Ensuring sustainability and access to digital public archives

In the face of growing data, changing formats and storage, digital archiving faces many challenges. To answer this question, it is necessary to continue the evolution of the offer of services around VITAM (Intangible Values Transmitted to the Archives for Memory) and to encourage its wide reuse, by providing a strategic vision on the major current and future challenges of digital archiving (electronic signature, database archiving, sustainable identifiers, etc.).

The development of digital technology creates a major challenge for the constitution and preservation of archives. The volume of data is exploding, as is the multiplication of formats and storage technologies. How to write history and report on public action if the electronic data and documents that bear the trace have not been properly archived or if they are not widely accessible?

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This imperative was taken into account in 2015 as part of the interdepartmental VITAM program (Intangible values transmitted to the archives for memory). This program has developed an open and reusable digital archiving software solution for free. Far from being just a technological development, the VITAM program was an opportunity to foster the digital transformation of public archiving. It is now possible on a large scale to support office documents, messaging and digital data, and to preserve them by allowing them to be accessed over time with particularly robust, innovative and secure technologies.

The challenge now is to encourage the widest possible reuse of this tool, and to ensure its continuity and continuous improvement. To do this, a new interdepartmental device (MAC VITAM: Maintenance and continuous improvement of VITAM) was put in place in June 2019. An intermediate archiving offer (VAS: VITAM accessible in service) for government services and operators was put into production in September 2021. Its development must be continued. Its adoption will be encouraged for administrations that do not yet have an electronic archiving system.