Live Memory. Digital Information Preservation:

Live Memory. Digital Information Preservation:
Proposal for Public Policies for South America, With Focus on Argentina


Susana Finquelievich1, Carlos Brys2, Elida Rodríguez3

1. CONICET, Research Institute Gino Germani, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, sfinquel@gmail.com
2. Computer Science Department, National University of Misiones, Argentina, brys@fce.unam.edu.ar
3. National Institute of Social Services for the Retired, PAMI, Argentina. Electronic government.
rodriguezbizole@gmail.com


Conference “Preservation of Digital Information in the Information Society”
Moscow, 3-5 October 2011
Russian chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Council
UNESCO Information for All Programme


Abstract:
The main objective of this paper is to identify the current policies for digital material preservation in South America, with a particular focus on Argentina, and to make proposal for the development of national and macro-regional strategies and policies.

This document is based on a collaborative research, which was carried on by way of a survey of relevant publications, both locally and internationally, complemented with interviews with key informers. The research has implied reviewing relevant existing documents in the field of Information Society Planning, legislation, policies and declarations; diverse countries’ expertise in the field of Information Society planning and legislation regarding the preservation of digital information (explicit national digital agendas; national, regional and local Information Society policies; national and regional legislative measures; etc.); and relevant national and international documents in the field of preservation of digital information planning, legislation, policies and declarations.

Introduction: Defining the subject to be discussed
The massive growth in the construction and dissemination of digital objects by governments, authors, publishers, corporations, academicians, and others, has emphasized the speed and ease of short-term dissemination. Nevertheless, little concern has been paid yet to long-term preservation. Digital information is characteristically more delicate and insubstantial than traditional technologies such as paper, photographs, or microfilm. It is more easily corrupted or altered, without detection. According to Russon (1999), digital storage media have shorter life spans and require access technologies that are changing at an ever increasing pace. The time frame between the creation of the object and the need for its preservation becomes shorter. The scientific and technical community risks the loss of valuable information without an adequate infrastructure for digital archiving and preservation

It is first of all necessary to define the subject that is being discussed. According to a definition provided by the National Archives of Australia (2001, quoted by the UNESCO DIGITAL PRESERVATION PROJECT, SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH TEAM, 2006) the term ‘preservation’ includes all actions that can be taken with the aim of ensuring the current and long-term survival and accessibility of the physical form, informational content and relevant metadata of archival records, including actions taken to influence records creators prior to acquisition or selection.

According to the mentioned document (UNESCO, 2006) “‘Digital preservation’ can be defined as the process and activities which stabilize and protect reformatted and digital authentic electronic records in forms which are retrievable, readable and usable over time (NARS, April 2004). ‘Digital preservation’ involves a number of organized tasks associated with a variety of technical approaches or strategies for ensuring that digital resources are not only stored appropriately, but also adequately maintained and thus consistently usable over time (UKOLN, 2004). It involves the processes of maintaining accessibility of digital heritage materials over time, for as long as they are needed (UNESCO, 2003: 34, 157)”.

Quoting IFAP – UNESCO: “In a world increasingly being shaped by digital technologies, the traditional guardian institutions (libraries, archives and museums) are challenged to keep pace with the rapid growth in information. They also face a new challenge – as technology advances the stability and lifespan of documents is considerably decreasing. If nothing is done, many important documents in electronic format will not survive or will become completely inaccessible within a very short time. The result will be a permanent loss to the collective memory of humankind. This challenge needs to be tackled urgently and the costs of preserving digital information should not be underestimated – these far exceed the preservation costs experienced to date with five millennia of traditional documents. Digital preservation also contributes to at least two other IFAP priorities – information for development and open & multilingual access to information. Digital technologies open up access to information and knowledge in democratic dimensions that has never been experienced before”.

For the authors of this paper, digital preservation is a way of preserving living memories, customs, cultures, and identities.

A policy can be defined as a development or general plan of action embraced by a governmental organization, multisectorial body, party or person. A National Policy for Information Society (NISP) can be defined as a roadmap, a national, regional, or local plan for the inclusion and appropriation, by Governments, institutions, communities and individuals, of the benefits derived from the construction of an Information Society. The NISP is a highway, not a harbour. It is a process, a collaborative, open, and permanent building task. In order to travel this highway, it is necessary to envision it, to plan and build it, to make it travelable for all the citizens (Finquelievich, Rozengardt, Davidziuk, and Finquelievich, UNESCO, 2010).

A digital preservation policy would state the principles and long-term direction that would guide preservation strategies and actions. A policy statement would set clear priorities. In terms of the South American context, a national and macro-regional digital preservation policy would reinforce mutual efforts of governments to preserve materials which document our laws, public administration actions, science and technology efforts, and cultural heritage. It would define organizational roles and (funding) responsibilities. The roles of established memory institutions, such as libraries, archives and museums, would also be addressed.

The document has been written as a series of questions and answers that deal with the subject of policies for digital material preservation in South America, with a particular focus on Argentina, the social agents that have developed actions in this area, and proposals towards the development of national and macro-regional preservation plan strategies and policies.



1. Do South American Digital Agendas contemplate the subject of policies for digital material preservation?

Most original NISPs in South American countries do not plan policies or strategies for digital material preservation, although it is expected that the processes of updating these NISPs will. However, some countries, such as Brazil and Colombia, participate in Inter Pares, an international project supported by the British University of Columbia and The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Community-University Research Alliances (SSHRC-CURA). Inter Pares member countries are Africa, Brazil, Canada, US, Cataluña, Colombia, Korea, China, Italia, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Holland, Belgium, UK, Singapore, and Turkey.

Policies for the preservation of digital material are undertaken, often jointly, by South American libraries, museums, and University, but governments have not yet arrived to formulate joint policies. However, the issue is currently being discussed at the Union de Naciones Suramericanas, Unasur (Union of South American Nations), the Regional organization that includes twelve South American countries, due to an Argentine initiative.

Another macro-regional agenda is eLAC 2007, the Regional Action Plan for the information society, which was officially approved at the Regional Latin American and Caribbean Preparatory Ministerial Conference for the World Summit on Information Society on June 10, 2005 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is based on constant dialogue and cooperation among all the Latin American and Caribbean countries, and leading to the adoption of a common policy agenda.

Regarding the preservation of electronic information, Elac 2007 proposed:
● Article 15.4: Contribute to the use of electronic/digital signatures in governmental procedures, both by public officials and civil servants and by citizens
● Article 15.5: Promote the adoption of information security and storage models at all levels of government with a view to engendering trust in the digital information managed or provided by the State.



2. Which antecedents exist in South America regarding the preservation of digital information?

One of the first events to raise the problem of preservation of the digital heritage was on the agenda of an expert consultation for Latin America and the Caribbean that UNESCO organized in November 2002 in Managua, Nicaragua. The results of the consultation would be the regional input to the Charter on Digital Heritage that UNESCO was organizing. In that opportunity, Dr. Isidro Fernandez Aballi, from UNESCO, spoke about the context of the digital era in the XXI Century, as well as about the huge quantity of information which exists in digital format, and which disappears in cyberspace, without being transferred to an updated, more durable support. Dr. Fernandez Aballi encouraged the professionals which were present to respond to UNESCO´s call, contributing their criteria to save the digital patrimonies.
In 2007, the Ibero American Chat of Electronic Government (CIGE) was approved by the Ibero American Conference of Ministers of Public Administration and State Reform in Pucón, Chile, on June 1st, and adopted by the XVII Ibero American Summit of Government and State Chiefs, organized in Santiago de Chile on November 10th, 2007.

Among the Electronic Government Principles stated in paragraph 24, the CIGE enunciates:

“g. Principle of technological adequacy: the administrations will choose the most adequate technologies to satisfy their needs. It is recommended the use of open standards and free software based on reasons as safety, security, long term sustainability, and to prevent the privatization of public knowledge. In no case this principle implies any limitation to the citizens’ right to use the technology of their choice in the Access to public Administrations”.

Moreover, there are a number of initiatives undertaken by “memory guardian institutions”: museums, libraries, and universities. One of them is the Latin American and the Caribbean Network of Social Sciences Virtual Libraries (Red de Bibliotecas Virtuales de Ciencias Sociales de América Latina y el Caribe ), created by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). Its Virtual Reading Room features more than 4000 complete texts of books, papers, documents, and journals. 168 research centres (of which 54% are universities) in 21 countries contribute their publications. Copyrights rights remain in the hands of the authors and the original editors, with a Creative Commons license for their dissemination with academic goals. This license certifies documents ´copies, dissemination, and public communication, with the condition of recognizing the credits in the ways specified by the author/editor, for non-commercial uses, and of not altering the contents without previous authorization. CLACSO uses Greenstone fir its virtual library. It is a set of software programs designed to create and distribute digital collections, providing a new way to organize and disseminate information though the Internet, or CD-ROM.


3. Which are the advances in Argentina regarding protection of critical infrastructures and the preservation of digital information?

From 2009 onwards, Mr. Eduardo Thill, Under Secretary of Management Technologies in the National Cabinet of Ministers has reinforced the argentine participation in the Meridian Process , with the goal to establish the necessary mechanisms to guarantee the protection of the information´s critical infrastructures, as well as long term preservation of digital information. The goal is to establish the necessary mechanisms to ensure the protection of security In information critical infrastructures. This is particularly relevant within the context of the governmental actions on digital inclusion, such as Argentina Conectada and Conectar Igualdad, which will provide the whole country with optic fiber connections.

As a consequence of this work, the Ministers’ Cabinet created the National Program of Protection of Critical Infrastructure of Information and Cyber Security, by the Resolution JGM N° 580/2011 , within the National Bureau of Information Technologies - ONTI.

Argentina has developed the ArCERT Program (Coordination of Emergencies in Argentina’s Teleinformatic Networks), while supporting Latin American countries (México, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panamá, República Dominicana) which are developing policies for information protection and preservation. Argentina is currently encouraging the creation of a Macro Regional network for to transfer and share information and knowledge on information preservation policies, with the goal to strengthen the public administrations’ information systems.

The First International Congress for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures took place in March 14th, 2011, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the Argentine Enterprise University, UADE. The Congress, which gathered argentine and international experts, showed the Argentine government and the corporative sector´s interest in working jointly to generate a conscience for the protection if the critical and Cyber security structures, as well as to consolidate future actions, strategies, and policies.

In this Congress, Mr. Thill stated the importance of achieving the users’ social engagement in critical infrastructures. The proposals for a policy on the preservation of digital information state that, even is such policy should be coordinated by the national governments, its design should include representatives from the corporative sector, Universities and “memory guardian public equipments”, and it should not be the work of isolated countries, but that public strategies on these issue should have a macro regional scope.


4. Which are the Argentine initiatives towards the preservation of the digital information?

The limits of time and space allow us only to mention a few examples in a vast universe of digital repositories and libraries. In the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR, 2008), Argentina is represented by three reservoirs: SciELO Argentina (registered in year 2000), la Revista Cartapacio de Derecho Published by the Universidad Nacional del Centro (registered in 2004), and the CLACSO Network of Social Sciences Virtual Libraries of Latin America and the Caribbean (registered in 2008).

In the Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR, 2008), Argentina is represented by other three repositories: The Digital Library for Identity, the Academic Memoir of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Siences of the National University of La Plata, and the Service for the Dissemination of Intellectual Creation, SeDiCI (registered in 2008), also from the National University of La Plata.

As a whole, 15 repositories have been identified in Argentina.

It is worth mentioning the Project ECO-PORTAL MERCOSUR (Institutional Repositories for the Academic Intellectual patrimonies of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Cordoba). The project was started in 2008. Repositorio Institucional del Patrimonio Intelectual Académico de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba). At present, it gathers the research works that were disseminated in the Internet, and offers the academic community a tool to publish their academic work.

Moreover, in the National Congress, in September 2011 took parliamentary state a law project proposed by deputy Giannetasio, regarding the creation of institutional, open access digital repositories, in which the public institutions and organizations integrating the National Science, Technology & Innovation (SNCTI), and funded by the National State, must deposit the scientific and technological production resulting from the work of their researchers, technologist, post doctorate fellows, and postgraduate students. This S&T production includes all the documents (journal papers, S&T projects, academic thesis, etc., which result from research work funded by the State, published and unpublished, and that undergo a process of quality evaluation.

It is worth remarking that the Province of San Luis is the first state in Latin America that has not only digitalized all the public administrative information, but it also currently generates exclusively digital documentation in the public administration. Public administration has moved from working with paper to work exclusively in digital support. It works solely with digital documents and digital signature.


5. Preserving digital information means to decide which information is to be preserved, and which has to be discarded. Which are the criteria that will guide these decisions?
"Funes the Memorious" (original Spanish title: "Funes el memorioso") is a fantasy short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, published in 1942. "Funes the Memorious" tells the story of a fictional version of Borges himself as he meets Ireneo Funes, a poor, ignorant teenage boy who lives in Fray Bentos, Uruguay, in 1884.Funes reveals to Borges that, since a fall from a horse that had left him crippled, he perceives everything in full detail and remembers it all. He remembers, for example, the shape of clouds at all given moments, as well as the associated perceptions (muscular, thermal, etc.) of each moment. In order to pass the time, Funes has engaged in projects such as reconstructing a full day's worth of past memories (an effort which, he finds, takes him another full day), and constructing a "system of enumeration" that gives each number a different, arbitrary name. Funes is incapable of Platonic ideas, of generalities, of abstraction; his world is one of intolerably uncountable details. He finds it very difficult to sleep, since he recalls "every crevice and every moulding of the various houses which [surround] him".
The fact that Funes remembers absolutely everything, that his memory occupies his brain, makes him incapable of conceptualizing and generalizing. One of the issues of the preservation of digital information is that if we lose our memories, we lose our identities. But if we preserve all the information, we will be invaded by it. The question, then, is to decide which information is to be preserved at each technological turning point, and which will be discarded.
Digital preservation is a complex problem. We´re talking about the set of processes and activities that ensure continued access to information and all kinds of records, scientific and cultural heritage existing in digital formats, and for long periods of time. This includes the preservation of materials resulting from digital reformatting, but particularly information that is born-digital and has no analog counterpart. In the language of digital imaging and electronic resources, preservation is no longer just the product of a program but an ongoing process. In this regard the way digital information is stored is important in ensuring its longevity. The long-term storage of digital information is assisted by the inclusion of preservation metadata.

Ken Thibodeau states that probably, the only valid prediction on the future of information technology is that it will continue to change constantly. Every preservation system conceived as a final solution, even if it seems to solve all the problems of fragility and obsolescence of the tools known until then, will become inevitably obsolete in a relatively short period. This is why any decision about digital preservation should include the capacity to accommodate to fast technological changes, and to incorporate the new products generated by information technology. The only relatively durable factor in a digital preservation solution is the adopted conceptual scheme: the criteria and strategy that will be used.

The Argentine digital preservation strategy conceives preservation as an institutional responsibility, with multi stakeholder participation, political support, and a firm engagement from all the participant agents. According to Serra y Serra (2002), the definition of a preservation plan has to find answers to the following questions: a) which information is to be preserved, and why?. b) Where is it going to be preserved?. c) Until when is this information going to be kept?. d) How will it be possible to find it later?. e) What actions are necessary to keep these materials unaltered?. f) Which measures have to be taken to avoid obsolescence?

The Argentine National government´s strategy has chosen to create and select digital collection with duration according to its administrative and cultural importance. Work is being developed to establish a well-defined preservation policy, establishing which information is to be preserved, and though which norms and procedures. This policy has to be periodically revised and updated, in order to define the new technological supports, to improve the preservation methods, and to redefine the sets of object to be preserved. Since some information packages or objects are more durable than others, these periods of preservation should also be periodically assessed and updated.

According to Bia and Sanchez, the evaluation of electronic documents and objects provides two main advantages:
● It avoids costly migration methods for documents meant for short term preservation. The identification of such documents previously to taking decisions about technical migration and recopying allows reducing costs and technical difficulties.
● It allows advancing in the transference of the electronic documents destined to long-term preservation to historical archives, when the office or department that produces them cannot assume the costs of implementing a policy for digital preservation.


1. Which agents should take the decisions about digital preservation?

Governments should generate, implement and coordinate the policies and strategies regarding digital preservation, but it should be an open process that includes multistakeholder participation. Other agents, such as enterprises specialized in information preservation, Science and Technology institutions, Universities, libraries, museums, technicians, and NGOs, data storing centres, among others, should be able to contribute their experiences, know-how, and opinions.


2. Which issues should be considered by a South American policy of preservation of digital information?

Some recommendations could be:
● To conform multistakeholder agencies to make de fundamental decisions about short, medium and long term preservation of digital materials.
● To inform and sensitize the diverse social agents about the importance of the preservation of digital materials.
● To engage the compromise and involvement of the enterprises that deal with information preservation.
● To ensure that the digital materials kept as file documents are stable and fix, in content as well as in their form.
● To ensure that the digital materials are adequately identified.
● To guarantee that digital materials are classified in logical aggregations.
● To use authentication techniques which promote the maintenance and preservation of digital materials.
● To create and periodically update norms, legal frameworks, and procedures for long term preservation of digital materials.
● To protect digital materials from non authorized interventions.
● To assess documents and digital materials to determine the periods of their preservation.
● To make campaigns to sensitize the population about the value of digital preservation.
● The criteria used when it is decided to transfer documents form paper or film to digital materials are valid only within the context in which these criteria were adopted. Prospective studies could help when deciding which digital materials will be most useful for future generations.
● The choice of the stocking technologies should be careful and constantly updated, since there is no physical device that can guarantee the perpetual life of the digital contents.
● The intellectual property costs (copyright) in the digitalization processes are relevant when deciding the policies and projects, and should be considered when making the selection of the materials to be preserved.
● It is necessary to elaborate legislative actions to protect information resources; an option could be the open knowledge licenses, such as Copyleft, Creative Commons, among others, as well as to clearly explicit the limitation for the use of digital contents.
● Quality is a significant element. It is necessary to capture the best intellectual and visual contents, and then to choose the forms to present these contents to the users in the way that responds better to their needs.
● The selected digital resources should be apt to work in diverse types of informatics platforms.
● The responsible agent is the State through its cultural institutions such as: Secretaries of State, Ministry of culture, national libraries, etc. The second responsible agents should be the institution that sponsors the development of universities, research centers, libraries, etc. These organizations have to emphasize that all digital development project is accompanied by a digital preservation policy to ensure the preservation of the institutional developments.


Conclusions
In summary it can be said that a piecemeal groundwork is currently and gradually being built in South America and in Argentina. It appears that South American countries have advanced in digitalizing their vital information, but public policies and strategies for the long-term preservation of information are still to be designed and implemented.

Moreover, the process of digitalizing information does not imply per se the preservation of knowledge. In order to ensure this preservation it is necessary to implement clear and unambiguous policies of long term digital preservation.

There is a basis of existing partial legislation and policies, which can be used to draft a national long-term preservation policy for South American digital materials. The South American Government’s e-government policy can be used as a point of departure, but needs to be urgently updated with reference to the establishment of e-depositories. Some South American academic institutions, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, have well-established e-depositories. Much debate is still required. There is a pressing need to work together in regional institutions such as Mercosur and Unasur. A national long-term digital preservation policy is needed for South America with the purpose of enabling cooperation between major stakeholders and to be discussed on the political agendas of Government. The following elements need to be debated:

a. Ensure political security against loss, access denial or falsification.

b. Provide open, easy digital access (with the exception of externally sensitive, legally protected data).

c. Use open, standard and non-proprietary formats, make regular migration to current formats.

d. Retain formal and semantic content of documents.

e. Context retention: references and cross links to other documents.

f. Ongoing translation into appropriate specialist language of the time.

g. Rules for selection of sources (based on content, expected impact, future users) regardless of type of object, distribution or publication method, publishing house, author category or document type.


When analyzing the main issues related to the preservation of digital information, it is possible to conclude that technological issues are not the most important. Many experts believe that the main defy faced by preservation is located in the institutional area (the design and implementation of public policies), the economic area (the adequate funding to develop such policies), and the legal framework (clarifying intellectual property issues, and defining who have the legitimate right to exploit and access these digital contents).


One of the main difficulties regarding South American strategies and policies for the digital preservation of information is consists in making South America governments aware of the urgent need to include the preservation of digital information in their National Digital Agendas, as well as in regional policies, among other goals, to register and preserve the diverse stages if the public policies and strategies for building feasible Information Societies.. A relevant problem is that the responsibility of the preservation of digital information is distributed among diverse social agents.

Diverse experts usually propose campaigns of sensitization and information of civil servants as a driving factor that will determine a positive change of attitudes towards digital preservation. This implies assuming a priori that individuals and groups which are taught to identify and acknowledge the relevance of digital preservation will change their attitudes towards this issue, and even will generate actions towards creative solutions and strategies. It is generally believed that individuals an public administrations do not generate actions regarding the preservation of digital material because they are not provided with the adequate information, and that when they receive this information, they will change their attitudes and become proactive agents of the cause of long-term digital preservations. Nevertheless, while the dissemination of information remains a valuable tool, it is not enough, by itself, to generate behavioral changes.

Which factors do engender such necessary changes in attitudes, policies, and strategies? We believe that it is not enough to “sensitize” the public administration using reasonable, politically correct arguments informing about an obvious problem, that entrails present and future dangers about collective memory and identities. The fact that the loss of collective memory through the successive losses due to the lack of policies, and of consequent and consecutive losses at each technological turning point, can be perceived by public administrations as a relevant problem is based on the ethic foundations and principles that the diverse types of social actors use to assess and decide action priorities, in individual as well as in collective ways.

This is a complex issue, in which individual and collective behavioral patterns are clearly determinate by institutional cultures and bureaucratic rules that frame, and may encourage or inhibit each course of action. This is the main reason why it becomes absolutely necessary to integrate the issue of preservation of digital information to South American National Digital Agendas, as well as to generate an active debate at Unasur and Latin American level.

These policies and strategies could consider the following issues, among others:

● Providing ample information, seminars, conferences, virtual courses, and publications on international best practices on the subject.
● Generate multistakeholder spaces for participation and actions.
● Provide the individuals and groups that have generated positive changes in strategies and actions regarding the preservation of digital materials with appreciation, recognition, and empowerment.
● Facilitate the international mobility and learning exchanges of public administration members concerned with the preservation of digital materials.



Bibliography:

● Manuel Sánchez Quero and Alejandro Bia Platas. (2002). “Desarrollo de una política de preservación digital: tecnología, planificación y perseverancia”, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, Universidad de Alicante, Spain. ISBN 84-688-0205-0 , págs. 41-50.

● International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) (2002). “Guidelines for digitization projects for collections and holdings in the public domain, particularly those held by libraries and archives”.
Available at: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s19/pubs/digit-guide.pdf

● Finquelievich, Susana, Adrian Rozengardt, Alejandra Davidziuk and Daniel Finquelievich. (2010). “Public Policies for Information Society. A Template”, IFAP – UNESCO, 2010.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/susana_finquelievich/3

● Fernandez Aballi, Isidro, Editor (2007): “Building National Information policies: Experiences in Latin America, Unesco”, Information Society Division, Kingston, pp. 20–27
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● Fyffe, Richard et al. (2004). “Preservation planning for digital information. Final report of the HVC2 Digital Preservation Task Force”. University of Kansas.

● Hedstrom, Margaret et al. (2003). “Invest to save. Report and recommendations of the NSF-DELOS working group on digital archiving and preservation”. National Science Foundation & European Union.

● Jiménez León Alejandro and Maria Graciela Gutiérrez Vallej. (2007). “La preservación digital, un valor agregado en el desarrollo de contenidos digitales”, en 2º Congreso Internacional de Innovación Educativa. Ciudad de México, November, 2007

● Russon, David. (2004). “Access to Information: Now and in the Future”, in: Science for the XXI Century, FORUM I , I.6 Sharing Scientific Knowledge, UNESCO, Budapest, Hungary, 2004.
● Serra Serra Jordi. (2002): “Estrategias de Preservación de Documentos Electrónicos: El Nacional Archives and Records Administration and El Public Record Office”, Facultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació, Universitat de Barcelona, (Actas de las V Jornadas de Archivos Electrónicos. Priego de Córdoba: Archivo Municipal, 2002)

● Thibodeau, Kenneth. (2001). "Building the archives of the future: advances in preserving electronic records at the National Archives and Records Administration". En: D-Lib Magazine, 2001, February, vol. 7 num. 2.

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About the authors:

Susana Finquelievich
Dr. Susana Finquelievich is an Architect, Master in Urbanism at Université Paris VIII, France, and Ph D in Urban Sociology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France. She is a Senior Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET, Argentina). She is the Director of the Research Program on Information Society, at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, University of Buenos Aires. She is President of LINKS, Civil Association for the Development of Information Society. She has authored and co-authored 14 books on diverse aspects of Information Society.

Carlos Brys
Mg. Carlos Brys is professor of Knowledge Management, Electronic Commerce and Information Technology at the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Misiones. Director of Management Modernization and Electronic Government in the Government of the Province of Misiones. Coordinator of the Electronic Government commission of the Federal Council of Public Function of the National Government of Argentina. He has a Masters in Computer Science and is a Ph.D. candidate in Systems Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Malaga, Spain.

Elida Rodríguez
Lic. Elida Rodríguez is working currently at the National Institute of Social Services for the Retired, PAMI, implementing electronic government. She has worked as: Director of ONTI. Undersecretariat of Technologies of administration. Secretariat of Gabinete and Public Administration. Coordinator of the multisectorial group for the design of the Digital Agenda Argentina and the design of the Strategic Federal Plan of Electronic Government. Consultant at the PNUD to evaluate the project “PROMOTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT IN ARGENTINA”. Coordinator of the project “MODEL OF STRATEGIC PLANIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC GOVERMENT” Program URB-AL II, EUROPEAN UNION. Responsible of the design and implementation of the Provincial Plan: “Towards the digital government”. Mendoza.
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