Page 14 - Professorial Lecture - Prof Nengomasha

Records Archives 2.0, its programme for scheduling, transferring and storing the
electronic records it receives from the agencies. The system will enable cloud-to-
cloud transfers of electronic records between agencies and NARA (Heckman,
2021). Studies by Karlos (2023) and Mulokoshi (2022) show that there are some
cloud service providers providing storage services to some few public service of
Namibia institutions. However, unlike the United States Government, the decision
by the public service to use cloud service providers is not a policy decision and
neither is it based on records management requirements. As both Karlos and
Mulokoshi argue, these records are in danger of losing their authenticity, reliability,
integrity and usability. They both recommend the establishment of archives
digital repositories following standards such as the Open Archival Information
System (OAIS) Reference Model - ISO-14721-2012.

OAIS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), 2012) is a
framework for setting up an archival information system dedicated to the
preservation of digital information overtime through hardware and software
obsolescence. An OAIS refers to any organisation, establishment or system
tasked with the management and preservation of digital information and
making it accessible to a specified class of users. In the context of the records
centers and archives, their clientele are their specified users and the public
service action officers in the case of the EDRMS. Figure 1 below illustrates how
the OAIS Reference Model can be applied in addressing accessibility to digital
information in the long term. According to Vardigan and Whiteman (2007, p. 83)
“A critical component of the OAIS Reference Model is the set of responsibilities
that an OAIS-conformant archive must fulfill consistently in order to be considered
trustworthy”. The key stakeholders in digital preservation are the creators of the
records from where the records originate, the records and archives management
staff with records and archives management description skills, the IT staff with
the technical skills and the users to provide feedback on their experiences to
enhance the system.

Figure 1: Applying the OAIS Reference Model to Digital Preservation: Adapted
from CCSDS (2012); Vardigan & Whiteman (2007)

Prof. Cathrine Nengomasha | Professorial Lecture 14