scope, costs, risks and timeframes | Phase 1 Project Planning |
| Disposal determination to identify records required as State archives | Phase 1 Project Planning |
| Assessment of access requirements and restrictions for both agency and public access | Phase 1 Project Planning |
| Description of the records to support ongoing management and access | Phase 2 Migration Planning |
| Format assessment to identify transformations required for digital continuity | Phase 2 Migration Planning |
| Metadata assessment and mapping | Phase 2 Migration Planning |
| Migration planning to outline the migration process including the migration path, timeframes and resourcing | Phase 2 Migration Planning |
| Preparation, testing and validation for migrations | Phase 3 Migration |
| Action on source records from a migration | Phase 4 Project Closure |
Published July 2014