Policy Analysis Methodology Policy Data, Descriptions & Insights

A more detailed description of each visualisation and the associated data is available on this page. Possible insights and interpretations of the information are also discussed.

The following documents provide further contextual information:

Visualisations can be viewed in full screen by clicking on the double-headed arrow symbol to the bottom right. Also, underlying data for some visualisations can be viewed by right-clicking the graph and choosing “Show Data”.



Policy Data & Descriptions

Policy Development Status

This illustrates the completion status for each policy subject within each institution (‘Yes’), and also indicates where external policies are applied to a subject area (‘External’) - 4/6 institutions implement at least one external policy. In some cases, policies are in draft stage or are only partially implemented.

Policies are listed absent or not specified in only 14% of cases. Future updates to the survey data may help to indicate the rate of progression in those policies which are currently under development.

This visualisation illustrates a greater proportion of external policies within Data Management (20%), and IT Strategy and Policy (18%). We can also see a higher policy completion rate within Collections Strategy & Management (60%) and the lowest within Data Management (30%)

This visualisation allows for interactive exploration of the presence/absence of policy components within each institution and by policy subject.

It should be noted that in some cases where an institution has listed a policy as 'present', none of the individual policy components within that subject were identified in the analysis (for example - Institution 5 and FAIR/Open Data/Open Access).

Two policy components were identified for all participants: Curation and GDPR. The following components are almost universally covered by 5 out of 6 insitutions:

  • Attribution & Citation
  • Collections development goals and prioritisation
  • Copyright
  • Default license(s) for 2D images
  • Default license(s) for collections data
  • Digital licensing
  • Incoming & Outgoing Loans
  • Object Entry
  • Publically Available Data & Digital Media
  • Visitor Access

The majority of these sit under Data & Digital Media Publication - within this subject area, 6/10 components are represented by 5 of the 6 institutions. Access & Benefits Sharing (ABS) issues are also well-covered in the majority of surveyed institutions.

This illustrates the comparative proportion of policy components per subject covered by each institution. It shows significant variation in how comprehensively the subject areas are addressed by each participant. However, it should be noted that many of the individual policy components were identified from a review of documents from institution 3, thus explaining the higher overall coverage. Despite this, there are some areas which show notably greater coverage in the majority of cases, such as Access & Benefits sharing. Areas with consistently lower coverage include Digitisation Strategy and Prioritisation, and Public Sector Information.

These graphs illustrate the shareability and accessibility of these policies present at each institution. In this case, shareability refers to whether policies can be shared with peer institutions. Accessibility refers to whether policies are visible in the public domain.

Shareability of policies varies widely, with 64% of one institution's known policies unshareable, and 93% shareable in another. Whether shareable policies are also publicly shareable is not fully identifiable, although can be inferred for some policies through the 'visibility' data below.

Shareability with peer institutions does not always correlate to public visibility: here we can see that institution 3, with 93% policies shareable, has exclusively internal visibility. Whilst institution 2 has 33% public visibility and 33% peer shareability, this does not refer to the same policies. Overall, the degree of known public visibility is low, ranging from 15-33%.

Policy Coverage: ‘Collections access & information’ and ‘Collections care, development & scope’ had the most consistent internal presence across all surveyed institutions. This likely reflects the greater longevity and therefore maturity of physical collections management policy over digital. Policies with legal and regulatory implications such as ‘Information security’ and ‘Personal data’ are also well-represented, possibly due to these external driving factors.

Component Coverage: The two policy components with 100% coverage are ‘Curation’ and ‘GDPR Applies’. The latter should be expected due to the severe implications of GDPR non-compliance. Curation is an expected universal feature of collections-holding institutions and we would therefore expect well-embedded policies. We see the lowest component coverage under Digitisation Strategy & Prioritisation, Cloud Services and Storage, and Information Risk Management. This may similarly reflect the lower maturity of digital vs physical infrastructure. Digitisation strategies are likely to evolve and be further established through the work of ICEDIG, DiSSCo and other linked projects.

Areas for further investigation:

The data we have tell us little about policy compliance. Internal awareness of policies, adherence to policies, and associated training may all vary widely and could be influenced by the following:

  • Ease of accessibility of the policy within institutions
  • Staff awareness and/or related training
  • Adaptibility of policies to different departments and working environments
  • Ability to translate external policies into institutional practice