Posted: October 25, 2022

BCC Strategic Plan

BitCurator Consortium

BitCurator Strategic Directions 2022-2024

1. Purpose

The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) is an independent, community-led membership association which builds a community of organizations that support practitioners responsible for the curation of born-digital materials, especially through the application of free and open-source tools.

2. Vision

The BCC addresses the articulated needs of the BitCurator community—training, collaboration, research, software development, documentation, integration, code—while advocating for the expansion of digital forensics practice worldwide.

3. Strategic Plan 2022-2024

The Consortium offers this two-year strategic plan to guide membership, BCC Executive Council, standing committees, staff and wider digital forensics community. The following goals were collaboratively formed by the BCC Executive Council and standing committees to further the Consortium’s purpose and vision.

Goal 1: Expand and improve technical documentation for the BitCurator Environment so that it meets the needs of various different groups

Objective 1.1: The BCC Executive Council (EC) in collaboration with the Documentation & Training Committee, Software Development Committee, and Educators Membership Working Group will refine and scope affiliated projects to better meet community needs, with the expectation that these projects will include anti-racist work or partnerships. The EC will draft criteria for affiliated projects, which they will seek feedback and approval on from the other committees and groups. This activity will help to ensure that the BCC pursues the most relevant and impactful work that will provide the greatest benefit to the community.

Objective 1.2: The BCC Executive Council in collaboration with the Document & Training Committee, Software Development Committee, and Educators Membership Working Group will create a clear process to sunset affiliated projects that will allow us to effectively steward our resources with transparency and more responsively to our community’s needs. This activity will also provide a useful mechanism to review project closure and critically examine hardware, software, project management, or educational approaches to better our anti-racist approach in future undertakings.

Objective 1.3: The BCC Executive Council in collaboration with the Document & Training Committee, Software Development Committee, and Educators Membership Working Group (EMWG) will perform a review of all existing documentation to determine whether there are any gaps in information covered, need for updates, and the sustainability and process for review if necessary. This work provides the opportunity to build on the Document & Training Committee’s existing work to provide broad free access to documentation and tools, build on and incorporate EMWG educational aims including addressing and documenting ethical issues in digital forensics, accessibility issues, and more.

Objective 1.4: The BCC Educators Membership Working Group (EMWG) with guidance from the BCC Executive Council and in collaboration with the Document & Training Committee and the Membership Committee will leverage existing technical overviews of digital forensics and BitCurator for multiple audiences. This effort will further the BCC’s mission to support a wide audience of users, including students and novice professionals.

Objective 1.5: The BCC Documentation and Training Committee with guidance from the BCC Executive Committee will review accessibility of BitCurator documentation. This effort will further the BCC’s commitment to equity by making its resources as widely accessible as possible.

Objective 1.6: The BCC Executive Council in collaboration with leaders of projects initiated during prior BitCurator User Forums (BUF) such as the Python Study Group will determine tasks needed to sunset those projects. This will ensure that the BCC is only engaged in the most relevant and timely work.

Objective 1.7: The BCC Documentation and Training Committee in collaboration with the Program Committee will conduct at least one training activity utilizing resources from the Introduction to Digital Forensics/BitCurator workshop given at the BitCurator User Forum in 2021. This training will further the BCC’s mission to provide educational opportunities in the area of digital forensics to a wide audience.

Goal 2: Strengthen the governance and support structure of the BitCurator Consortium

Objective 2.1: The BCC Executive Council (EC) with guidance from Educopia staff will conduct a pilot that leverages EC members’ labor to distribute workload and fill gaps in BCC communication strategies. It will assess communication needs, create responsibilities, rotate activities among EC members, and, if successful, will become a model to apply in other areas of BCC governance and support structures. This activity proactively supports efforts to be mindful of volunteer and staff capacity and avoid burnout by equitably and inclusively spreading labor amongst BCC’s governance structure.

Goal 3: Advance the BitCurator technical environment with improved usability, interoperability, and options for future development

Objective 3.1: The BCC Executive Council and Software Development Committee will identify one to three grant opportunities and apply to at least one that supports development of the BitCurator environment. This objective will advance equity and inclusion by seeking new opportunities that help finance improvement of the BitCurator tools in order to respond to community needs for usability and interoperability.

Objective 3.2: The Software Development and Documentation & Training Committees with support from the Executive Council will improve BitCurator interoperability by researching ways the community uses BitCurator with other systems, and by creating a proof of concept design that will allow interoperability between systems. This will facilitate equity and inclusion by providing the BitCurator community with a more user-friendly product that works with other tools.

Objective 3.3: The BCC Documentation & Training Committee will improve documentation resources by soliciting a call for workflow documentation for microservices/scenarios that speak to different combinations of systems and tool uses, sharing these as resources on the BCC website or BitCurator wiki, then holding a community call when the resources are released. This project will support equity and inclusion in the field by providing free, accessible, and practical resources for professionals as they begin to set up their workflows.

Goal 4: Expand focus of community to support broader application and use of digital forensics in cultural heritage

Objective 4.1: The Executive Council and Membership Committee will work in tandem to alternate at least three monthly community call meeting times throughout each year to allow for more participation outside of the Western Hemisphere. This furthers our goal of equitable and inclusive programming by making the calls accessible to a wider range of participants and make membership more attractive for international institutions, diversifying membership.

Objective 4.2: The Membership Committee, with support from the Executive Council and based on recommendations from the Educators Membership Working Group, will enact retention strategies/programs for exiting members. Using feedback from the upcoming user survey to guide these strategies, the Membership Committee will ensure we gather critical feedback that allows us to better meet the needs of the community and guide improved inclusive recruitment and retention practices. 

Objective 4.3: The Forum Committee, in collaboration with the Executive Council, will take one initiative/idea/activity raised during the BitCurator Forum to implement in partnership with another organization each year. Listening to the community and meeting members where they are honors people’s time and effort in attending the Forum and sharing their knowledge, and offers a tangible service built from the information shared in that space. Each of these activities will be formed with an evaluation and sunset process in place.

Goal 5: Strengthen and expand membership in order to increase the financial sustainability and security of the Consortium

Objective 5.1: The Membership Committee, in collaboration with all committees of the BCC, will conduct a membership survey in order to collect critical feedback from the BCC membership. The survey will ensure we are meeting community needs, guide decisions on which programs and committees to support and which to sunset, and help us better embody our inclusivity statement. 

Objective 5.2: The Educators Membership Working Group and Membership Committee will explore additional membership models to make the BCC more accessible to students and others who have not traditionally been BCC members, increasing access to BCC membership benefits. We will measure success as proposing at least one new membership to the Executive Council for approval. 

Objective 5.3: The Membership Committee will continue the 1-1 outreach process for recruitment, which acts as targeted outreach to interested community members, increases access to member benefits, and provides an opportunity to do outreach to potential members from institutions/communities underrepresented in the BCC. 

Objective 5.4: The Program Committee, with support from the Executive Council, will hold a virtual BitCurator Users Forum in March 2023. The Forum will be held virtually in order to accommodate more attendees and will include a $0 pricing tier to level the playing field for anyone interested in learning about digital curation practice. The Program Committee will also coordinate with any members who wish to hold in-person regional events during the Forum.

 

Strategic Directions Timeline

This Airtable view shows each of the above strategic objectives, organized by goal, and the progress currently made on each one. The table and the goals themselves are works in progress, so check back for updates. For a customized experience, try changing the timescale of the table on the top right, or click on the objective bars to see a full description.

Past Strategic Directions

See where we’ve come from and how it has influenced where we’re going.

Review the Strategic Directions for 2018-2021.

Cite this resource:
BitCurator Consortium. (October 25, 2022). BCC Strategic Plan. .
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