As announced last week, the Data Management Forum has spearheaded the formation of a new Technical Working Group (TWG) focusing on the development of standards and best practices for long-term digital information retention and preservation. The work of the "Long-Term Digital Information Retention and Preservation (LT-DIRP) TWG is one of many follow-on activities based upon the 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey report, published last year. With more than 70 percent of respondents saying they are 'highly dissatisfied' with their ability to assure that they will be able to read and interpret their retained information in 50 years, there is a critical need for standards to assist users in retaining and preserving information for the future of their organizations.

The LT-DIRP TWG will be focused on enabling physical and logical preservation and migration. To achieve these objectives the LT-DIRP TWG will work to develop a new application-centric standard called a Self-Describing Self-Contained Data Format (SD-SCDF). This standard will define a 'preservation-oriented' logical container consisting of the content (the data) and associated preservation metadata, including reference information, integrity and authenticity controls, audit records and potentially event readers.

Interested in participating in this new TWG? Membership is open to all SNIA member companies. To learn how to get involved, visit http://www.snia.org/apps/org/workgroup/lttwg. To download a copy of the complete 100 Year Archive requirements survey report, go to http://www.snia-dmf.org/100year.

SNIA Tutorials

Delivered at SNW Spring 2008
Available for download!

Once again, thought leaders from around the storage industry met in Orlando Florida last week for SNW Spring 2008. The DMF was represented on many levels with members delivering a number of SNIA tutorials addressing the hot topics and technologies of today, including the inaugural Data Deduplication session. If you were not able to attend SNW, check out all SNIA Tutorials available for download now.

Watch for these informative emails about twice a month with news on Data Management Forum activities and events. Comments, topic suggestions and questions are always welcome. Please send emails to ebull@advisorygroups.snia.org.