ICZ Awarded Prestigious Order for the Czech National Archive

"In terms of overall volume, the Czech National Archive has access to the largest collection of documents and records in the Czech Republic. It is therefore a great honor and a challenge to participate in the preparation of this project," said Jiří Votruba, Director of the Division of Document Management for ICZ. He added, "ICZ proposed a professional concept for the long-term storage of and access to documents based on years of experience in document management and administration delivering solutions in the area of complex Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Our concept proposal relies on expertise acquired by ICZ specialists in non-commercial activities such as membership in the commission for MoReq, cooperation in the preparation of standards for the long-term storage of electronic documents in the CR and others."

This project is the first phase in the construction of a nationwide digital archive that will provide long-term digital document storage services to all legal entities from the fields of archiving and file management. In practice this pertains to all government bodies, health-care facilities, state companies and organizations as well as numerous commercial subjects such as professional chambers, civic organizations, foundations and others.

The task of ICZ is to conduct a feasibility study of the entire system. Over the course of approximately one year from launching the study the project will be designed, all authorization workstations and as well as the entire technical design of the project for the storage of hundreds of thousands of documents amounting to dozens of terabytes of data will be implemented. The system will allow for the documentation of both standard text documents as well as audio and video data and web pages.

The system is also designed to enable both medium and long-term data storage without time limitations. It will be designed to provide digital filing services for the long-term storage of electronic documents by the author until their evaluation, transfer or destruction. During the period of storage of electronic documents the author and other authorized subjects will have access to them in electronic form. The system will also have to provide accessibility (upon expiration of the protection period) to the public and enable further archival processing.

The project will encompass access to electronic documents including storage methods, the provision of technical equipment and an analysis of the financial costs, personnel requirements and space requirements necessary for the establishment of the digital archive work station. The design selected by the National Archive will be implemented by ICZ and will adhere to all OAIS (Open Archival Information System) standards to be verified during actual operation predominately as pertains to the storage of digital documents. Because of the long-term nature, volume and importance of these data the infrastructure chosen for the solution was an IBM platform able to provide a robust and scalable system with an emphasis on security and future development.