DASH Development and Migration DSpace 8 Project

• Project Name
• Project Goals
• Problem and Value Statements
  • Problem Statement
  • Solution Business Value
  • Alignment with Harvard Library Multi-Year Goals and Objectives
  • Alignment with HUIT Objectives
• Vision
  • (Insert Vision table, as below)
  • Approach
• In Scope/Out of Scope
  • In Scope
  • Out of Scope
• Deliverables and Work Products
  • Key Tasks and Outcomes
• Definition of Done
• Stakeholders
• Project Team
• Cost and Estimated Schedule
• Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, and Risks
  • Project Assumptions
  • Project Constraints
  • Project Dependencies
  • Project Risks
• Acceptance

DASH Development and Migration to Hosted DSpace 8

Project Goals:

Invest in sustainable infrastructure and improvements to DASH's workflow, metadata, metrics, and preservation. This will allow Harvard Library to broaden DASH’s service adoption levels and support Harvard's research lifecycle, data repositories, digital asset management, and digital scholarship systems.

• Enhance DASH interoperability 

• Advance repository collaboration 

• Establish a sustainable infrastructure  

• Improve workflow, refine metadata, and diversify repository content 

Problem and Value Statements

Problem Statement

The current version of DSpace 6.2 is highly customized to accommodate the D3 workflow, waiver requests, assistance authorizations, quick submit deposit form, and the DASH Stories feedback module. Local customizations slow or prevent adoption of newer releases due to the need to re-write local code customizations to new versions. These local customizations, along with in-house platform hosting, have created an environment that lacks flexibility and presents risk for long-term viability. 

Solution Business Value

Working with a new Hosting and Services partner (4Science), we will target desirable local customizations to the DSpace 8 release, and modify local practices (where necessary) in order to reduce or eliminate true local customizations. DSpace versions 7.2 and higher are being designed to WCAG 2.0 AA and AAA standards and these versions would also enable the Harvard Libraries to use the new Entities functionality to provide improved services for journal hosting and overlay journals. There are also ongoing opportunities to collaborate with peer institutions on mutual open source development projects, most immediately around quantitative and qualitative metrics modules, researcher profiles, and metadata harvesting. These solutions will allow OSRDS and LTS to position DASH as a service that will be able to meet current and future sustainability goals for advancing open access to knowledge.

Alignment with Harvard Library Multi-Year Goals and Objectives

This projects aligns with FY 24 HL Goals:

• Diversify and expand access to knowledge

• Maximize the breadth of tangible and digital collections across Harvard and peer institutions, for the benefit of all partners

• Increase our focus on acquiring, accessing, and creating digital content that is accessible to all, as open as possible, and permits creative uses of collections as data 

• Invest in open access infrastructure and services that support equitable, sustainable models for scholarly communication and open knowledge

Alignment with HUIT Objectives

This project aligns with the following FY 23 HUIT Goal:

• Identify 20 candidate services that are “at risk” or “unsustainable” and produce action and/or remediation plans

Vision

Position DASH as an exemplary and collaborative next generation repository that supports Harvard Library initiatives in advancing open knowledge. DASH must evolve to become a more interoperable, collaborative, and accessible next-generation repository. With a more sustainable infrastructure and improvements to its workflow, metadata, metrics, and preservation, the Harvard Library can broaden DASH’s services in order to cooperate with Harvard research lifecycle, data repositories, digital asset management, and digital scholarship systems. 

Goals:

• Enhance DASH interoperability 
• Advance repository collaboration 
• Establish a sustainable infrastructure  
• Improve workflow, refine metadata, and diversify repository content 

In Scope/Out of Scope

In Scope

• Upgrading to DSpace 7.x or DSpace 8
• Working with 4Science to develop DASH Stories for inclusion into the standard code base
• Working with 4Science to develop modifications to Waivers/AA/IOAL for inclusion into the standard code base
• Reassigning Harvard's authority data into the new DSpace "Entity" items and integrating authorization with HKey/OIDC
• Working with 4Science to develop search enhancements for inclusion into the standard code base
• Refining importing of data, search statistics, and storage statistics metrics with 4Science
• Data migration, hosting and support

Out of Scope

• Custom solutions for Harvard workflows unless explicitly necessary to support HUIT security protocols
• Custom workflows for end-users of DASH unless explicitly necessary based on critical policy or security protocols

Deliverables and Work Products

Key Tasks and Outcomes

Definition of Done

Stakeholders

(Who is sponsoring the work? Who is funding the work? Who will accept the work? What organizations, departments, or people will benefit from this work? Link to related governance structure wiki page(s) where relevant.)

Project Team

(Roles include: Product Owner, Project Manager, Scrum Master, Business Analyst, Quality Assurance Analyst, Architect, Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, UI Designer, Metadata Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, Release Coordinator)

Cost and Estimated Schedule

(Define the resource commitment, project phases with their associated activities, deliverables and milestones. Include a plan for transitioning to a stabilization phase, if needed, and then operations and maintenance. This section may not be relevant for projects for which schedule/date-based information is not available at the time the charter is being written. In that case, be sure to document the schedule, milestones, and deliverable dates in other ways with stakeholders and be transparent about accomplishing them.)

Assumptions, Constraints, Dependencies, and Risks

Project Assumptions

• • Stakeholders have identified the appropriate subject matter experts to participate in the Working Group and who can accurately and completely define the business requirements for the project
  • Stakeholders will have made available the time required to participate in project activities and to complete tasks as requested
  • Project sponsor and other stakeholders are empowered to make the decision required for the project to be a success
  • Project sponsor will provide written approval to move forward with system development when requested as part of incremental/iterative system demonstrations

Project Constraints

• • Scope - as detailed in contract
  • Time - go live is projected for 9/1/2024
  • Cost - $128,939.23 inclusive of development, PM, T&M, hosting and support

Project Dependencies

Project Risks

Acceptance

Accepted by: Colin Lukens

Prepared by: Grace Dunbar

Effective Date: August 1, 2023