The UK National Archives leads on The Digital Continuity project on the behalf of UK government departments to create a shared service solution to the challenges of protecting vital digital files from technological obsolescence.

The Digital Continuity project published an 8 page brochure in the latter half of 2007 titled - If you don’t protect your digital assets, they can’t protect you.

The project describes Digital Continuity as:

“Electronic communication is how government does business. Yet the average life of a piece of digital information is just five to seven years. Vital government information is becoming unreadable or even unrecoverable because the media it is stored on is deteriorating, hardware and software is no longer in use, or successor products cannot read old files. For example 5 1⁄4 disks, though commonplace 20 years ago, are now obsolete; CDs and DVDs have a finite lifespan; software such as WordStar, used to view documents, cannot easily be run on modern machines.”

The Digital Continuity Project portal provides information on:

• Working with government departments
• Digital Continuity system
• Information for suppliers
• Frequently asked questions