La valutazione di interoperabilità dei formati elettronici nelle nuove Linee guida sulla formazione, gestione e conservazione dei documenti informatici

Abstract

This paper aims at addressing the issues of file formats assessment for the preservation of digital documents, which is critically important because the chance of preserving documents created in these formats and minimizing the migration operations that will become necessary over time depends greatly on it. In particular, the paper shows the methodology proposed by the Italian Agency for Digital Government who recently published the Guidelines on the creation, management and preservation of digital documents. For the first time worldwide, this methodology is based on a qualitative and quantitative method based on the evaluation of some properties of file formats and assigning them a score; the sum of these scores constitutes the so-called interoperability index which makes it possible to establish whether the format is prone to obsolescence or not. The method is explained with examples that show its potential. Some suggestions for improvement and further developments are then discussed.