Comments on OAIS responses to our comments on OAIS

Yes, it sounds weird and it was, a bit. One of the workshops at the International Digital Curation Conference was to consider the proposed "dispositions" to the DCC/DPC comments on OAIS, made around two years ago! Sarah Higgins of the DCC and Frances Boyle of the DPC had an initial look and tried to work out which proposed dispositions we might have an issue with. A couple of the original participants made written comments in advance, but the rest of us (the original group or their successors, plus one slightly bemused visitor) had less than 3 hours to hammer through an see whether we could improve on the dispositions. The aim was to identify areas where we really felt the dispositon was wrong, to the extent that it would seriously weaken the standard, AND we were able to provide comments of the form "delete xxxx, insert yyyy". We did identify a few such, but were also pleased to discover that some areas where we thought there would be no change would in fact receive significant revision (although we haven't yet seen the revision).

We understand that the process now is for the OAIS group (MOIMS-DAI) to finalise their text, and then put it out for a second round of public comment early next year. After that, it will go through the CCSDS review process (ie it gets voted on by Space Agencies interested in Mission Operations Information), before going on to ISO, where it gets voted on by National Bodies involved in its Technical Committee! So, don't hold your breath!