ORGANISATIONAL THREATS TO DATA CURATION PRESERVATION

INTRODUCTION

Owning a competitive edge 

Organisations with the best information hold a competitive edge over their competitors (Koley & Lala, 2022).  Best business decisions are made in the presence of quality and easily accessible information. As such, organisations need to preserve in perpetuity quality information to keep accessing the preserved information for administrative, legal and historical advantage in business decision making (Abubakar Lawan & Henttonen, 2025; Mosweu & Rakemane, 2020).  There are several data curation preservation threats that an organisation needs to deal with to achieve perpetual access to productive information. Here are some of the organisational threats to data preservation: 

1.  Lack of data curation preservation policy and weak governance

Lack of policy and weak governance structures lead to poor implementation of data preservation vision (Zareef & Jabeen, 2025). A policy provides standards and guidelines for basing decisions and carrying out activities surrounding data preservation regime to ensure perpetual access to productive data. Lack of standards and guidelines lead to poor decision making and actions which lead to poor data preservation practices leading to collapse of perpetual access to productive data. An organisation has to be guided on appraisal of data, storage, application of metadata standards, staffing levels and training, staff responsibilities, technological infrastructure, funding levels and disaster preparedness of the preserved data. Weak governance structure might also see a visionary policy on data preservation going to waste. Audits need to be carried out on a regular basis with corrective actions and punishments being implemented to ensure strict compliance of guidelines and standards in the policy.

2.  Lack of skilled staff

Social Networks and Partnerships

Lack of skilled staff is a recipe for disaster in achieving a vision for data preservation (Pasqui, 2024). Skilled staff are the mouth, ear and hands of a successful data curation preservation regime. First, it is the skilled staff who can engage with top management on issues to do with data curation preservation to gain managerial support on preservation regime. Secondly, skilled staff are responsible for proposing, drafting and raising awareness of policy issues to do with data preservation. Next, skilled staff have social capital through professional networks that help them build and exploit the necessary partnerships in data preservation for the benefits of their institution. Finally, data curation professionals have the mandate and pride of applying data curation preservation standards throughout the lifecycle of data curation preservation to ensure provision of differentiated professional work. According to Chawinga and Zinn (2021) lack of skilled staff leads to lack of top management support on digital curation preservation issues, absence of digital curation policy and its awareness drives, lack of partnerships and failure to implement several standards in the digital curation preservation regime; a scenario which pulls down an institution’s vision on data curation preservation.

3.  Lack of funding

Lack of funding is another threat that an organisation faces to realise a data curation preservation vision (Pasqui, 2024; Zareef & Jabeen, 2025). Maintaining motivated and relevant skilled staff, installing and maintaining technological infrastructure need constant and huge chunks of money (United Nations Education Scientific Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 2021). Limited funding would see the regime running into issues to do with technological obsolescence, technological faults and employment of non-professionals which would all lead to a data curation preservation disaster in the organisation.  There is need for enough funds to fund professional staff and the cutting-edge technology infrastructure to achieve institution’s vision on data curation preservation.

CONCLUSION

Achieving a data curation preservation vision is as good as securing a competitive edge in this information economy. As such, data curation preservation has to be treated as a strategic issue for the benefit of an organisation.

 

 

REFERENCES

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Mosweu, O., & Rakemane, D. (2020). The role of records management in ensuring good governance in Africa. Journal of the South African Society of Archivists, 53, 103–123. https://doi.org/10.4314/jsasa.v53i1.8

Pasqui, V. (2024). Digital curation and long-term digital preservation in libraries. JLIS.It, 15(1), 109–125. https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-567

United Nations Education Scientific Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2021). Outcomes of UNESCO policy dialogue documentary heritage at risk: policy gaps in digital preservation. https://www.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documentary_heritage_at_risk_policy_gaps_in_digital_preservation_en.pdf

Zareef, M., & Jabeen, M. (2025). Systematic literature review of digital curation services in academic libraries (2001–2023): A global perspective. Journal of Information Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515241305348