The SCAPE Policy Framework
The SCAPE Preservation Policy Framework consists of three preservation policy levels that can support an organisation in creating their preservation policies set.
By connecting these three levels and identifying clearly which level is fit for which purpose, we intend to make the creation of a preservation policy for organisations
more straightforward and better prepared for machine readable policies.
Guidance policies.
On this level the organisation describes the general long term preservation goals of the organisation for its digital collection(s). One example is that an organisation decides that the infrastructure in place to provide digital preservation will be guided by the OAIS model.
The set of guidance policies that were used as a starting point are mentioned in the Catalogue of Policy Elements.
Preservation Procedure level policies
These policies describe the approach the organisation will take in order to achieve the goals as stated on the higher level. They will be detailed enough to be input for processes and workflow design but can or will be at the same time concerned with the collection in general.
This is the level that is the topic of the Catalogue of Policy Elements
.
Control Policies
On this level the policies formulate the requirements for a specific collection, a specific preservation action or for a specific designated community This level can be human readable, but should also be available in machine readable and actionable form
and thus can be used in automated planning and watch tools to ensure that preservation actions and workflows chosen meet the specific requirements identified for that digital collection. This process is further described here.
More information about this SCAPE Policy Framework can be read in : Barbara Sierman, Catherine Jones, Sean Bechhofer and Gry Elstrøm:Preservation Policy Levels in SCAPE. IPRES 2013 – Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Preservation of
Digital Objects ; ed. José Borbinha, Michael Nelson, Steve Knight, http://purl.pt/24107, ISBN 978-972-565-493-4. Download: Link
Making your policies publicly available?
What information about policies is made public depends on the remit of the organisation. We would suggest that the guidance policies should be available to the user community;
whereas the control policies are too detailed and may have operational information which should be kept internally. How available the preservation procedure level policies are depends on the organisation and their user community.