Germany
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Country Profile for Germany
Legislative and organisational background
The Federal Archives is the national archive of Germany. It brings together and pre-serves the records of central government and the courts of law, and makes them available to all who wish to consult them. The holdings contain :
- 295.000 m files
- 12 Mio. Photos
- 2 Mio. books
- 989.565 reels of film
- 191 GB machine-readable data
Today the Federal Archives advises government departments on best practice in records management and selects the records which will be kept in perpetuity. These documents are generally opened for public inspection thirty years after the file was closed.
Law on the Preservation and Use of Federal Archival Documents (Bundesarchivgesetz - BArchG) of 6 January 1988 (BGBl. I S. 62), as amended at last by the Freedom of Information Law of 5 September 2005 (BGBl. I S. 2722)
§ 1 Federal archival documents are to be permanently preserved, made available for use and scholarly exploited by the Federal Archives.
§ 2 (1) Federal constitutional bodies, agencies and courts, Federal corporations, public institutions and foundations under public law as well as other Federal agencies shall offer all documents, which they no longer need for fulfilling their public duties including the safeguarding of the security of the Federal Republic of Germany or one of its States, to the Federal Archives. (...)
(5) (...) In the case of machine-readable records, the method of transferring shall also be agreed upon. It shall comply with the generally recognised technological practices. If such documents which have been offered to the competent archives are not taken over within four months, the agency offering them shall not be obliged to keep them for further storage.
(8) Documents within the meaning of this Law are paper files, single written papers, maps, plans as well as data, pictures, film, sound and other records which are produced by the Federal agencies mentioned under paragraph 1, by agencies of the German Democratic Republic, by agencies of the zones of occupation, the Deutsches Reich or the Deutsche Bund or have become their property or else have been deposited for use.
(9) Documents within the meaning of this Law also are those produced by the United Socialist Party of Germany, by organisations or legal persons affiliated with this party as well as by mass organisations of the German Democratic Republic in so far they refer to the persuance of state functions. This shall also apply to other parties of the German Democratic Republic or organisations and legal persons affiliated with them.
(10) The Federal Archives shall advise Federal agencies designated in paragraph 1 on the management of their records.
Partnerships in long-term preservation
nestor - the german Network of expertise in Digital long-term preservation
Since 2005 the Federal Archives are project partners in nestor, a cooperative project of libraries, archives and museums as well as of leading experts forming a network of expertise in long-term preservation and long-term availability of digital resources. A goal of this project (funded by the BMBF, German Ministery of Education and Research) is the constitution of a permanent form of organization for all issues of long-term preservation as well as the development of national and international agreements and the assignment of tasks.
Management of databases
The german Federal Archives preserve databases from the ministries of the former German Democratic Republic. After the German reunification in 1990 the Archive of the German State »Bundesarchiv« was not only confronted with the task of having to take over a large amount of Files in paperform from dissolved authorities and institutions of the GDR, bat had to cope with a large quantity of electronic data files as well. These files raised a great number of problems for the solving of which there is hardly any experience available, and tested procedures for their handling do not exist. Even though the often bad condition of the storage media brought about partial loss of data, of more serious consequences were an often incomplete or nonexisting documentation for many of the data files. The saving of these files - if at all possible - can be obtained only by laboriously reconstructing the former structure of the data.[1]
The database files were mostly coded in EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) a common code-standard for mainframes. The files are then converted by the archive to ASCII-code, the patterns of the data values in their intended tables are preserved through the simple and flat csv-format (comma seperated values). To give meaning to the coded values, the archive has to preserve special lists, to translate the codes into human readable information.
Electronic Records Management Systems
DOMEA-Concept
The DOMEA-Concept is a strategy for document management and electronic preservation within public agencies in germany. The main goal of DOMEA is the implementation of the electronic record under the same regulations pertaining to paper records. [2]
Vendors of electronic records management systems can try to achieve a DOMEA-certificate. Currently 16 ERMS-products are DOMEA certified. [3]
Moreq2
Germany was also involved in the revision of Moreq2
Metadata-Standards
Several metadata-standards for the exchange of electronic records between ERMS are developed, revised and reviewed by the XÖV-board (XJustiz, XFinanzen etc.), lead by the Federal Archives. The exchange-standard XDOMEA 2.0 is currently under construction. XML is the lingua franca for all XÖV standards in germany.
Ingest and pre-ingest in general
Pre-ingest activities between agencies and archives are described and recommended in the DOMEA-Module for disposal and appraisal of electronic records [4]
A generic description for ingest projects and procedures is the new guidebook "Wege ins Archiv" [5] by the nestor working group for Long-Term Preservation Standards.
Pre-ingest actions for datasets
Methods for the ingest of datasets into the digital archives of the federal archives germany will be developed in 2009.
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg has developed a digital stack dimag [6] for the digital preservation of agency data bases.
Pre-ingest actions for ERM systems
Pre-ingest at the Federal Archives Germany
Pre-ingest activities at the Federal Archives Digital Archives requires in general:
- Contact between the agency and the archive.
- Analysis of dataformats and metadata delivered by the agency.
- Integration of a mapping-schema to convert agency metadataformats into the archival information package format XBARCH.
- Agency gets an account in the archives ingest-database.
Transfer to archives
See Ingest and pre-ingest in general
Ingest actions for datasets
See [6]
Ingest actions for electronic records
The ingest into the Digital Archives at the Federal Archives requires a SIP according to the federal archives ingest procedures. A packaging-tool for electronic records is currently under development. Metadata for electronic records must be transferred in xml or csv format. It is recommended that all documents are of valid PDF/A-Format. However, if the documents can't be converted to PDF/A within the agency, the SIP can contain other formats. In this case the migration to PDF/A will be executed and overviewed by the technical staff of the Federal Archives.
Portable off-line storage medias will be used for the SIP transport to the federal archives in the first phase. Secure transfer protokolls will be evaluated for future transmissions.
References
- ↑ [1] Digitale Datenbestände von Behörden und Einrichtungen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (in German)
- ↑ [2] DOMEA - organisational concept
- ↑ [3] DOMEA - certification procedures
- ↑ [4] DOMEA-Module for disposal and appraisal of electronic records
- ↑ [5] "Wege ins Archiv" (generic guideline for ingest procedures)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 [6] Dimag - Digital stack for preserving agency databases
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