National Archives of Australia
Software
The National Archives' suite of software is referred to as the Digital Preservation Software Platform (DPSP). The DPSP is made up of the following applications:
When researching and developing our approach to digital preservation, we made some important decisions about the software we required.
As a result, the software:
- is licensed under an open source licence (the GNU General Public License, or GPL)
- converts proprietary file formats to preservation file formats based on open standards.
Open source development allows the Archives to build upon the efforts of other open source projects, so we can achieve our goals more quickly with fewer resources. Australian Government agencies and other stakeholders benefit too; the software developed by the Archives is freely available to download and use.
The Archives uses preservation file formats based on open standards, which:
- have full specifications that are publicly documented
- are interoperable with a range of software applications
- are not affected by changes in commercial property rights over software in the marketplace.
Future directions
The Archives' development priorities are driven by changes in technology, standards and our own business processes. We are continually improving our software so it can handle the exponential growth in file sizes and process an increasing variety of file formats and volumes of digital records.
