Tehnologii de procesare și garantare a conținutului electronic

Contract number: 10DPST/20.08.2013

Project title: Technologies for processing and assuring electronic content – acronym: TAPE

Project Coordinator: CERTSIGN SA

Project Manager: Togan Virgiliu-Mihail

Project funded by UEFISCDI – Program: Innovation – Subprogram: Product-Systems-Technologies Development

Project value

Total value: 4.728.225,00 RON

Non-refundable: 1.878.637,75 RON

Consortium: CERTSIGN SA

Project objectives

Strategic objectives

certSIGN’s overall objective to increase its market competitiveness aligns with the project objective to stimulate enterprise innovation by developing “Technologies for processing and assuring electronic content” that underlie products or services which will allow satisfying some needs lying at the convergence of eDiscovery-type markets combined with long term electronic archiving and content assurance.

The eDescovery market refers, in a broader sense, to finding, processing and presentation of stored information or exchanged in electronic format, for better information management, for past values preservation or to use information in any kind of litigations. On the other hand, the electronic information archiving market refers to the products and services that provide long-term storage, in accordance with electronic archival rules, for electronic content, specific to an organization. Also, these solutions provide capabilities for searching and finding information quickly, allowing organizations to enforce rules and policies for archiving information, thus providing the platform for services such as e-Discovery or data loss prevention.

The technologies developed will form the basis of a software product that will be delivered, depending on market opportunities as a standalone application or as Software as a Service (SaaS) / Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Electronic information is different from printed information because of its intangible form, volume, or durability over time. Also, once the information is identified, in most cases, it is presented with varying degrees of relevance, consistency and coherent structure. When electronic information takes a structured or indexed form, it is usually accompanied by metadata that is not present in the document itself but can play an important role if it is used as evidence in various litigations (e.g. the date and time when the information was issued is useful in a copyright dispute).

There should be considered the fact that, globally, the IT industry has a clear tendency to increase the level processing for the information generated by organizations. The R&D project in this field will allow, at this point, to further develop Romania’s accumulated experience and to place the global IT services and applications in the forefront.

In the medium term, the project will allow certSIGN SA:

To further develop its existing design, R&D and production capabilities and to add in its portfolio a new range of technologies that will form the basis for targeting new market niches or for opening new markets;
To capitalize the results of research and development through production and marketing, so that in 2015 – 2018 it will achieve a cumulative sales volume of 18,225,000 RON.
To strengthen its research and development team with valuable young people, whose training will start in the university, including through the exchange of experience in research with the academia.

Specific objectives

Identifying, collecting and indexing the electronic content provided by the client
Determining this electronic content’s authenticity and integrity
Ensuring the electronic content
Archiving the electronic content
Presenting the relevant electronic continent from the archive or from other processing phases

Electronic content may originate from:

Internal or private resources of an institution or company (joint collections of information – intranet, file servers or individual collections of information – spread on PCs, laptops etc.)
The external or public resources of the same institutions or companis (websites, social media, wikis, blogs etc.)

Of course, the two sources above may be used separately or simultaneously.

For positioning the solutions and services in the reference industry the EDRM model is used as a benchmark.

The EDRM model was created in may 2005 address the lack of standards and guidelines in the eDiscovery market – a problem identified in 2003 and 2004 that was a major concern for consumers and providers of such products and services alike.

The finished reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic products and services for eDiscovery. The finished model was placed in the public domain in 2006.

The service provided by certSIGN SA will include the components for identifying, collecting, processing and assuring and for on demand archival and presentation

Subsequently, certSIGN will be able to develop the service to other adjacent areas such as business intelligence or data mining, to the extent to which the market opportunities demand it

The way forward in this perspective will be determined after the completion of the analysis phase of the project development, a phase which aims to collect as much information as possible, including by resorting to external consulting services

Information management

Setting the information exchange path from the creation to the end of the electronic content’s life so as to reduce the associated risk and costs

Identification

Locating potential sources of electronic information and determining their field of relevance

Collection

Collection of electronic information for later use in various stages of the process (analysis, presentation, etc)

Processing

Reducing the volume of electronic information and converting it, if necessary, into a format more suitable for review and analysis

Document review

Evaluation of electronic information in terms of relevance and access rights

Analysis

Evaluation of electronic information in terms of content and context it is in, including addressed topics

Production

Delivery of electronically stored information to the next presentation phase in the approved format and using the appropriate delivery mechanisms

Presentation

Displaying the relevant electronic content in front of the beneficiary or third parties

Implementation period: 27 months

Expected results

Technical studies on algorithms, technical mechanisms and methods available for collecting, structuring, archiving and ensuring electronic content

Technical study on methods for collecting electronic content within the organization.
Technical study on existing algorithms and methods for structuring and indexing electronic content.
Technical study on the technical mechanisms that can be applied for long-term archiving of information and on the legal rules and regulations that must be applied in this regard.
Study on proposing a set of procedures to govern the operation of a nationwide TTP-type service designed to ensure the published web content.
Reinforced technical feasibility study for industrial research of technologies for collecting, structuring, archiving and securing electronic content.
Project presentation website
Articles published in the press, publishing content on the web site dedicated to the project etc.

Creating experimental models and the requirements analysis in view of designing prototypes

The experimental model for the content collecting components that will work on a client distributed mode, for the centralized collection and archiving components and TTP services to ensure web content.
Documentation of functional requirements for the components for collecting, structuring, archiving and ensuring electronic content.
Documentation of functional requirements for the TTP service for ensuring web content
An article published in an international journal or conference.
Participating to an international conference.

Designing prototypes and developing technical implementation documentation.

Documentation for the design and production of the components for collecting electronic content.
Documentation for the design and production of the components for archival and ensuring the collected electronic content.
Documentation for the design and production of the TTP-type service for ensuring web content.
An article published in an international journal or conference.
Participating to an international conference.

Developing, testing and validating prototypes

The final prototype of the components for collecting electronic content.
The final prototype of the components for archiving and ensuring the collected electronic content.
The final prototype of the TTP-type service for ensuring web content.
The product prototype that includes all the technical components of the previous prototypes.
An article published in a journal or conference indexed in databases renowned internationally.
Participating to an international conference.

Technological transfer of the results of experimental development

The supporting documentation of the products that will use the technologies developed as a prototype in view of their manufacturing.
Documentation for preparation and execution of product manufacturing.
Presentation, installation, putting into service and user manuals.
The documentation necessary for the protection of industrial property rights.
A technical presentation workshop.

For more information on this project see the reports below:

Contact

Cristina Banu