u n i t e d s t a t e s c o p y r i g h t o f f i c e
Report and Recommendations of the
Technical Upgrades Special Project Team
office of the chief information officer february 2015
u n i t e d s t a t e s c o p y r i g h t o f f i c e
Report and Recommendations of the
Technical Upgrades Special Project Team
office of the chief information officer february 2015
United
States
Copyright
Office
Library
of
Congress ·
101
Independence Avenue
SE
·Washington,
DC
20559-6ooo · www.copyright.gov
February
18,
2015
Dear Register Pallante:
I am pleased to deliver a report and final recommendations from the Technical
Upgrades Special Project Team. The project team was charged with assessing technological
functionality and business strategies related to Copyright Office services. I chaired this
project in my capacity as the first
Chief
Information Officer
of
the Copyright Office.
The project team performed significant research and analysis on important concepts
and technologies that would optimize key services for customers and learned a great deal
from our interviews with stakeholders throughout the copyright community. We also
solicited written comments from the public.
While the report contains many recommendations, our current IT environment
presents a substantial limitation and we will need to work carefully with the Library
of
Congress to reconcile enterprise solutions with existing infrastructure and architecture.
It
seems unlikely,
if
not impossible, that the Copyright Office can administer the law
effectively into the future without technological changes that reflect the importance and
growth
of
its mission.
Thank you for entrusting me with this important project. I hope that the report will
serve as a valuable resource for the Copyright Office as we consider future strategies.
Yours sincerely,
Dou as
P.
Ament
Chief
Information Officer
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................4
1. Background .......................................................................................................................................12
2. Project Objectives.............................................................................................................................12
3. Project Approach and Methodology ...............................................................................................13
3.1 Intelligence Gathering and Analysis .....................................................................................13
3.2 Resource Utilization .............................................................................................................14
4. Participating Parties .........................................................................................................................14
5. Findings: Additional Service Recommendations ..........................................................................17
5.1 Challenges with Current User Experience ...........................................................................17
5.1.1 Feedback from External Users ................................................................................17
5.1.2 Feedback from Internal Users.................................................................................23
5.1.3 Additional Ideas and Features ................................................................................24
5.2 Challenges with Existing Public Record...............................................................................27
5.3 Inadequacies of Current Copyright Data..............................................................................30
5.3.1 Data Exchange .......................................................................................................30
5.3.2 Data Model and Data Standards.............................................................................32
5.3.3 Data Repository ......................................................................................................35
5.4 Outdated Architecture & Infrastructure.................................................................................35
6. Enabling Technologies.....................................................................................................................37
6.1 Technologies........................................................................................................................37
6.1.1 Application Programming Interface.........................................................................37
6.1.2 Cloud Computing ....................................................................................................39
6.1.3 Integrated Solutions / Business-Driven Ecosystems ..............................................44
6.1.4 Service Oriented Architecture .................................................................................45
6.1.5 Mobile Computing...................................................................................................47
6.1.6 Big Data ..................................................................................................................49
6.1.7 Data Analytics .........................................................................................................50
6.2 Deployment Challenges .......................................................................................................51
6.3 Adoption of New Technology ...............................................................................................52
6.4 Cost/Benefit Considerations.................................................................................................54
7. Modernizing the Copyright Office ...................................................................................................54
7.1 Enhance User Experience ...................................................................................................55
Enhance User Experience Recommendations.................................................................55
7.2 Enhance Public Record........................................................................................................57
7.2.1 Public Record Database .........................................................................................58
7.2.2 Data Sources ..........................................................................................................59
7.2.3 Credibility of Data....................................................................................................60
Enhance Public Record Recommendations .....................................................................60
7.3 Improve Data and Information..............................................................................................61
7.3.1 Data Strategy, Data Management & Data Governance..........................................63
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
7.3.2 Data Analytics .........................................................................................................66
7.3.3 Data Exchange .......................................................................................................66
Improve Data and Information Recommendations ...........................................................71
7.4 Architecture ..........................................................................................................................73
7.4.1 Enterprise Architecture (EA) ...................................................................................73
7.4.2 Technology Infrastructure: Requirements and Alternatives ....................................74
7.4.3 Secure Repository for Works of Authorship............................................................77
7.4.4 Remote Workforce..................................................................................................78
7.4.5 Mobile Technologies...............................................................................................79
7.4.6 Systems Development Strategy..............................................................................80
7.4.7 Enterprise Solution..................................................................................................80
Architecture Recommendations .......................................................................................81
Closing ......................................................................................................................................................82
Appendices
Appendix A: Federal Register Notices
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Executive Summary
On October 25, 2011, the Register of Copyrights released a two-year work plan entitled
Priorities and Special Projects of the United States Copyright Office. The plan
established ten special projects that were designed to “improve the quality and
efficiency of services in the twenty-first century” and, more generally, to prepare the
Office for future challenges.
1
This document is a report from the project team that was
responsible for examining “Technical Upgrades,” an assignment that commenced in
November 2011 and included stakeholder input throughout 2013. The project team
spent 2014 analyzing its findings and conducting additional research. Although the
initial focus of the project was technology as it affects electronic registration, the scope
expanded over time into a broader assessment of technological functionality and related
business strategies.
The Technical Upgrades project should be viewed as an intelligence gathering initiative,
not only to evaluate the technological environment in which the services of the
Copyright Office are currently offered and used, but also to ensure the long-term
flexibility that will be necessary as the Office plans for and implements changes to its
administrative and regulatory functions. The project has highlighted important concepts
and technologies that would enhance key services for customers – including copyright
registration, the recordation of copyright-related documents, and the searchability of
public records – and would facilitate the exchange of legal and business data with the
global marketplace. This report documents various issues related to the Office’s
technology and services in a set of findings, along with recommendations that will
inform the strategic direction of the Copyright Office.
In order to enable the suggestions recommended in this Report, and to manage the IT
resources of the Copyright Office in a manner that supports its core mission and
statutory responsibilities, the Office will need significant improvements. In the view of
the project team, these improvements should be premised upon a new architecture and
infrastructure that is specific to the Copyright Office. This infrastructure would support
such initiatives as an enterprise application solution and a mobile technology strategy.
In addition, the Copyright Office will need staffing resources that are more appropriate
to its growing technology and data needs. It will need experts to support a systems
development strategy and to handle implementation of new initiatives. This staff would
have the benefit of being fully integrated into the daily business of the Copyright Office,
and would also be familiar with the businesses that depend upon the Office.
The review process that served as a basis for the recommendations in this report
commenced in November 2011 and included significant outreach to stakeholders and
1
See also Maria A. Pallante, The Next Generation Copyright Office: What it Means and Why it Matters,
61 J. C
OPYRIGHT SOC'Y 213 (2014) (summarizing the scope and preliminary findings of the Office's special
projects).
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
other Office constituents. As part of our work, the team interviewed stakeholders from
throughout the copyright community and solicited written comments from the public.
2
Midway through the project, we published a set of questions in the Federal Register.
These focused on (1) the capabilities of the Copyright Office’s public portals; (2) the
nature of the data captured during the registration and recordation processes; (3) data
and metadata standards used within the copyright industries; (4) data storage practices
and policies; (5) search technologies; and (6) the possibility of integrating third-party
data or databases.
We received feedback from a variety of entities, including large and small businesses,
individuals, trade and professional associations, rights management groups, legal
practitioners, publishers, and content creators, as well as from internal Copyright Office
staff. This input was in addition to significant research and analysis from the project
team itself, which included business and technology experts.
Modernization Themes
The project yielded a number of common themes and identified areas in greatest need
of improvement, falling into four broad categories: (1) challenges with the current user
experience; (2) challenges with access to and the usability of copyright records; (3)
inefficiencies with current copyright data; and (4) poor performance of outdated IT
architecture and infrastructure.
Among other things, this report summarizes the 2007 implementation of electronic
registration, known as “eCO,” a successful effort that transitioned several paper-based
processes to an online environment that may be considered a “first generation” system.
In the words of one organization, the eCO system should be “re-engineered so as to
create a more intuitive user interface that is easier for new users to navigate, that allows
users to print and save data in a way that can be easily printed, viewed, and forwarded
outside of the system, and that allows clients to sign applications prepared by attorneys.”
3
Likewise, the community would like to see richer, more accurate and timelier copyright
data. The American Bar Association noted “significant delays in the appearance of
registration records” in the online database,
4
and more than one stakeholder expressed
frustration with the ability to find information when searching for it.
5
It would seem that
confidence in Copyright Office records is directly related to confidence in copyright
protection. In the view of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), the
2
Notice of Inquiry: Technological Upgrades to Registration and Recordation Functions, 78 Fed. Reg.
17,722 (March 22, 2013). All comments sent to the Office in response to this public notice are available
on the U.S. Copyright Office's website at
http://copyright.gov/docs/technical_upgrades/comments/.
Citations in this document will refer to the comment number as listed on this webpage.
3
Comment 3, American Intellectual Property Law Association, at 2.
4
Comment 2, American Bar Association, at 2.
5
Comment 3, American Intellectual Property Law Association, at 6.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Copyright Office database can determine whether “creators’ works are easily identifiable
and do not become orphan works.”
6
Looking ahead, many stakeholders would like the Copyright Office to develop data
exchange capabilities between external and Office systems.
7
In addition, there was
keen interest in the Office adopting and promoting data standards, especially
recognized and accepted national and international standards. The project team
recognized early on that data considerations would play a vital role in technical
upgrades to the Copyright Office, and incorporated such concerns into its overall study.
Infrastructure is, of course, a major part of the analysis of this report. The project team
met with a number of experts in the copyright business community with this in mind.
Parties shared technological solutions that have proven successful for their businesses,
as well as information about the challenges they face. It should be noted that the
Copyright Office commenced the Technical Upgrades Project with prior knowledge that
its copyright systems were outdated and overdue for upgrades. This is true in the area
of the Office’s underlying IT architecture as well as the supporting infrastructure.
General Conclusions
In order for the U.S. Copyright Office to deliver highly reliable services to stakeholders
and provide a high degree of system availability, it needs to operate like a 24-7
business. To do so, it needs modern system architecture and supporting IT
infrastructure. In the view of the project team, this ultimately should include an
enterprise solution that is dedicated to the Copyright Office and deploys a highly reliable,
high performing, highly redundant, and cost-effective server environment designed to
meet the current and future IT needs of the Office.
In the current system, the Copyright Office does not have a fully-resourced technology
shop, but employs 20 or so staff to perform planning, analysis, development,
implementation and maintenance for the Copyright Office’s line of business systems,
which are primarily focused on the eCO system. All administrative control over the
infrastructure, operating systems, database systems, storage systems,
telecommunications systems, legacy systems, and other common IT resources are
controlled by the Library of Congress.
This arrangement is not optimal given the general IT challenges at the agency level,
and perhaps difficult to rationalize given the specific importance of the Copyright Office
to the overall national copyright system and global digital economy. Additionally, in
some cases, the Library’s needs in relation to copyrighted works – which revolve around
6
Comment 1, A2IM, at 1.
7
By “data exchange” we mean the sending and receiving of data, which may include the use of data
standards and schemas, to support interoperability.
6
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
acquisition, preservation, and access – may compete with those of copyright owners,
who are most concerned with legal protection and security.
In its report, the project team identified several technologies that should be central to a
modern Copyright Office:
Application Programming Interfaces (API): API technology is used to enable
standards-based data exchange between two entities. APIs are the de-facto standard
to support business-to-business (B2B) data exchange. It was clear in interviews with
the copyright community and from the public’s written comments that data exchange
with the Office is a critical service that needs to be offered. However, the Office must
expand the capabilities of its IT systems to provide data exchange via APIs.
Cloud Computing: Cloud computing has emerged as a viable alternative to the
traditional approach of deploying applications within an organization. Cloud computing
has characteristics that separate it from traditional computing environments, such as the
provision of on-demand service that is billed like a utility service and based on usage.
This characteristic provides users of cloud technologies with advantages in efficiency,
agility, scalability, and innovation, advantages that should be a priority for an agency at
the center of a booming marketplace of technology platforms, devices, and content.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): SOA refers to a collection of services (software)
that have the ability to communicate with each other. It can range from simple data
transfer between two services to multiple services working in tandem to perform an
activity. SOA requires services that are well-defined, self-contained, and have the
ability to operate independently without requiring the context or state of other services.
Organizations that follow SOA integrate multiple services to fulfill a specific business
function. In the case of the Copyright Office, this would promote better planning and
cost savings.
Integrated Solutions/Business-Driven Ecosystems: Organizations have recognized
that one-size-fits-all solutions often fail to meet the needs and expectations of all users.
Because of this, many businesses are developing solutions that provide internal and
external system developers with the flexibility to provide solutions that are targeted as
well as integrated. This kind of approach is possible with service oriented architecture,
flexible web-services, and expanding cloud solutions. In order for the Copyright Office
to serve its data driven customers, it will have to develop a new ecosystem model.
Mobile Computing: Mobile devices are being used by organizations for access to
internal systems and by end-users to access business systems. End-users have a
plethora of applications for everyday tasks (e.g., email, mobile banking, access to
weather, account information) available to them through mobile devices. Moreover,
organizations are beginning to develop interfaces into their business systems that are
designed specifically for mobile devices.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
The Copyright Office should seek to deploy mobile capabilities to meet customer
demand. This would result in new software and web interfaces optimized for mobile
device utilization. Benefits of deploying mobile capabilities would include:
1. Improved Business Productivity – Provide immediate access to systems anytime,
anywhere.
2. Reduced Operation Costs – Enhanced access to business systems (no need to
be at the office/desk) to correct issues or logistics problems.
3. Improved Customer Relationships – Provide additional opportunities to connect
with systems to obtain information anytime, anywhere.
Big Data: “Big Data” is a term used in information technology to refer to extremely large
data sets that are stored in large database systems and rely on high-performance systems
to capture, store, and analyze data to provide useful business intelligence. In order to
take advantage of Big Data technology and realize the most benefit, organizations will
need to deploy a Data Analytics solution (see below). A combination of both would
provide the Copyright Office with the business intelligence to gain efficiencies while
meeting its customer needs, thus maximizing its services. Specifically, the development
of Big Data technology would help the Copyright Office determine customer needs and
develop new business goals; increase efficiency in existing operations; refine existing
services and products that better meet customers’ needs; and improve the Office’s
decision-making regarding both short-term and long-term objectives.
Data Analytics (DA): DA is an essential technology for managing large amounts of data
(see Big Data, above). DA provides organizations with information to help make them
more competitive and target products and services that provide the most return on
investment. Organizations use DA as one method for predictive analysis based on data
captured by their systems. Both governmental and commercial organizations continue to
deploy DA as a tool to increase profitability and efficiency and it is difficult to see the
Copyright Office moving forward without investing in and developing these analytics tools.
Specific Recommendations
The project team’s conclusions and recommendations speak to the most pressing
deficiencies in existing environment, but are nonetheless a step towards positioning the
Copyright Office for future success. As the agency adopts a more sophisticated IT
direction, it will of course require the flexibility to perform ongoing assessments and
adjustments simply to keep pace with its customers. These customers have been patient
with the Copyright Office, but as they have politely but firmly stated in recent years, they
need the Office to be significantly more innovative and accountable than it is now. With
this in mind, the project team is pleased to offer these initial recommendations. These
recommendations address key aspects of the four modernization themes, and are
supported by a number of more detailed recommendations that provide a comprehensive
strategy for the future of the Office’s technical upgrades.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Enterprise Solution: An architecture and infrastructure that directly and capably
supports the many complex duties of the Copyright Office is fundamental to all other
goals discussed in this report. Ultimately, the Office should have a new and dedicated
enterprise copyright system, which might be perceived as “eCO 2.0.” By this, the team
means a large-scale application package that includes the capabilities for registration,
recordation, public information and records, accounting and processing, and acquisition.
While the result would be an over-arching enterprise system, each copyright function
must have its own dedicated development cycle to include analysis, requirements,
design, build, testing/pilot, deployment and maintenance phases.
It should be noted that these goals would need to be reconciled with the existing
systems and future plans of the Library of Congress. But, it seems unlikely if not
impossible that the Copyright Office can administer the law effectively into the future
without IT investments that reflect the importance and growth of its mandate. In short,
the goal should be to evolve the Copyright Office’s technology department from a small
liaison staff that relies on and is required to advocate to the Library’s technology office,
to a fully-empowered operation in which technology decisions are measured against the
singular goal of furthering the objectives of the copyright law and meeting the needs of
the copyright community, including the content and technology sectors that are the
Office’s customers. Each one of these industries accounts for an economic impact of
billions if not trillions of dollars. It seems obvious that a significant percentage of staff in
the Copyright Office should be technology experts, including dedicated systems, data,
and architecture staff, rather than the current paradigm in which twenty or so staff
liaison with central Library offices. Put another way, Library staff do not have the benefit
or experience of working in the Copyright Office, and therefore will never have the
context or specialized knowledge that is essential to Copyright Office success.
Mobile Capabilities: A digitally-integrated Copyright Office would include interactive
and mobile technologies now common in the global marketplace. Mobile capabilities
could be leveraged by external users for ease of copyright application submission and
provide for the use of Copyright Office services from smart phones and tablets. In
addition, a mobile platform could be leveraged by internal users for improved
efficiencies in performing daily work functions; work force benefits might further include
a secure, robust, state-of-the-art telework program.
Because the existing user interface is inelegant and inflexible, the Office needs to
redesign and deploy a new, browser-agnostic web portal. This redesign effort should
also include a fully redesigned copyright.gov that offers patrons the ability to perform all
transactional activities and provides for improved searching capability. The new
website must be fully under the control of the Copyright Office, not only because the
Office cannot risk disruption to its daily business and services, but because the website
is the primary tool by which the Register administers the copyright law. The website of
the Copyright Office must be geared to and meet all of the needs of its customer base.
In redesigning the site, the Office should incorporate the many wizards, tutorials, and
other self-help features suggested by the copyright community.
9
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
A Better Public Record: One of the ongoing and primary objectives of the Copyright
Office is to create and maintain a public database of robust, reliable, and authoritative
records of copyright ownership. What constitutes a good public record should focus on
both legal sufficiency and client requirements. In addition, the Office should identify and
consider potential enhancements to the public record, such as whether it should allow
for samples of deposit copies (e.g., thumbnails of images or snippets of sound
recordings), or whether claimants should be granted access to update their own contact
information for rights and permissions. Finally, the redesigned public record should be
seamlessly integrated with the various efforts to improve copyright data, as described in
the section below.
Internal efforts might include conducting an alternatives assessment on existing
database products capable of supporting the new public record, as well as conducting a
cost-benefit analysis comparing migration to a new, large-scale database versus
enhancing current capabilities. Further, the Office could release a Request for
Information or Statement of Objectives to industry experts and technology research
organizations to obtain input on deployment of enterprise class databases.
Sophisticated Data Management: Because data is such a vital asset to the Copyright
Office and because it is fundamental to mission success, the Office needs to develop a
long-term Data Strategy, a comprehensive Data Management Plan and a detailed Data
Governance Plan. The Office will also want to develop a detailed “as-is” document,
consult with industry experts, and develop a best-possible data model.
The project team recommends that the Register establish and appropriately staff a data
group to be chaired by the Copyright Office Chief Information Officer. This group would
have many functions including but not limited to participating in working groups of data
standards-setting bodies and developing API’s. One task for the group would be
dedicated to data exchange to establish a short-term pilot for secure, bulk submission of
registration applications or documents for recordation.
There is significant additional data and metadata in registration and recordation records,
electronic deposits, and other sources of data that the Copyright Office has yet to
coordinate and exploit, such as within legacy systems or metadata inherent in born-
digital submissions. The Copyright Office might wish to seek interim solutions to
harvest this data and make it available. Meanwhile, it is essential that the Office
establish a secure data warehouse, applying data management and archiving principles
and best practices. Once established, this data repository would allow the Office to
engage in data analytics, including conducting business-side and partner-side data
analytics. As a first step, the Office should undertake a study to analyze the available
models and frameworks to gain an understanding of the infrastructure requirements and
best practices necessary to administer the law.
Security Practices: Finally, the Copyright Office has a statutory responsibility to
securely protect the works it needs to examine for registration, meaning that it must
meet the requirements of the law and the concerns of copyright owners. This focus is
10
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
lacking in eCO but is essential to a next generation system, particularly because the
Office will be exploring a variety of new registration procedures for digital works – from
the data that should be captured in digital photographs, to the methods for examining
works that are delivered as streams rather than as copies to works that change rapidly
and frequently throughout the day, such as news sites. The Office moved this work
forward in December 2014, when it published a substantially revised Compendium of
U.S. Copyright Office Practices, a key foundation for future practices and regulations in
the digital space.
A Commitment to Interim Work: While pursuing enterprise and data solutions for the
long term, the Copyright Office must continue with the interim modernization efforts that it
has put in motion over the past two years. This report addresses the processes for how
digital works should be registered and the options for improving and automating
document recordation. In order to enhance its existing offering in a meaningful way, the
Office will need an application development strategy, which may include in-house
application development capability. In other words, the Copyright Office will need to
invest in a common resource infrastructure – primarily servers, in which applications can
be developed, tested, staged and put into production.
The project team recommends that the Copyright Office engage in an effort to itemize
proposed improvements to the Copyright Office architecture by defining “as-is” and “to-
be” models, as well as analyzing the benefits of using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
products versus in-house development. The Office should engage in a similar analysis
to define the as-is and to-be of its infrastructure, with a goal of determining if the existing
technology infrastructure is sufficient. Additional infrastructure analyses will have to
include a cost-benefit study on a Copyright Office data center versus using existing
facilities and deploying infrastructure dedicated to the Copyright Office. A dedicated
data center appears preferable for many reasons, but would require a more thorough
analysis to identify all possible operational and maintenance expenses, for example,
floor space, electricity and cooling for servers, additional servers for storage and backup,
software licenses, telecommunications and personnel.
Acknowledgments
The Technical Upgrades Project was a challenging but important exercise. On behalf of
the project team, I would like to thank Register Pallante and our Copyright Office
colleagues for the opportunity to engage on these issues. While the assignment was
ultimately to think ahead, this would not have been possible if we had not had the
freedom to engage critically and objectively.
For all aspects of this endeavor, I am indebted to the talented members of my project
team. They are: Joanna Corwin, Project Manager; Peter DesRoches, Technical Subject
Matter Expert; Susan Todd, Copyright Office Registration Subject Matter Expert;
Christopher Reed, (former) Senior Advisor to the Register for Special Projects; Annette
James, Business Analyst; and the many other wonderful staff members who graciously
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
volunteered their time, passion and knowledge of the Copyright Office to accomplish the
goals and objectives of this very critical project.
Finally, I am grateful to the many members of the copyright community who spent
valuable time meeting with us and responding to inquiries. You have educated and
inspired us, and we thank you for sharing your expertise for the betterment of the United
States copyright system.
Doug Ament
Chief Information Officer
1. Background
In late 2011, the Register of Copyrights and executive management team of the Copyright
Office published a document entitled Priorities and Special Projects of the United States
Copyright Office. That document outlined ten “Special Projects” which would become
core focus areas for improvement by the organization over the course of two years.
This public report is the culmination of one of the ten special projects, entitled Technical
Upgrades to Electronic Registration, which progressed over time to a broader
exploration and shorter title: Technical Upgrades. As stated in the Executive Summary,
the project should be viewed as an intelligence gathering initiative, not only to evaluate
the technological environment in which the services of the Copyright Office are both
offered and used currently, but to ensure long-term flexibilities that will be necessary as
the Office plans for and implements changes to the way it administers the copyright law.
We hope the report will inform the strategic direction of the Copyright Office as it
navigates the twenty-first century and moves to a new generation of services.
2. Project Objectives
Ultimately, the Copyright Office needs to align its IT capabilities and processes with the
technological and procedural needs of the copyright community. Thus, a key objective
was to work collaboratively with willing stakeholders to identify technologies that could
help shape a more effective Copyright Office.
The second objective was to research and analyze original research, drawing upon the
technology expertise of the project team in addition to information gleaned from
stakeholder interactions.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
The third objective was to document outcomes, prepare findings and propose
recommendations for the Register of Copyrights and her senior management team.
These should in turn drive the information technology aspects of a new strategic plan.
3. Project Approach and Methodology
3.1 Intelligence Gathering and Analysis
The Technical Upgrades project team performed two major intelligence-gathering
initiatives to solicit input from the copyright and technical communities. A Notice of
Inquiry (NOI) published in the Federal Register (attached as Appendix A) elicited
twenty-eight responses. In addition, the project team completed a series of interviews
with interested parties, and over the course of many months, the project team met with
thirteen external organizations and conducted eleven internal interviews.
The NOI, published on March 22, 2013 in volume 78, issue number 56 of the Federal
Register, provided the public with sixty days to submit comments. The NOI highlighted
six areas of specific interest:
(1) the capabilities of the Copyright Office’s public portals;
(2) the nature of the data captured during the registration and recordation processes;
(3) data and metadata standards within the copyright industries;
(4) data storage practices and policies;
(5) search technologies; and
(6) the possibility of integrating third-party data or databases.
The project team compiled and analyzed all of the information collected from the NOI
responses in order to develop recommendations responsive to the public’s needs.
The Technical Upgrades interview program spanned twenty months, from November
2011 to July 2013. The project team’s interviewers generally met with one organization
at a time, to better focus on each party’s input and to keep the tone of the meetings
intimate and conversational. Further, we informed the parties that their comments
would be not be attributed to them, to encourage them to provide honest feedback
about Copyright Office systems, and to share openly about their own technological or
business challenges.
Collaboratively and with confirmation from subject matter expert (SME) volunteers from
within the Copyright Office, the project core team performed business analysis on the
intelligence and data captured in the site reports for all of the interviews conducted as
well as the comments provided in response to the project’s NOI. This analysis
established the final list of recommendations offered by the interested parties. Finally,
the core team performed a technical review of the recommendations in order to develop
an implementation strategy including a high-level timeline and estimate of resources
required.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
3.2 Resource Utilization
To efficiently complete the series of interviews, the project team was divided into sub
teams with specific tasks to accomplish. Senior leadership identified organizations from
the copyright community for outreach and participation in the project, including specific
contact information. A volunteer team of SMEs conducted background research on
each interested party and documented their findings in a site report. The project
manager established contact with the parties, scheduled meetings and distributed the
read-ahead information from the volunteers to each member of the interviewing core
team. The interview was conducted and following each meeting, the business analyst
compiled the notes and updated the site report to document all of the data,
recommendations, process improvements, and technology proposals (where applicable)
provided by the interested party.
By leveraging a sub-team approach, this Special Project was able to minimize the
number of dedicated resources by recruiting volunteers within the Copyright Office to
perform many of the sub-team activities. Because of the dynamic nature of the project,
individual volunteers often played multiple roles simultaneously. In addition, the team
structure varied and was tailored to the specific needs of each interview.
4. Participating Parties
There were forty-seven participants in this Special Project offering a variety of
perspectives. Interviews and written comments were shared by trade and professional
associations, rights management groups, legal practitioners, publishers, content
creators and internal staff of the Copyright Office.
The table below lists all of the parties from the copyright community that participated in
this Special Project and provides some key information regarding each:
Name
Primary Service
American Association of
Independent Music
Trade association for
independent music
labels
American Bar Association,
Intellectual Property Law
(ABA-IPL)
Bar association of
intellectual property
attorneys
American Intellectual
Property Law Association
(AIPLA)
Bar association of
intellectual property
attorneys
American Society of
Composers, Authors and
Publishers (ASCAP)
Performance rights
organization
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Name
Primary Service
American Society of Media
Photographers
Trade association of
professional
photographers
Association of American
Publishers
Trade association of
book and serial
publishers
Author Services, Inc.
Representatives of L.
Ron Hubbard
Broadcast Music, Inc.
(BMI)
Performing rights
management
organization
Colton, Robert
Retired Section Head
of Recordation
Copyright Clearance
Center
Provides licensing
solutions to copyright
content
Copyright Society of the
USA
Professional
association for the
copyright community
County Analytics Ltd
Independent
consultant, Paul
Jessop
Dominican University
Graduate School of Library
and Information Science
Students of an ALA
accredited Masters of
Library & Information
Science program
Donahue Gallagher
Woods, LLP
San Francisco Bay
area law firm
Educational Testing
Service (ETS)
Standardized testing
and assessment
service
FLASHLIGHT2013
Grassroots copyright
awareness effort
Graphic Artist Guild
Trade association for
graphic artists
Harry Fox Agency
Rights management
organization
ISNI International Agency
Maintains the
International Standard
Name Identifier (ISNI)
ISRC Agencies
Administer the
International Standard
Recording Code
(ISRC)
LegalZoom.com, Inc.
Online legal
documentation service
Library of Congress,
Information Technology
Services (ITS)
Provides technical
support to the Library
of Congress
Microsoft
Software corporation
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Name
Primary Service
Morris Music Law
Private practice of
Jess E. Morris,
attorney
Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA)
Trade association for
the motion picture and
television industry
Music Reports, Inc.
Performance rights
organization
National Music Publishers
Association (NMPA)
Trade association for
the music publishing
industry
New Hope Publishers
Book publisher
NWReflections, LLC
Fine art photographers
Optimos
Development and
maintenance of eCO
Pearson Education, Inc.
Book Publisher
Perkins Coie
International law firm
Petruzzelli, Nanette
Retired Associate
Register for the
Registration Program
ProQuest
Aggregator and
publisher, particularly
of dissertations and
periodicals
Recording Industry
Association of America
(RIAA)
Trade association for
the music recording
industry
SAIC
Staff of eCO Help
Desk
SoundExchange
Performance rights
organization
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Copyright Acquisition
Division (CAD)
Acquiring copyrighted
works for the Library
of Congress
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Copyright Technology
Office (CTO)
Providing technical
support to the
COPYRIGHT OFFICE
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Director of IT
Providing technical
direction for the
COPYRIGHT OFFICE
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Information and Records
Division (I&R)
Providing copyright
information and
products to the public
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Name
Primary Service
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Literary Division (LIT)
Registration and
recordation of literary
works
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Performing Arts Division
(PA)
Registration and
recordation of
performing arts works
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Receipt, Analysis &
Control Division (RAC)
Materials processing
and accounting at
COPYRIGHT OFFICE
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Register of Copyrights
Director of the
COPYRIGHT OFFICE
COPYRIGHT OFFICE,
Visual Arts Division (VA)
Registration and
recordation of visual
arts works
Writers Guild America
West
Labor union for film,
TV and radio writers
5. Findings: Additional Service Recommendations
This section outlines the key issues the copyright community identified as users of the
current Copyright Office systems. As well, it documents the suggestions and requests
from the participating parties for the Copyright Office to take under advisement. In
analyzing the feedback collected through both interviews and comments to the NOI, the
project team determined four priorities: (1) the overall user experience; (2) the official
Copyright Office public record; (3) copyright data management; and (4) the overall
technical posture.
5.1 Challenges with Current User Experience
5.1.1 Feedback from External Users
The Copyright Office implemented the eCO system in 2007 with Library of Congress
technology services. It was designed to bring registration processes and some related
functions online. Since the initial implementation, the agency has made a series of
improvements to address some of the shortcomings of the software. Although it was
already aware of many of the deficiencies, the project team wanted a clear assessment
from the perspective of external users.
eCO Interface
When users log into eCO, they would like to have a personalized dashboard so they
can quickly navigate to the information they seek, such as the status of a particular case
or an inventory of all cases in correspondence. An improved user interface might offer
customizable columns, places for users to add notes, a more complete audit trail and
potential integration with docket management software for attorneys. Users would
17
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benefit from sorting capabilities or filters, such as the ability to sort individualized
pending queues by categories, such as the type of work being registered. To become a
truly twenty-first century Copyright Office, the eCO user interface should offer all the
capabilities that users have come to expect from an online service, such as those
commonly seen in various electronic commerce applications.
While many updates to eCO have been released since its launch, external users continue
to report that the system is cumbersome, requiring too many clicks and too much
scrolling. The navigation panel added to eCO was a welcome benefit to registration
applicants; however, they would like to see an even simpler interface where they do not
have to navigate through so many screens. Several customers indicated they would like
the Office to offer fill-in forms and/or have the ability to enter all of the required
information into a single screen.
For example, the Graphic Artists Guild (GAG) suggests, “a registration form as a single
page akin to a sheet of paper which scrolls down. All questions and content would be
visible to the user on one webpage.”
8
Users have asked that the system take advantage of profile management capabilities
with saved values, which the system would prompt for “auto-fill.” Currently eCO allows
users to save templates, but the project team also heard feedback about ways in which
the templates could be improved so they are easier to save and retrieve, as well as
navigate.
Further, applicants would like to see improvements to tracking, status and notifications.
The external user interface could be enhanced with a tracking feature such as a status
bar or other visual display that would clearly indicate the progress of their applications.
An additional feature some would like to see is the ability to submit an inquiry or follow-
up on a specific case from within the online system. For example, some users
requested the ability to signal the Office with a simple click from within the system when
they have not received a certificate for a case marked closed. Currently, users receive
system notifications when their application is submitted and when their deposit is
uploaded. Some users would like these notifications to be consolidated and several
would like to see more information provided about the deposit, such as a listing of all the
file names and their sizes. Users also requested additional system-generated
notifications not currently in place, such as confirmations of documents received or an
indication that a certificate is in the mail.
Our interviews of internal users also generated feedback regarding notifications for
external users. Copyright Office staff would like for the system to provide more detailed
and helpful information to the public regarding the status of their requests, including
receipt acknowledgements. Copyright Office employees who support the registration
process spend a great deal of time providing status updates to applicants. If the system
8
Comment 15, Graphic Artist Guild, at 8.
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provided detailed information, for example, where a claim is in the registration process,
this would eliminate the need for applicants to call the Office which would in turn reduce
inbound call wait times. Likewise, employees who support the mandatory deposit
process would like follow-up requests for demands to be automated and system-
generated.
Regarding registration records, some external users would like the ability to view all of
the correspondence, notes and application versions pertaining to a case together as a
single file history which they can access at any time (such improvements may also
streamline internal processes when the Copyright Office provides copies of records to
members of the public, e.g., for litigation). When a claim is pending and in
correspondence, external users cannot view the application as submitted in order to
understand a Registration Specialist’s request. After a claim has been closed, external
users cannot access the case file to determine how a previous application was filed for a
similar situation. Also, registration records are not linked to previous or subsequent
registrations, documents filed or corrections/amplifications.
For example, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) recommends that the
Office “organize records into complete file histories, i.e., if a member of the general public
searches for a particular work (by title, author, ISBN, etc.), all documents associated with
that particular work should be part of the file.”
9
In general, the external user experience needs to be improved and the system more
flexible. Users would like eCO to be compatible with a wide range of web browsers.
For example, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) notes that
“[t]his is a significant problem for an industry that relies heavily on non-PC based
browsers, such as Apple’s Safari . . . . There is a real need to upgrade the Copyright
Office’s system to incorporate cross-browser compatibility.”
10
Likewise, the American Bar Association, Section of Intellectual Property Law
(ABA-IPL) suggested “[a] potentially low-cost improvement to the eCO claims interface
could be to integrate ‘Tips’ for practitioners with respect to each of the fields that need to
be filled in.”
11
Other respondents suggested resources such as a “common mistakes” document or
“do’s and don’ts” compiled by registration staff. In addition, participating parties
suggested the online application system provide instructions and definitions in plain
English rather than “legalese” to the greatest extent possible.
Staff suggested numerous improvements to the phone system that would better serve
the public. A series of automated questions could be used to route calls to staff with
9
Comment 6, Association of American Publishers, at 8.
10
Comment 5, American Society of Media Photographers, at 3.
11
Comment 2, American Bar Association, at 2.
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areas of specialty; call wait times or place-in-queue announcements could be useful to
callers; and other recorded information could be played to callers on hold such as
answers to frequently asked questions, Copyright Office news and other helpful
information. Additional upgrades to the system might address call monitoring for
improved quality control and recordkeeping.
Registration Claims
Under the Copyright Act, the application, fee and deposit copy
12
are the three necessary
components in a copyright registration claim and each process would benefit from
technical improvements. Beginning with application submission, users would like the
ability to preview the completed registration application, the ability to edit the application
from this preview, and the ability to both print and save the preview copy. Currently,
users have to drill into fields to see all of the information provided on an application, must
navigate to specific sections of the application to make changes, and cannot save or
easily print a copy for their records. Multiple users complained that printing a preview of
the application requires at least seven pages that cannot be formatted properly and are
hard to read because of the font size. Some expressed the desire to see better
alignment between the paper and electronic application, such as consistent terminology
or a correlation between the two regarding the information requested.
Next, the applicant must pay the filing fee for the registration. The project received
several comments that this process could be streamlined. Suggestions included
developing an integrated payment option rather than directing applicants to pay.gov, or
at least providing additional payment options aside from pay.gov. Some applicants
filing on behalf of numerous claimants would like the ability to create individual receipts
and the ability to link to various deposit accounts, or have multiple account profiles link
to a single deposit account.
The final step in the process of submitting a claim is to provide a deposit copy. Many
users indicated that the deposit upload functionality should be improved. While the
current system has been upgraded, users still complain about the upload process being
awkward, slow and too often resulting in system “time outs.” The Office needs to
expand the list of acceptable file types and provide the necessary software for staff to
view them. In addition, many external users requested the ability to view the files once
they have been uploaded; this is not a feature available in the present system.
Comments from LegalZoom.com, Inc. included “the case summary page does not
allow users to view the deposit copy once it is uploaded or check it for completeness
before it is submitted, and does not provide immediate confirmation of the upload or
submission.”
13
12
The term deposit copy refers to the copy of the work being registered and which is being “deposited”
with the U.S. Copyright Office for examination in conjunction with the application.
13
Comment 18, LegalZoom.com, Inc., at 1-2.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
It is worth noting that despite the virtues of making deposit files available through the
Office’s online web portal, such features raise important security considerations,
including a risk of improper disclosure, either inadvertently or as a result of malicious
intent. These kinds of security issues will need to be addressed not only as technical
issues but also as legal and regulatory issues, and it is possible that the Office will
adopt a variety of rules over time through appropriate public processes.
Beyond electronic deposits, the project also received some comments regarding
improvements to the shipping slips used to transmit physical copies and requests to
improve options for mailing physical copies. Employees who facilitate mandatory
deposit would like publishers to have label printing capabilities for demand submissions.
Automation Issues
All of the foregoing addresses feedback on the existing system, which is currently
limited to registration functions. As much as external users would like to see
improvements to the existing registration process, they would also like to see the Office
create new automation features. This includes new registration options as well as other
Copyright Office services, in particular document recordation.
Regarding registration, users would like all registration processes to be automated and
all methods of registration available online. Currently, many group registration options
including the group registration of published photographs and group registration of
databases cannot be processed through eCO. Some other non-basic registration
options are also unavailable through the electronic registration system at the present
time, such as supplemental registration, renewal registration, and GATT registration.
Users would like to see the Copyright Office complete its transition to an electronic filing
system by automating all remaining registration applications. Although the Register
prioritized recordation as a separate special project, the Technical Upgrades project
provided a vehicle for stakeholders to underscore their discontent.
Thus, AIPLA writes, “[w]e think that an electronic system for recording assignments is
an imperative improvement.”
14
And the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said, “the inability of
registrants to file transfers of copyright ownership, license agreements and other
relevant documents with the Office electronically deters copyright owners from filing
relevant documents with the Office.”
15
Some requests for an automated recordation system include the ability to record
documents on a mass basis and the ability to record a document directly against a
given registration. Other users envision a notification system wherein any documents
recorded against a registration will prompt an action requiring approval from the original
14
Comment 3, American Intellectual Property Law Association, at 3.
15
Comment 27, Recording Industry Association of America, at 2.
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copyright registrant. Finally, internal users requested that the document numbering
process be automated.
Many of the technical issues involving recordation implicate questions of law. The
Copyright Office pursued the legal issues on a separate track, culminating with a major
study entitled: Transforming Document Recordation, published in January 2015. The
study was conducted by the Abraham Kaminstein Scholar in Residence, a new position
that attracts independent scholars to work in the Register’s Office, and the incarnation
of yet another special project, in which the Copyright Office seeks to supplement its own
expertise with programs that invite the participation of academic institutions and their
faculty members.
Although recording a copyright document (e.g., an assignment, a license, a security
interest) offers a copyright owner important benefits, it is not required, with one critical
exception. Authors (and as applicable, heirs) who seek to terminate their earlier
transfers (e.g., an exclusive license to publish) must provide notice to the transferees
and record the notice with the Copyright Office within a statutorily prescribed timeframe.
These notices may be filed under Sections 304 or 203 of the Copyright Act, pursuant to
the requirements of those provisions.
The public record for termination notices is something authors, heirs, businesses and
successor businesses rely on to assess copyright ownership, liability and expiration of
copyright term.
As Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) observes: “With terminations playing an increasing
role in ownership determinations, virtually every member of the content industry will at
some time likely require the means to verify the validity of termination notices. . . . It is
therefore crucial that the digitization and uploading of termination notices to the Office’s
website for public review becomes and remains up-to-date.”
16
There a variety of other copyright services that the public would like to see automated,
all of which affect the legal rights and/or economic interests of private parties. Among
these are filing of notices of intent to use, particularly in bulk; a seamless online system
for DMCA filings; and a repository of Copyright Office review board decisions. In
general, stakeholders recommend that all Copyright Office services be accessed
through a single web-based portal. Through this main entry a user could self-guide to
various resources, but the goal would be to have an interface that is easy to use and
easy to navigate. A major redesign of copyright.gov could provide these capabilities,
assuming it is done with significant customer feedback and an eye to the commercial
standards and expectations of the copyright marketplace. To be clear, the Copyright
Office has implemented refreshes to its website now and again, since it launched the
website nearly twenty years ago. What we are discussing in this report, however, is an
16
Comment 8, Broadcast Music, Inc., at 4.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
overall change to architecture, service and interface, to enhance both the user
experience and overall interoperability.
5.1.2 Feedback from Internal Users
Copyright Office employees are a separate but equally important constituency. Most
employees have adapted to or been trained into the current system, but they have
developed or requested workarounds, and they have been instrumental in pressing for
the periodic updates and small improvements undertaken so far. However, these
internal users still struggle with many aspects of eCO and are perhaps the first in line
when it comes to calling for additional capabilities.
Just as with external users, employees would benefit from individual, customized
dashboards at eCO login. Specialists from various divisions indicated that they spend
too much time navigating within the system and drilling into records to obtain the
information needed. Not enough of the data is available at the top level and they spend
a lot of time clicking into applets and expanding fields. A more streamlined interface
would create greater efficiency and would ease frustration. Specialists and technicians
develop individual work patterns and sometimes work within their own areas of
expertise. They would benefit from a customizable interface suited to their daily work
routines, rather than a “one size fits all” model.
Employees would also like to see improved methods of tracking, including the ability to
identify the location of a specific deposit or application. The current system utilizes
barcodes that have partially addressed the need for tracking deposit copies. However,
the current workflow does not accommodate bar code tracking throughout all Copyright
Office processes. Both time and space considerations limit the success of a system
where bar codes must be laser scanned at each location. Recommendations from staff
included RFID (radio frequency identification) technology for enhanced, seamless asset
tracking.
17
Employees could perform their jobs more efficiently if the Copyright Office had better
system integration with the software used. In particular, the registration staff would like
to see a more fluid connection between eCO and email. The email feature in eCO lacks
the functionality users have come to expect from an email program. For example, staff
does not directly receive notifications about undeliverable email. If this functionality
were available in eCO, they could take immediate action to find alternate methods to
communicate to a remitter. Nor can a staff member set up an “Out of Office” notification
to alert applicants when he/she will be unreachable for a period of time. External users
also indicated there were difficulties in corresponding with staff, especially through email.
17
RFID technology transfers data over electromagnetic fields wherein readers identify and track tags
attached to objects. RFID is used to track anything from packages to livestock and is currently used by
many libraries.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
A member of the AIPLA indicated “[m]y BIGGEST complaint is that it is very difficult to
talk to copyright examiners. . . . The email inquiry from the examiner is apparently not
connected to their personal email but instead an electronic case file. Depending on how
the message was coded in their system, your reply email may or may not reach the
examiner.”
18
Registration staff stressed they would like the ability to link emails to cases in a many-
to-one relationship. In order to preserve the record where multiple cases require
correspondence, staff must decide between sending a separate email from each case
and sending one email and then manually entering notes into the remaining cases; both
options are time consuming. Because examiners often address multiple numbers of
cases in an email attached only to one case, specialists in the Records Research &
Certification section have difficulty identifying and producing complete records for
members who seek such materials for litigation or other purposes.
Similarly, Copyright Office registration staff would like to see external users have the
ability to mass update pending applications. A significant update to the current system
has been the ability for a specialist to return an electronic application to an applicant for
amendments. However, these alterations must be completed individually by drilling into
one claim at a time. Under the current configuration, changes as simple as updating an
address or correcting the answer to the “work made for hire” question quickly become
time and labor intensive.
Finally, staff in the Registration Program requested better utilities for deposit
examination. Many would like the Copyright Office to standardize the file formats
received including offering conversion tools within eCO to assist applicants in providing
an acceptable file type. Currently, eCO does provide a wide list of acceptable file types
but the system does not validate these file types. Since there are limited restrictions on
what types of files may be uploaded, registration specialists receive many files they
cannot view and must correspond to request a replacement. In addition, employees
would like external users to have the capability to upload larger files, especially for
motion picture claims and full resolution photographs. Certainly, registration staff would
like to have the latest versions of primary software for examining capabilities. Too often
the versions of software at their workstations lag significantly behind those used by the
creative communities.
5.1.3 Additional Ideas and Features
While many of the suggestions to the Technical Upgrades project are in response to the
current eCO system, the community also shared several forward-looking solutions. An
upgraded copyright system would not just address improvements upon the past but
should include additional capabilities not fully utilized at present. In addition, the House
Judiciary Committee is currently reviewing Title 17. Potential revisions to the copyright
18
Comment 3, American Intellectual Property Law Association, at 3.
24
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
law could result in need for technical capabilities that go beyond the examples that
follow.
Of particular importance to practitioners and attorneys is the ability for third parties to
certify the application. As noted previously, eCO does not allow a user to preview a
completed application before submission, let alone save or share a file copy. Lacking
this capability, attorneys are unable to show their clients the prepared application or
have their clients sign off on it. Creative businesses are similarly affected, such as in-
house professionals at publishing houses or film studios. These filers would like the
parties they represent to be able to review applications before submission. The
community strongly suggested that any new copyright system contain this feature.
Similarly, copyright owners would like to see options for receiving electronic certificates.
The current system provides for electronic applications and deposit copy upload, but
issues paper certificates. Many parties would prefer to receive or have continuous
access to an electronic certificate as well. Some have suggested that the Office move
to electronic certificates with the option to purchase a “hard copy” paper certificate.
At a greater level of sophistication, the Copyright Office could offer digital certificates
that would be accepted in courts by taking advantage of digital signature capabilities
including signed hashes and digital fingerprints. Thus, not only would an applicant be
able to receive an electronic certificate by email for their records, but official certified
copies of the certificate could also be electronic using digital signature technology. If
such a capability were offered, an attorney could log into eCO to submit certified digital
copies of certificates to courts directly. Of course, digital certificates raise policy and
legal questions that would require further review and, potentially, proposals for
legislative or regulatory adjustments.
As noted above, applicants indicated they would like to be able to view the files they
uploaded as electronic deposits. Expanding on this, both internal and external users
suggested that portions of the deposit copy could become part of the available public
record at the copyright owner’s option. This would require very careful deliberation and
consultation with stakeholders, but the point is a good indication that the Office should
be exploring new paradigms.
For example, BMI noted that a sample or snippet of an MP3 file could be made
available. “With regard to musical works, BMI believes that, if a copyright owner wishes
to authorize uploading short digital samples of works to the Office website and
incorporating such samples as part of the registration records, samples would be useful
in the identification of copyright works . . . .”
19
19
Comment 8, Broadcast Music, Inc., at 2.
25
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
This goal was further supported by the visual arts communities, including the American
Society of Media Photographers and the Graphic Artists Guild whose expanded vision
included the use of image recognition technologies to search records.
20
NWReflections, LLC, an independent, small-entity photography studio wrote, “it would
be extremely valuable to have the ability to identify specific digital files within a
registration . . . It would be incredibly valuable to be able to query that repository,” and
“[o]ptimally that search also would display a web rendering of the uploaded file.”
21
Respondents noted that this additional feature would not only help them in their own
record keeping but could also help connect users of copyrighted content with rights
holders. Additional security measures would have to be put in place to protect against
infringement, such as watermarking.
Many participants in the project expressed a strong interest in the Copyright Office
utilizing mobile technology. Internal and external users alike noted that the registration
system should be compatible with mobile devices, especially since so much creative
content is now being created on cell phones, tablets, and other devices. Authors and
creators should be empowered to register their works at the moment of creation, from
their mobile device. In addition to being able to register works, users should be able to
search copyright records, research copyright information or check the status of a
pending registration from their mobile device. In an age where things as complicated as
banking and finances can be transacted from a mobile device, the Copyright Office
needs a mobile platform.
Mobile devices may also be used to support internal Copyright Office functions.
Currently, barcode readers used to track copyright deposits must display on a monitor
attached to a desktop computer. However, mobile devices that would display as well as
scan would expedite workflow. Selection officers in their rounds to Registration and
CAD (Copyright Acquisition Division) must have access to a desktop computer for
research at each location they visit. However, these could be replaced with a single
hand-held device, integrated to the various Copyright Office and/or Library systems.
Both the wider copyright community and staff would like the Copyright Office to
incorporate alternative means of correspondence in a twenty-first century
communications strategy. Currently, the Office uses phones, email, letters and fax.
However, users would like to see the Office take advantage of chat and instant
messenger technologies.
20
See Comment 5, American Society of Media Photographers, at 5; Comment 15, Graphic Artists Guild,
at 10.
21
Comment 23, NWReflections, LLC, at 2.
26
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
ASMP notes, “[m]ost users of today’s computers are accustomed to, and expect, almost
instantaneous support, whether by telephone, instant chat, online FAQ’s or even user
forums linked to the main website.”
22
Or, as with many online customer support centers, applicants can leave a phone
number and expect to receive a call within moments. Using profile management tools,
applicants could indicate their preferred method for being contacted by the Copyright
Office, including days and times. Internal staff would welcome this information as well
for managing their workloads. Internal users also suggested that communication be
automated to the extent possible. And of course, any new copyright system must be
fully compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act as well as the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
Under the Register’s Special Project for Public Outreach and Copyright Education, the
Copyright Office has begun utilizing webinar and videoconference technologies.
The Technical Upgrades project received a similar recommendation from Education
Testing Service (ETS), which files high volumes of copyright registrations for secure
tests. Currently, such applications must be presented in person. ETS notes that using
instant messaging, video calls and online meetings “would eliminate our travel time and
travel expenses through the use of desktop sharing and conferencing.”
23
Finally, Copyright Office employees recommended enhanced foreign language support.
Comments ranged from improvements to the copyright registration certificate and public
record to how Office staff interacts with the public. Currently, eCO does not recognize
diacritical marks and thus cannot accurately convey names or titles with accent marks.
This should be amended so that the public record accurately reflects the work and
author to which it pertains. Additionally, staff suggested that the Office adopt live
translation for phone support and offer foreign language support and translation
services for the public record.
5.2 Challenges with Existing Public Record
According to the participating parties, the second major focus area for system
improvement is the public record. It concerned the project team to hear that the
Copyright Office is not the definitive source for all copyright information, and that a few
parties indicate they search other databases before visiting copyright.gov. This is a
fracture in the Copyright Office’s mission. Stakeholders would like to see more robust
copyright records updated more timely and with richer data.
22
Comment 5, American Society of Media Photographers, at 3.
23
Comment 13a, Educational Testing Service, at 1.
27
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
The ABA-IPL notes, “[t]here are sometimes significant delays in the appearance of
registration records in the Copyright Office’s online database following the issuance of
corresponding registrations.”
24
And AIPLA writes, “[a]s to the searching system, my main quarrel is credibility. I know I
have searched for items that should be there, and come up empty. I have little
confidence in the present search system.”
25
Similarly, the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) writes, “[w]e
believe the Copyright Office database should become a key searchable source for
copyright information so that creators’ works are easily identifiable and do not become
orphan works.”
26
Metadata is a major issue. That is, in addition to records being more current, as a result
of faster processing times, participants expect additional metadata in a twenty-first
century system. Those who create and use visual arts works specifically cited the
inclusion of metadata in images that could be used in copyright records. For example,
metadata is automatically captured and stored by many digital cameras and the
software used in digital photo editing. Some image metadata is not currently required
on copyright registration applications, however its inclusion would make for a richer
record.
As for metadata that is required, supplying a solution whereby that metadata can
migrate from the image to the application would save applicants from having to
manually key it in. The Technical Upgrades project team notes that metadata is a major
issue where music rights are concerned, and it was therefore an essential discussion
point in the Copyright Office’s recently policy study, Copyright and the Music
Marketplace, published in February 2015.
Various respondents had specific comments about what additional data fields to include
in copyright records, with a number agreeing that information about change of ownership
or recordation of transfer would be valuable, including updated contact information.
Much of this data (such as change of address information) is gathered by the Copyright
Office and is publicly available through examination of the physical records, but is not
included in our online records.
Author Services, Inc. stated, “there is not enough information to determine the
ownership if there is a transfer and the contact information of the parties and/or owner
and/or new owner are not available as part of the online record. It must be obtained
either by visiting the Copyright Office in person and pulling the record or by researching
the owner’s name using other online research sources.”
27
24
Comment 2, American Bar Association, at 2.
25
Comment 3, American Intellectual Property Law Association, at 6.
26
Comment 1, American Association of Independent Music, at 1.
27
Comment 7, Author Services, Inc., at 3.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Beyond making updated contact information available, several participants added they
would like the ability to directly update contact information through the system. Other
suggestions for additional data points in copyright records include: a note about whether
a termination notice had been filed against a work, an indication as to whether the work
was registered upon appeal, and whether a work was currently in a legal dispute.
Finally, there was considerable demand to have all of the Copyright Office records
available online, including those prior to 1978. The Copyright Office is well aware of this
concern and is addressing it through the Register’s Special Project for Public Access to
Historical Records. Since the funding was first obligated in 2009, the Copyright Office
has digitized 35.8 million pre-1978 registration records as well as 661 record books
(Copyright Catalogue entry). Currently, the Office is digitizing 2.4 million registration
applications. Much more challenging are the means by which the Office will make these
aging records searchable, especially since so many of them contain data that was initially
captured with handwriting, including pencil.
Copyright patrons need the search functionality of copyright records to be greatly
enhanced. The project team heard that the existing Voyager system crashes, times out
and cannot handle large volume requests. Put differently, there is an upper limit to the
number of records returned on a given search. Even if more records exist that match
the requested data, they will not be provided. Hence researchers that may need to
inventory all of the registrations owned by a particular party cannot currently do so.
Other times, searchers are overwhelmed with the results they receive and have
requested that the Office implement sorting and filtering capabilities. In this scenario, a
searcher would conduct an initial search and then apply filters to the results either to
narrow their results or to compare results based on alternative criteria. Examples given
by participants included filtering by format of work, date of first publication, nation of
publication, and so forth. The current Voyager system offers certain search limits but
they cannot necessarily be combined, cannot be applied to results after the fact, and
are generally just not as flexible as the community would like to see.
Music Reports, Inc. commented, “[w]hen search results are returned by the Office’s
system, they tend to include numerous irrelevant results. Specifically, the publicly
searchable records of the Office outside of the Office itself do not permit a researcher to
filter the results by subject matter type. . . . Implementing search filtering by work type
would be a useful improvement to the Office’s public-facing search capabilities.”
28
Additional capabilities suggested include the ability to search by partial names and even
more nuanced search strategies such as combinations of names/partial names, date
ranges, and key words all at once. The Voyager system does offer some Boolean
28
Comment 20, Music Reports, Inc., at 3.
29
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search options where users may construct advanced searches, but not to the level of
granularity many users require.
5.3 Inadequacies of Current Copyright Data
As previously discussed, the establishment, preservation and maintenance of the public
record are core missions of the Copyright Office. Both the Office and the copyright
community would like to see more robust, relevant and useful records. Improving the
public record begins with gathering additional relevant data. The project team
recognized early on that data would play a vital role in technical upgrades to the
Copyright Office.
5.3.1 Data Exchange
Of all the suggestions participating parties shared with the project team, perhaps the
most frequent recommendation was that the Copyright Office pursue business-to-
business capabilities to enable data exchange and batch processing, including the use
of application program interfaces (APIs).
29
Both internal users and external users of the
current copyright system, as well as interested parties from the copyright and technical
communities, saw a great opportunity for the Office to enhance its records and its
services with business-to-business technology. On the simplest level, many registration
and recordation customers would like to see batch processing capabilities so that they
may directly export data to populate registration applications or provide the titles for
recordation. Currently, data is manually keyed in on a title-by-title basis, both by
external users and internal users. Batch processing capabilities would not only create a
more effective, efficient system but could lead to greater volumes of registration and
recordation.
Batch processing or business-to-business transactions would not simply benefit
applicants who submit high volumes of claims. Historically, this has been the vision of
how batch processing would be utilized, but in fact this capability would service the
entire community. Certainly high-volume applicants have much to gain from being able
to directly export data to the Copyright Office. However, even individual creators and
small businesses would benefit. The Office has already heard that users would like a
simpler interface and that the community would like to see more data in copyright
records. To accomplish this without asking users to spend even more time keying in
data, the Office should develop an API. In some cases, such as digital photography,
that data is already stored within the copyrightable work itself and simply needs to be
harvested.
In order to register a work for copyright protection through eCO, creators go to the
Copyright Office website and enter the required information into successive screens.
However, this is an outdated model while modern approaches use an online transaction
29
See discussion of APIs infra, section 6: Enabling Technologies.
30
Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
model. As rapidly evolving technology continues to permeate our lives, transactions
must become more fluid. The Copyright Office needs to be adaptable and our systems
must be able to receive data in the various methods people wish to provide it. Web
services or web APIs offer this flexibility. This approach may also improve the quality of
the data; since it requires fewer keystrokes, there is less potential for error.
An API would also allow for direct interfaces with other services. Copyright subsists
from the moment of fixation. Ideally, creators could register their works at that moment
and from that creative space. In other words, the Copyright Office could publicly offer
an API with which software developers could create a rich tie-in whereby authors can
submit registration applications from their word processor, their photo editing application,
their sound recording program or their graphic design suite. Tie-ins could also be
created with parties throughout the copyright community. Content creators do not
always register their work with the Copyright Office but may be involved in other
registries at performance rights organizations, writers’ guilds and licensing services. An
API would allow these copyright owners to register their works through seamless
interoperability and third-party services. Again, in the twentieth century model, affiliates
of the Copyright Office may have directed their patrons to copyright.gov through a link
on their websites. But in the twenty-first century, creators can enter their information in
one location and that data would be shared through an API approach.
These activities would not only grow the Copyright Office database and promote
registration and recordation, but also put it in a position to offer data verification. Some
of the participants in this project do not file registrations or record documents, but do
search copyright records to look for matches within their own information. For example,
performance rights organizations that manage registries for the purpose of collecting
and distributing royalty payments need copyright data. Searching and matching
exercises are currently performed manually, but with data exchange capabilities,
organizations could automatically compare their information to the official public record
maintained by the Copyright Office.
In fact, use of APIs may not only generate additional copyright registrations and
recordations to enhance the value of the public record, but could grow the entire
copyright community and promote the national copyright system itself.
SoundExchange shared this vision with the project: “Rights management organizations
and other data aggregators could utilize APIs in order to learn about newly copyrighted
works, either by generating a request to the Copyright Office that initiates a response
containing the information, or by subscribing to a data feed maintained by the Copyright
Office that notifies subscribers when new works are successfully ingested into its
systems. Finally, third party developers and other services could utilize these APIs in
support of new and innovative applications for collecting and disseminating information
regarding copyrighted content across the supply chain.”
30
30
Comment 28, SoundExchange, Inc., at 6.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
5.3.2 Data Model and Data Standards
Several of the interested parties interviewed suggested the Copyright Office, working
with the copyright community, begin with creation of a standard data model. This model
would determine the structure of the data collected, stored and transmitted by the
Copyright Office and specify the relationships and constraints between data points.
Before implementing any system improvements, the Office should consider which data
elements to include and under what schema. Former Associate Register for the
Registration Program, Nanette Petruzzelli, writes, “[a]lthough the Office is a department
of the Library of Congress, the Office now creates (unlike the Library) records of works
which give copyright information as opposed to bibliographic (library) information. It is
this copyright information, in the form of consistent, accessible and legally meaningful
data that should make the Office a one-stop shopping site for the copyright/protectibility
status of so many works.”
31
The wealth of information and activity regarding data standards could warrant its own
study. However, a high-level discussion of data standards follows. Along with
improving the external user interface and enhancing the public record, the most
commonly cited suggestions were to develop an API and adopt data standards.
Parties participating in this special project emphatically recommended that the
Copyright Office utilize global data standards and take a leadership role in supporting
the use of standards. Whether the standard identifies a work, identifies a party or
organization, or establishes a format for messaging, the digital world runs on standards.
For example, the ISRC Agencies write, “[g]iven the increasing importance of both
digital distribution and electronic recordkeeping with respect to all manner of
copyrighted works, we believe the Office would be remiss if it failed to position itself now
to collect information that will be of increasing importance in the digital age.”
32
Interested parties would like, at minimum, for the registration applications to contain
optional fields for standard identifiers that would be validated during the examination
process by registration staff, such as ISBN or ISSN. Some parties urge the Copyright
Office to consider requiring these fields and recommend validation be automated.
Certainly, they advised that any system improvements should be constructed
anticipating changes in industry standards. Ideally, the system would be flexible enough
to allow for identifiers to be added post-registration to enhance existing records. An
advanced system would be able to validate the requested data standards. Improperly
formatted codes would be flagged and a notification could be sent to the user. Many
codes include a country identifier in their structure or contain a check character.
Validations for these aspects can be built into the system and compared against the
31
Comment 26, Nanette Petruzzelli, at 3-4.
32
Comment 17, ISRC Agencies, at 4.
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application data. Some envisioned a truly sophisticated system that could check for
duplicate identifiers, offer suggested resolution for problem identifiers, or even refer an
applicant without a code to the service provider. In the case of the International
Standard Recording Code (ISRC), the Copyright Office could become an ISRC
manager and provide codes to applicants who do not have one.
Data standards would enrich copyright records and searching copyright records would
become significantly more successful. An added benefit would be that they create an
opportunity to exchange data with registries around the world.
County Analytics Ltd writes, “[b]ecause standard identifiers are in general global in
scope, the Copyright Office data would become interoperable with worldwide
databases.”
33
The following list is not exhaustive but merely highlights some key data standards
recommended to the project team by participating parties:
International Standard Book Number (ISBN), International Standard Serial
Number (ISSN): Copyright registration applications currently include an optional field
for applicants to provide ISBN and ISSN information. However, parties are not able to
search copyright records by ISBN or ISSN. In addition, these fields are neither required
nor verified during registration.
International Standard Recording Code (ISRC): Used to identify sound recordings
and music videos, the ISRC is widely used by digital music services, performance rights
organizations and others.
SoundExchange advises, “[i]f the Copyright Office collects ISRCs at the point of
registration, then the public can use ISRCs as a defined connection point between third
party databases and the Copyright Office’s records. The public will be able to search
the Copyright Office’s databases more easily . . . . This, in turn, strengthens the public’s
trust in and reliance on the Copyright Office as a repository of valuable information.”
34
International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC): Used to identify musical
compositions, the American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (ASCAP)
recommends that the Copyright Office include ISWCs in registered works.
35
International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI):
Uniquely identifies individuals and/or organizations to prevent disambiguation.
Separate ISNIs are provided for an individual, his pseudonym and his corporation.
33
Comment 10, County Analytics Ltd, at 9.
34
Comment 28, SoundExchange, Inc., at 3.
35
Comment 4, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, at 7.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
The ISNI International Agency notes, “the use of an international standard identifier
such as ISNI will, if included in the public database held by the Copyright Office, allow
its interoperability with databases whether crowd-sourced or operated by collective
management organizations or commercial entities. This will allow innovative services to
be created, generating better awareness and consumption of copyrighted works,
thereby promoting ‘the progress of science and the useful arts.’”
36
Online Information Exchange (ONIX): A standard format for capturing bibliographic
data related to books.
AAP notes, “[i]n conjunction with publishing more digital content, many publishers
already submit some ONIX metadata on copyright ownership to third party entities in the
publishing supply chain. Hence, publishers are, in general, optimistic about the
possibilities of bulk data transfers using ONIX . . . .”
37
Common Works Registration (CWR):
A standard format for registration information designed to facilitate information
exchange by music publishers.
ASCAP explains, “[t]o ensure . . . that the entire world musical works repertoires are
aligned, works registration follow CISAC
38
-agreed registration standards, referred to as
‘Common Works Registration.’”
39
Digital Data Exchange (DDEX): A standard format for XML messages to exchange
metadata.
SoundExchange recommends that “the DDEX working group could define a profile for
use with the Copyright Office’s databases.”
40
Incorporating internationally accepted standard identifiers would strengthen copyright
records and generate dynamic opportunities for their use. But additional metadata may
also be considered. Parties recommended the Copyright Office create its own identifiers
as needed, such as naming conventions for the various types of registration applications
or unique customer identifiers. Within eCO, each service request has a unique number
but that number does not tell the user – internal or external – about the case.
Simple conventions could distinguish applications by the type of work being registered
at various levels of granularity, or it might indicate whether the application is a basic
registration, a group registration or an appeal. Also, eCO customers are identified by
36
Comment 16, ISNI International Agency, at 2.
37
Comment 6, Association of American Publishers, at 8.
38
Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC) (an international
creators’ rights group).
39
Comment 4, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, at 5.
40
Comment 28, SoundExchange, Inc., at 7.
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their login or, if they have a deposit account, their account number. However, the
various employees of a given publishing company each have individual logins, so there
is no easy way to query cases throughout the organization. Unique identifiers for
parties could be used in a number of ways to search and sort cases. Finally, it was
recommended that an upgraded system would allow users, particularly external users,
to provide optional identifiers of their own such as docket numbers for attorneys, release
dates of sound recordings, universal product codes for commercial goods, etc.
5.3.3 Data Repository
A data warehouse with robust analytics and business intelligence capabilities would be
a valuable investment for the Copyright Office. The reporting capabilities of the current
system are very limited. Hence the staff is not sufficiently enabled to work at their
greatest productively and managers at all levels are not empowered to make vital
business decisions, potentially missing opportunities. Building a data repository would
begin with centralizing the multiple data sources and sets into a single location. For
example, some parties would like to see connections between registration and
recordation data. Another component to the data repository is to provide necessary
long-term storage solutions for both data and electronic deposits. Such measures
would not only be responsible, proactive stewardship of valuable copyright information,
but would improve the Office’s data exchange capabilities.
The Copyright Office data warehouse would effectively and efficiently centralize all of
the Office's existing systems containing copyright information, but may also include new
databases for crowd-sourcing and third party data. While participant parties respect the
official copyright records and wish for them to remain clearly identifiable, some
suggested that the Office also provide additional information sourced from third parties
that appeared alongside, but did not replace, the official legal record. Increasingly,
crowd-sourcing is proving to be a successful means for growing vast bodies of data.
However, the benefit of this method is that the information is provided by the public and
does not compete for resources. Such data could be valuable to the community but
must be clearly demarcated and distinguished from the official and authoritative records
created by the Copyright Office. Alternatively, the Office might wish to devote resources
towards validating data received from third party sources in order to incentivize
participation. If an organization were to share its data with the Office and receive our
endorsement, it would buttress that organization's efforts. Parties presented various
strategies to the Technical Upgrades project team that should be further vetted and
explored for collaborative opportunities.
5.4 Outdated Architecture & Infrastructure
The project team met with interested parties throughout the copyright community not
only to solicit information about their experience with the Copyright Office's business,
but also to establish a better understanding of their businesses. Parties shared
technological solutions that have proven successful for them, as well as information
about the challenges they faced.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Many of the organizations participating endorsed cloud implementation strategies as a
recommended alternative to maintaining and updating their infrastructure. Benefits
include cost savings – especially for reducing expenditures on software licenses –
greater efficiency and improved system elasticity. Several parties indicated that they
have been using cloud solutions for years after weighing its benefits with risk.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office shared that they are partnering with Amazon
Web Services for a proof of concept for a patent system project. Additional methods of
reducing operations and maintenance budgets parties shared with the project include
outsourcing and remote support. Of course, as discussed previously, the registration
system must maintain adequate security for electronic works, and transitioning to
systems where much of the hosting and processing is effectively outsourced will require
careful consideration of the security risks associated with offsite hosting, server
management, and the like.
As a best practice, the Copyright Office should first develop an independent IT
enterprise strategy and plan reflective of its needs to support the creative industries.
Another best practice found throughout the copyright and technological communities is
to provide a high level of system redundancy that leads to a higher degree of reliability
for our line of business. There is a vital need for redundancy to provide full system
backup, thereby reducing risk to loss of data. In addition, these improvements would
enhance the Office's availability by minimizing system down time, whether due to
planned outages for maintenance or unplanned failures or crashes. Greater availability
would also better accommodate our users, particularly international users, and could
potentially enhance Copyright Office revenues.
The interested parties interviewed suggested that as the Copyright Office proceeds with
implementing upgrades consistent with the enterprise strategy, it would be wise to
develop iterative releases to accomplish a phased plan of improvements. In addition,
they recommend the plan be communicated to all users, in particular external users.
Copyright Office customers may need time to adapt and strategize how to alter their
own business processes as legacy systems are replaced. Awareness of the Office’s
implementation plan could promote buy-in, provide reassurance and perhaps gain
patience from the public.
Of significant interest is to deploy highly secure systems and mechanisms to meet
known threats and risks to the copyright community. The Copyright Office is well aware
of the ongoing need to protect our systems for a number of reasons including
safeguarding records that may contain personally identifiable information, or preventing
unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works. However, even our own internal staff
expressed interest in greater measures to protect against potential piracy of valuable
electronic deposits. External users, as well, voiced this concern.
For example, ASMP shared, "[i]n recent months, there has been a lot of media
coverage of vulnerability to cyberattacks, and security of data has become a major
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
concern. Like almost every web-based application, eCO appears to need a significant
upgrade in every security aspect in light of these recently apparent threats."
41
Issues surrounding personally identifiable information in registration records are not new
to the copyright system, but take on new importance in the digital age. In considering
the appropriate scope of public information, the Office must weigh the value of
incorporating certain information in the record to facilitate the identification of copyright
owners, against the potential risks that such information could be used for nefarious
purposes.
Finally, the next generation Copyright Office will also require improvements to its remote
workforce capabilities these should be incorporated into planning in conjunction with
client-focused upgrades.
6. Enabling Technologies
6.1 Technologies
This section includes a description of technologies that may be considered to improve
support of the U.S. Copyright Office and its interested parties within the copyright
community. The technologies considered were either identified by the Special Project
team or were discussed with interested parties during the interview phase of the project.
It is expected that derivative technologies from those included in this section will also be
considered as more detailed requirements are obtained in the deployment of a
modernized Copyright Office.
6.1.1 Application Programming Interface
Technology Description
At the broadest interpretation, an Application Programming Interface (API) is a
mechanism that specifies how software components should interact with each other.
Traditionally, APIs were developed and distributed by organizations to be included in
external applications that were developed by other companies. For example, Adobe
Corporation developed an API that when included in Microsoft Word maintains the “look
and feel” of Word while providing the added capability of creating PDFs.
Organizations that create APIs allow for market expansion and also benefit end-users
by providing an integrated solution. There has been considerable expansion of the API
concept as the Internet and mobile computing technologies continue to proliferate. APIs
can be deployed in various forms. Although the traditional form of an API is still being
developed and distributed for use in other applications (internal and external to
organizations), web based APIs have seen significant growth.
41
Comment 5, American Society of Media Photographers, at 3.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
In this context, web-based APIs are installed on servers, which do not require
distribution and end-user installation. Commonly, web based APIs are installed to
provide business-to-business functionality and mobile device transactions. Web-based
APIs are also referred to as “web services.” For example, Pay.gov offers a web service
to government agencies to process customers’ payments. This service allows the
agencies to develop their own user interface to accept payments that are processed,
transparent to the user, by exchanging data securely between two systems.
Technology Benefit
The Gartner Group discussed the importance of APIs in the banking industry at their
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012. Although not all industries operate like banks, the
copyright community has similar needs to the banking industry when it comes to sharing
data and functionality securely. Gartner said that, “apps, not applications, enable a new
style of engagement with customers—one that is focused on providing needs-based
and context-aware services.”
42
The Gartner Analysts believe that APIs will allow banks
to deliver services based on customer need relevant to the customer’s context. For
example, if the customer is used to working with a specific financial software package,
APIs will provide a layer of abstraction so customers will not be forced to utilize a
different software package when interacting with an external bank. In addition,
providing an API interface to the bank will allow third-party software developers to
market solutions based on customer need.
Another significant benefit of APIs is that they provide other opportunities to expand
market space and provide enhanced services to their customers and partners. This
includes:
• Partner connectivity (B2B)
• Mobility programs
• External developer ecosystems
• Cloud integration
• Internal application data exchange
It is clear that server-side APIs are critical in supporting business-to-business (B2B)
operations. There are well-established standards that support secure web-based
communications between disparate organizations. This capability has enabled B2B to
flourish. However, security, scalability, performance, complexity, regulatory compliance
and integration are still challenges to organizations. Therefore, deployment of APIs
require IT governance and reliance on service-oriented architecture (See section 6.1.4,
Service Oriented Architecture, below) to obtain the greatest value.
42
Press Release, Gartner Group, Gartner Says Banks Should be Banking on APIs and Apps, Not
Applications (Oct. 30, 2012),
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2217415.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
APIs have also enabled organizations to interact with mobile devices that run
applications or “apps” designed specifically for the format of the mobile device (phone,
tablet, etc.). Both client-side and server-side apps have been created to provide data
exchange between mobile devices and organizations. As more and more devices and
systems exchange data via APIs, an ecosystem has emerged that allows users to work
with data through multiple platforms. For example, a transaction such as form
submission could be created via a mobile device, updated via a browser on a
workstation, and be viewed from a software packaged installed on a workstation. Apple
has been successful using this approach with their devices. Their iPhone, Apple TV,
iPad, and workstation platforms all interact with each other. Users that start with one of
their devices begin to see benefits as they add additional devices that are part of the
Apple ecosystem.
With the emergence of cloud computing, APIs are being created by organizations to
provide cloud service providers with the ability to resell software and services to larger
audiences. For example, a sales application from one company can be integrated with
a marketing application from another company and hosted as a service on the Internet.
A detailed discussion of cloud computing is presented in 6.1.2.
Lastly, APIs are also being created for internal use as well. The current approach most
organizations are taking is to develop applications as services to provide a higher level
of integration and re-use of custom software. For example, an application could be
created to share copyright data in real-time. The application could also have further
functionality that provides reporting, querying, and other business capabilities. These
services can be delivered in the form of APIs and part of the organization’s service
oriented architecture (see section 6.1.4, below).
6.1.2 Cloud Computing
Technology Description
Cloud computing is emerging as a viable alternative to the traditional approach of
standing up and hosting applications within an organization.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as,
“a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared
pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications,
and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management
effort or service provider interaction.”
43
Traditionally, organizations have purchased and deployed infrastructure (networks,
hardware, software, etc.) and dedicated the IT resources to specific applications. For
example, an accounting application would require a specific number of servers, storage,
43
Peter Mell, Timothy Grance, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST Special Publication 800-
145 at 2, Sept. 2011, http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
network resources, etc. Internal or contracted staff would be assigned to specific
applications or hardware and software to maintain the datacenter.
Cloud computing differs from a traditional datacenter approach in that specific hardware
and software is not purchased for a specific application and/or customer. Instead, using
a shared platform model, infrastructure is deployed to support multiple applications and
IT resources are provisioned out as a service. Consumers do not need to know nor be
directly concerned with the underlying infrastructure that supports their IT systems.
Rather, consumers are mostly concerned about service delivery. There are several
characteristics of cloud computing that differentiate the capability from more traditional
IT implementation. This includes the following:
• On-Demand – Ability to provision IT services immediately without needing to
necessarily purchase hardware and software. Deployment of IT resources
typically occurs almost immediately or within hours.
• Internet/Intranet Access – Applications or services can typically operate over the
Internet or Intranet. This allows multiple types of devices such as mobile laptops,
phones, tablets, etc. to access resources.
• Resource pooling – Hardware, software, network, storage, and other IT
resources can be pooled so that multiple user groups can share the same
underlying infrastructure while maintaining their own security boundaries.
• Elasticity – Applications and computing resources can be expanded and
contracted based on need. This provides for rapid scalability based on demand.
• Measured Service – IT services can be measured and charged based on
utilization. This characteristic has also provided the ability to use computing as a
utility. Much like electricity or water is charged, computing can be charged based
on utilization. Resource utilization can be monitored and reported to provide
transparency to the consumer of the services. However, this presents a different
cost model than many organizations are accustomed to.
NIST has defined several service models for cloud computing. A service model describes
the capability that the cloud service provides. The three service models include:
1. Software as a Service (SaaS) –This capability provides software to users that is
typically accessed through a web-browser. This includes applications such as
email, database applications (e.g., contact management), customer relations
management (CRM), etc. Customers do not manage the software, operating
systems, network, servers, storage, etc. under a SaaS service model.
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – This capability allows consumers to deploy their
own custom applications in a cloud environment. Consumers are responsible for
managing their own applications but do not need to manage the underlying
operating systems, network, servers, storage, etc.
3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – This capability provides consumers with the
most flexibility but requires consumers to be more involved with the management
of their environment than any of the other service models. Consumers are not
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
required to manage hardware but they are required to install and manage
operating systems and applications.
NIST has also defined deployment models of cloud services. A deployment model
describes where the physical infrastructure is deployed and who manages it. NIST
includes four deployment models:
1. Private Cloud – IT infrastructure is deployed for a single organization but may be
used by multiple business units. For example, a single government agency may
deploy a private cloud within its datacenter that would only support business
units within the agency. IT infrastructure is purchased, owned, and managed by
the agency. Each business unit would share the common IT resource and be
billed based on what it consumes.
2. Community Cloud – IT infrastructure is deployed for exclusive use by a specific
community of consumers with the same mission, security requirements, policy,
etc. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide a cloud service that can
only be used by government and organizations responsible for managing
government systems. In this case AWS is a third party responsible for the
community cloud. However, a community cloud may also be deployed and
managed by multiple organizations that share use of the community cloud
resources. The infrastructure may be deployed on or off-premises.
3. Public Cloud – IT infrastructure is deployed for use by the general public. The
infrastructure is owned and managed by a commercial business or government
organization. The infrastructure is located at the public cloud service provider’s
location but may be used by organizations outside of the cloud provider’s location
4. Hybrid Cloud – IT infrastructure is a mix of two or more cloud deployment models
(i.e., Private, Community, and/or Public). For example, an organization may
deploy a private cloud to support their internal line-of-business applications, and
use a public cloud service provider to host applications that support the general
public.
Technology Benefit
Cloud services are growing at a rapid rate because of the benefits that they bring.
Gartner predicts strong growth in public cloud services, with a growth of 18% in 2013
alone.
44
Gartner predicts that the market will grow an additional 38% by 2015.
However, this does not necessarily apply to all the deployment models (i.e., private,
community, and hybrid cloud). Business and security challenges have not kept up with
the technology growth. This includes establishment of common criteria for service level
agreements (SLA), and accreditation of secure environments for use by government
44
Gary Flood, Gartner Tells Outsourcers: Embrace Cloud Or Die, INFORMATIONWEEK (July 31, 2013, 2:12
PM),
http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/gartner-tells-outsourcers-embrace-
cloud/240159246.
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agencies. Nonetheless, there are compelling reasons for both private and public
sectors to consider deploying systems using cloud technologies.
Most organizations in public and private sectors are already in the process of deploying
private cloud solutions since they present the least amount of risk while still attaining
gain. The main reason for this is that private clouds are completely under control of the
organization where security risks can be contained and where SLAs can be more easily
adapted to reflect cloud operations.
A Gartner poll by Forbes showed that 75% of respondents intend to deploy a private
cloud strategy by 2014.
45
Most organizations are seeing benefits of private cloud
solutions when deploying IaaS and PaaS service models. Because the first step to
developing a private cloud requires deployment of virtualization technologies,
companies quickly realize benefits as they move to a private cloud solution.
Virtualization refers to the creation of a virtual (rather than physical) component of IT
infrastructure. For example, in the past if a system required five servers, five separate
physical computers would need to be deployed to support the application. Virtualization
allows the capability to install all five servers, virtually, on one or a few physical
machine(s). This is possible because of the advent of the faster processing power of
today’s computers. In this example, the five servers operate autonomously on a single
piece of hardware. There are several benefits of virtualization that include energy
efficiency, lower cost of ownership (less hardware, maintenance, etc.), faster
deployment of infrastructure, increased up time inherent to virtualization technologies,
and improved disaster recovery.
Deployment of public, community and hybrid cloud deployments are moving at a slower
pace. However, SaaS is rapidly gaining adoption by commercial and government
organizations. Gartner forecasts more than 50% of enterprises will deploy applications
based on the SaaS service model by 2015. The reason for this is that there are
numerous benefits to cloud services. In 2011, the U.S. White House released its
Federal Cloud Computing Strategy
46
that listed several benefits of cloud computing.
The report included the following benefits:
• Efficiency
o Improved asset utilization (server utilization > 60-70%)
o Aggregated demand and accelerated system consolidation
45
Louis Columbus, Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing Shows Enterprises Finding Value in Big Data,
Virtualization, F
ORBES (Aug. 4, 2012, 12:19 PM)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2012/08/04/hype-cycle-for-cloud-computing-shows-
enterprises-finding-value-in-big-data-virtualization/.
46
Vivek Kundra, U.S. Chief Information Officer, Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, (2011)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/egov_docs/federal-cloud-computing-strategy.pdf.
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o Improved productivity in application development, application
management, network, and end-user
• Agility
o Purchase “as-a-service” on a metered basis (i.e., only pay for what is
used)
o Near-instantaneous increases and reductions in capacity based on
demand
• Innovation
o Shift focus from asset ownership to service management
o Leverage private sector innovation
o Faster deployment of new technologies
The Federal Government has seen success deploying cloud solutions, following the
SaaS service model. This includes deployment of Microsoft’s cloud service that
supports 120,000 staff. The service includes Exchange, SharePoint, Office
Communications, and Live Meeting. The Library of Congress has also launched a
successful cloud project in support of their National Digital Information Infrastructure
and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The project allowed for perpetual access to
certain digital content.
In considering future infrastructure and architectural options, the Copyright Office must
contemplate migrating to cloud solutions in some form or fashion so as to realize the
many benefits of cloud technology. In fact, in a Library of Congress Survey report, the
Office of the Inspector General concluded that the Library needs to develop an
enterprise-wide plan to evaluate use of cloud computing and achievable cost savings.
47
Figure 1 shows the maturity level of the various service models. Based on the analysis
in the report, it is clear that cloud technology offers some cost benefit and the project
team would agree that this is a good planning focus for endeavors specific to the
Copyright Office.
47
LIBRARY OF CONG. OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GEN., LIBRARY-WIDE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES:
T
HE LIBRARY HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE MORE PROACTIVE IN ADOPTING MORE EFFICIENT COMPUTING
TECHNOLOGIES, Survey Report No. 2013-IT-101 (2013) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/libn/about/office-of-
the-inspector-general/documents/rpt2013marCloudComputingServerEfficieny.pdf.
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Figure 1 - Cloud Service Maturity (Source: Library of Congress, Office of the Inspector General)
6.1.3 Integrated Solutions / Business-Driven Ecosystems
Organizations have recognized that one-size-fits-all solutions are often times not
possible for all users. For example, internal users focusing on financial information may
not be interested in information regarding case management. In other cases,
operations management may be interested in both financial and case management.
External users may require a completely different system interaction experience
altogether. Because of this, organizations are developing solutions that provide internal
and external system developers with the flexibility to provide targeted and integrated
solutions.
By leveraging service oriented architecture technology (see section 6.1.4 discussed
below) and web services (see section 6.1.1), systems are now being delivered that will
provide a multitude of interfaces for end-users. This has enabled third parties to
develop solutions targeted to specific user groups and thus allowing business-driven
eco-systems to emerge. This section provides additional details on integrated solutions
and how business-driven eco-systems can benefit both internal and external users.
Technology Description
Over time, organizations have developed a significant number of systems and solutions
that include multiple vendors, complex configurations, and interfaces all designed to
meet a user’s needs. This approach has caused exponentially rising maintenance costs
and has forced organizations to consider other approaches in order to better manage
integrated solutions. With the advent of service oriented architecture, web-services,
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and expanding cloud solutions, organizations are beginning to look at the ecosystem
paradigm model.
An IT ecosystem relies on more than one organization, vendor, and solution provider to
meet the demands of users. For example, instead of developing or purchasing a point
solution
48
, organizations are investing in ecosystems. Ecosystems include solutions
from multiple providers and may operate in multiple hosting environments (i.e., in-house,
cloud, external organization). This includes solutions that are designed to integrate with
one another providing a rich experience to end users. This capability continues to grow
as cloud solution providers begin to offer solutions as part of a SaaS service offering.
For example, a case management system may be developed or purchased by an
organization that provides core functionality, relying on other solutions for value-added
services. External organizations or third party vendors may develop functionality such
as advanced querying, rendering (e.g.¸ printing), authoring tools, etc. This approach
allows the market place to develop functionality based on market and user demand.
Technology Benefit
Integrated solutions/ecosystems provide users with the widest selection of technologies.
Although users may require core functionality from a single organization, users will have
a richer user experience when third party solution providers offer additional functionality.
By building interfaces into applications, organizations responsible for providing core
functionally will benefit from greater expanded functionality in areas that are not within
an organization’s core competence. For example, organizations that are strong at
forms processing could develop or select a case management system while relying on
third parties to develop additional functionality (i.e., authoring tools).
By developing an ecosystem, multiple vendors are able to provide competing products
to appeal to various user needs. Cloud computing is a good example of rapid
ecosystem deployment that enjoys reduced project risk, costs, and rapid deployment.
By integrating various cloud applications and service offerings, users will begin
benefiting from an integrated solution. As additional cloud-based applications and
services are added, they are more easily integrated into a complete solution.
6.1.4 Service Oriented Architecture
A service oriented architecture (SOA) is a key “building block” to the delivery of other
technologies discussed within this document. SOA is a software architecture that is
based on applications that provide functionality as services. A service is a self-
contained logical representation of a repeatable function. For example, an application
that authenticates users can be used in multiple applications that require users to be
48
A software solution that provides a specific type of function such as finance, membership management,
etc. The solution is typically a best-of-breed solution.
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authenticated. Services can be combined to provide a full suite of functionality to an
organization and its users.
Technology Description
A SOA is a collection of services that communicate with each other. This can either be
simple data transfer between two services or it may involve several services working in
tandem to perform an activity. SOA requires services that are well-defined, self-
contained, and have the ability to operate independently without requiring the context or
state of other services.
Web services or web API is a prime example of connection technology used in SOAs.
Ecosystems also rely heavily on SOAs by integrating multiple services to fulfill a specific
business function. For example, either several departments within an organization or
third parties may develop or procure software written in different languages (following
SOA principals) but still have the ability to interface with one another. Organizations
can pick and choose which software modules to integrate without requiring software re-
write. An SOA always includes the ability to re-use software modules.
Technology Benefit
As mentioned above, an SOA is an essential building block that is required in the
delivery of other technologies recommended within this document. This includes
application program interface (API), cloud computing, integrated solution/business
driven ecosystems, and mobile computing. Deploying these technologies without
leveraging an SOA would be extremely difficult if not impossible as well as inefficient
and costly. For this reason alone, an SOA provides immediate benefit to organizations.
As illustrated in other sections, SOA allows simultaneous use and easy mutual data
exchange between software modules written by multiple organizations and/or vendors
and in multiple programming languages. SOA also allows software reuse resulting in
lower development and maintenance costs and higher quality. In addition,
organizations have realized a time savings in deployment of systems.
SOA benefits include:
1. Agile Software Development – Organizations can respond more quickly to new
business requirements and leverage existing services.
2. Cost Reductions – Organizations reduce software development costs by taking
advantage of software reuse, which greatly reduces software development costs.
3. Increased capability with lower return on investment (ROI) – Rapid deployment of
new business functionality is possible by leveraging software that is already
available, thus reducing the ROI.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
6.1.5 Mobile Computing
Mobile computing continues to grow in the market place. Gartner Group has predicted
the traditional PC market to decline 7.6% in 2013 as consumers transition to tablets and
ultra-mobile devices.
49
Mobile computing includes hardware devices such as smart-
phones, tablets, mobile computers, and other portable computing devices. This section
will focus on how mobile computing is emerging as a first tier mechanism to interface
with business and government.
Technology Description
A mobile computing device (MCD) is any device that utilizes components designed for
portable use. An MCD comes in several forms that include phones, tablets, and ultra-
portable screen/keyboard devices that look similar to laptops. An MCD must be
capable of operating, executing and providing services and applications like a typical
PC but may be limited in screen size and/or input capability (screen based keyboard).
MCDs have similar hardware and software components as used in PCs, such as
processors, random memory and storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. However, they differ
from PCs in that they are specifically built for lower power consumption.
Lower-cost devices in combination with accessibility (smaller, portable) have spurred
the growth of system access via mobile computing. Mobile computing encompasses
more than the end-user devices (i.e., phone, tablet, etc.) itself.
Mobile computing also includes infrastructure and software systems optimized for
mobile devices. While there will still always be users who interface with systems using
a traditional PC, organizations will need to provide the capability of accessing their
systems using a mobile device.
Organizations that deploy mobile systems for internal use must also deploy
infrastructure that helps manage devices and provide sufficient security. This includes
deployment of Mobile Device Management (MDM) software. MDM software provides
organizations with the capability to secure software and systems accessible through the
mobile device. In addition, MDM software provides monitoring tools for mobile devices
to ensure mobile access policy is being followed. Finally, MDM provides the ability to
distribute applications, data, and configuration settings over-the-air or by connectivity to
the internal network.
Mobile devices are being used by organizations for access to internal systems and by
end-users to access business systems. For example, tablets are being used for email
access, presentations, or access to inventory systems. End-users have a plethora of
applications for everyday tasks (email, mobile texting, access to weather, news, etc.).
In addition, organizations are beginning to develop interfaces into their business
49
Press Release, Gartner Group, Gartner Says Worldwide PC, Tablet and Mobile Phone Combined
Shipments to Reach 2.4 Billion Units in 2013 (Apr. 4, 2013)
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2408515.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
systems that are designed specifically for mobile devices. For example, airline
reservation systems have developed the necessary software on servers to provide
airline booking information in a format that can easily be read by users of the mobile
device.
Technology Benefit
The Gartner Group predicts that the decline in PCs will continue beyond 2013. This will
require organizations to adjust their delivery model to accommodate mobile computing.
As shown in the table below, The Gartner Group predicts that mobile phones will see
the most growth over the next four years.
49
Worldwide Devices Shipments by Segment (Thousands of Units)
Device Type
2012
2013
2014
2017
PC (Desk-Based and
Notebook)
341,263
315,229
302,315
271,612
Ultramobile
9,822
23,592
38,687
96,350
Tablet
116,113
197,202
265,731
467,951
Mobile Phone
1,746,176
1,875,774
1,949,722
2,128,871
Total
2,213,373
2,411,796
2,556,455
2,964,783
Organizations recognize the need to deploy mobile capabilities to meet customer
demand. This has resulted in developing software and web interfaces optimized for
mobile device utilization. Some of the benefits realized by organizations include:
1. Improved Business Productivity – Provide immediate access to systems
anywhere and anytime.
2. Reduced Operation Costs – Increase visibility into business systems faster (no
need to be at the office/desk) to correct issues or logistics problems.
3. Improved Customer Relationships – Provide additional opportunities to connect
to systems to obtain information anytime, anywhere.
4. Add functionality – Organizations can develop applications that take advantage
of unique mobile computing hardware (i.e., cameras, recording capability, etc.).
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
6.1.6 Big Data
“Big Data” is a term used in information technology to refer to extremely large data sets
that are stored in large database systems and rely on high-performance systems to
capture, store, and analyze data to provide useful Business Intelligence (BI).
50
Technology Description
Organizations have always relied on data collection and analytics to provide business
intelligence to help executives make business decisions. As data capacity and
processing speed has increased and the cost of both has decreased, larger data sets
are being analyzed.
Organizations have the ability to collect much more business data today than in years
past. Big Data requires large processing power which is becoming readily available to
organizations. Big Data also requires vast amounts of disk storage involving hundreds
if not thousands of computers processing data in parallel. With the advent of cloud
computing, leveraging external resources for data storage and processing is becoming
a viable and cost effective method of big data analysis.
Gartner defines Big Data as, “high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information
assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for
enhanced insight and decision making.”
51
The main reason is Big Data requires more than just computing power but specialized
software that can analyze large amounts of data. The software required includes
specialized database software that can handle larger amounts of data than traditional
relational database management systems (RDBMS).
A major proponent of Big Data deployment is Netflix. Netflix deployed a Big Data solution
to determine the quality and reliability of video streams to their customers.
52
In addition,
they utilize Big Data to help programmers determine what their customers are most likely
to watch. As the company grew, Netflix began to run out of capacity in their internal
datacenters so they decided to move to a cloud provider (Amazon Cloud). Netflix
decided on a highly scalable, high-performance, data processing software known as
Hadoop. A combination of cloud computing resources and Big Data processing software
allows NetFlix to grow or scale back as their needs change.
50
Business intelligence is a set of theories, methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies
that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes. W
IKIPEDIA,
“Business Intelligence,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Intelligence.
51
Gartner Group, IT Glossary, “Big Data,” http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/big-data/.
52
Joel Schectman, Netflix Uses Big Data to Improve Streaming Video, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(October 8, 2:30 PM) http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/10/26/netflix-uses-big-data-to-improve-streaming-video/.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Technology Benefit
According to Gartner, Big Data maturation will occur in the next five years.
53
However,
organizations both in the private and public sectors are benefiting from early
deployment. At a very minimum, organizations are developing their deployment
strategy of Big Data technologies.
In order to take advantage of Big Data technology and realize the most gain,
organizations will need to deploy a Data Analytics solution (see below). A combination
of both will provide organizations with the business intelligence to not only gain
efficiencies but also meet their customer needs, thus increasing growth.
Big Data technology provides several benefits:
1. Expand Market Space – Help organizations determine customer needs and
develop new markets.
2. Increase Efficiency – Help organizations analyze operations, products, and
services to determine where efficiencies can be made.
3. Tailor Services/products – Analysis of Big Data allows management to refine
services/products that better meet their customers’ needs.
4. Improve decision-making and reduce risk – Analysis of Big Data allows the ability
to do predictive analysis on past and real-time data. This information helps
reduce risk in the decision-making process.
6.1.7 Data Analytics
Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data in order to draw conclusions about
that information under review. DA is used by organizations to make better business
decisions. Oftentimes DA is used in combination with Big Data (see above) as a
necessary aid to process a large amount of data.
Technology Description
Data Analytics (DA) is the process of reviewing, normalizing (removing duplicate, invalid,
or corrupt data) and modeling data to provide conclusions and useful information in the
decision-making process. Data analytics is used by many organizations to make better
business decisions. Data analytics focuses on inference or the process of deriving a
conclusion based on all or a subset of captured data. DA is used in the sciences and
information technology. For IT, DA is used to examine operations and processes. The
analysis is used to determine whether the systems in place are operating efficiently and
accomplishing an organization’s objectives and goals. DA also helps organizations
predict and improve services to their customers. For example, DA has been used to
53
Big data won’t be mature for at least five years, Gartner predicts, INFORMATION AGE (Aug. 19, 2013)
http://www.information-age.com/it-management/strategy-and-innovation/123457283/big-data-won---t-be-
mature-for-at-least-five-years--gartner-predicts.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
help management determine help desk efficiency by analyzing data such as call volume,
call duration, number of support technicians and end-user feedback.
Organizations that provide online services use DA to examine web site traffic or system
use patterns to determine which services are more or less useful. For commercial
organizations, this information can also be used to determine which product or service
would most likely be the most profitable. Most DA systems include information
dashboards supported by real-time data sources.
Technology Benefit
DA is an essential technology for managing large amounts of data (see Big Data above).
DA provides organizations with information to help make them more competitive and
target products and services that provide the most return on investment. Organizations
use DA as one method for predictive analysis based on data captured by their systems.
Government and commercial organizations continue to deploy DA as a tool to increase
profitability and efficiency. As previously mentioned, in order to make sense of Big Data,
DA is almost an essential tool. In fact, The Gartner Group believes that DA will grow
because of organizations deploying Big Data solutions.
Gartner reported that organizations are seeing real and measurable return on
investment from deployment of Big Data.
54
According to The Gartner Group, 42% of
respondents to a survey indicated that they had either invested big data technology or
were planning to do so. Because of this, The Gartner Group predicts that DA will grow
along with this.
6.2 Deployment Challenges
Organizations deploying new technologies face challenges. Making a shift to new
technology is typically accompanied by its own set of unique hurdles.
Understanding the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the work a particular organization is currently
performing today (“as is” processes) is crucial to anticipating and managing most major
challenges associated with deploying new technology.
According to Joel Barger, Project Director of Power Consulting, Meridium, “Many times
the adoption of new asset management technology and processes fail because
employees do not realize the need for change or understand the benefits associated
with the change. This will require investments of time and resources in asset
54
Douglas Laney, Frank Buytendijk, Invest in Information and Analytics to Benefit From Big Data,
G
ARTNER (Mar. 8, 2013) http://www.gartner.com/id=2363115.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
performance education to provide a broad-based understanding of the flow of asset
performance information, as well as more specific technology training.”
55
In the case of early adopters of new technology, an organization is likely to be exposed
to the problems, risks, and annoyances common to early-stage product testing and
deployment. One risk in particular is that early versions of new technology may be
prone to bugs and/or malfunction, and might cost the organization more at the time of
release. On a positive note, the newer technology will in all likelihood become more
efficient and less expensive within a short period of time following new release.
6.3 Adoption of New Technology
Not all the enabling technologies shown within section 6 are considered “new”
technology. For example, service oriented architecture has been successfully deployed
for more than ten years now. In contrast, Big Data is relatively new and just beginning
to grow. Most organizations should take into consideration their approach in the
adoption of new technology when developing their deployment roadmap.
Some organizations consider the extension of the diffusion process to determine their
adoption of new technology approach. The diffusion process was originally published in
1957 by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State University
and was related to application to agriculture and home economics. However, the same
sociological principles apply to IT technology.
Figure 2 illustrates the adoption lifecycle model according to the diffusion process.
There will be less adopters of technology (2.5% and 13.5% in the chart) early on and at
the trailing edge of the cycle (16% in the chart). Most adoption is made in the middle of
the life cycle, either early majority or late majority.
55
Joel Barger, Managing Change: How to Effectively Deploy New Technologies and Processes in Your
Company, Meridium APM Advisor (February 2012)
http://www.apmadvisor.com/archivearticle.asp?is=60&ord=1.
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Figure 2 - Adoption Lifecycle (Source: Wikipedia)
In technology, innovators and early adopters take the most risk when deploying new
technologies, whereas “laggards” take the least amount of risk but often do not take
advantage of the most gain in the technology. Characteristics of the various adoption
approaches include:
• Innovators – Large scientific and research and development organizations that
have large investment money and are more risk-oriented
• Early Adopters – Large finance investment and highly competitive commercial
organizations with less investment money
• Early majority – Large and medium-sized commercial organizations that require
efficiency but can withstand some risk. Early majority organizations have a
moderate amount of investment capital
• Late majority – Large organizations and government agencies that require
efficiency but cannot withstand risk to stability and have minimal capital
investment for technology. Oftentimes, they wait until technology costs have
come down due to market competitiveness
• Laggards – Very conservative and/or small organizations that cannot tolerate any
risk and have little capital investment money for technology
Making a determination on what model best fits the organization, evaluating the
technology maturity, and determining the organizational IT priorities will help develop an
organization’s IT deployment strategy.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
6.4 Cost/Benefit Considerations
Like any change being considered in an organization, IT technology implementation
requires that cost/benefits be taken into account. At its most basic level, an analysis will
determine whether the cost associated with deploying a technology provides sufficient
benefit, whether tangible (e.g., cost savings over time) or intangible (e.g., enhanced
service to customers).
Each enabling technology presented in section 6.1 is associated with varying amounts
of benefits and costs depending on several factors:
• Costs
o In-house/contract labor
o Cost of software, hardware, etc.
o Cost of deployment (time to deploy)
o Lost revenue/time due to deploying new technology (risk associated with
deploying new technology)
• Benefits
o Reduced operating costs
o Increased efficiency
o Added services to customers
o Increased availability
Although this is not a complete list, organizations should always perform a thorough
cost/benefit analysis when deciding if and when a specific technology should be
deployed.
7. Modernizing the Copyright Office
The Office’s technology infrastructure impacts all of the Office’s key services and is the
single greatest factor in its ability to administer copyright registration, recordation
services, and statutory licenses effectively. This report thus provides a number of
recommendations that, if adopted, could significantly improve the Office’s operations
and interactions with the public. Specifically, this section will cover recommendations
established by the project team for improving the technology of the Copyright Office.
This section will also outline proposed technical enhancements which will provide the
underlying architecture and infrastructure to achieve some of the proposed
recommendations. These upgrades should position the Office in evolving and
improving the technology capabilities across the enterprise of the organization. The
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
recommendations are presented in four main areas of focus, responsive to the project’s
Findings as presented in section 5.
7.1 Enhance User Experience
As noted in Priorities and Special Projects, the Copyright Office set out to discover
areas for improvement to the existing registration system user experience so that we
could identify “what kind of interface [would be] optimal.”
56
Improving the user interface
and user experience, both internally and externally, was a major issue during the data
gathering phase of the special project.
Since eCO registration was adopted, the user community, both internal and external,
has had significant experience with the existing user interface. Internal and external
users commented that the user interface was “clunky,” hard to navigate, too browser
specific, and overall not well-designed. They would like to see a simpler application
process such as a fill-in form or one that guides a user through a series of defined steps
for completing an online registration (e.g., the TurboTax interface model). Users
recommended numerous improvements to the eCO interface such as individual
customization capabilities (e.g., changing screens to use only their applicable activities),
improved profile management capabilities (e.g., saving case submission histories,
abilities to login and retain user specific settings and pre-populated data) along with
limited abilities to upload and poor integration with pay.gov or Deposit Accounts.
The feedback of interface inadequacies is not new to the Copyright Office – the project
team is aware that the registration system user interface and overall user experience is
not optimal. Prior to engaging in this special project, the Office received numerous
recommendations for improvements through our eCO help desk, visitors to the Office,
through user surveys and through staff. Even though user feedback channels were
much less formal prior to the special project, the Copyright Office tracked and
maintained a running list of recommendations for future improvement considerations.
However, aside from a handful of minor tweaks to the user interface, the current
architecture remains largely unaltered, which hinders the Office’s ability to make
substantial user interface improvements in a cost effective manner. As a result, the
Copyright Office has focused on maintenance – keeping the core system up and
functioning properly.
The registration architecture is based on a customized Siebel Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) platform. This results in a product requiring both licensing fees
and software maintenance expenditures.
Enhance User Experience Recommendations
56
Maria A. Pallante, Priorities and Special Projects of the United States Copyright Office, October 2011-
October 2013, 13 (2011) (“Priorities and Special Projects”) http://www.copyright.gov/docs/priorities.pdf.
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To summarize, these are the steps that the project team recommends, on a schedule
and budget that would need to be determined:
Involve Copyright Community
• Assemble internal and external user groups, to meet regularly with
representatives from the Office with the objective of communicating users’ needs
and desires from Copyright Office systems, and for the Office to effectively
communicate resource conditions and constraints
• Meet with remitters across industries and at various levels of expertise to gain an
understanding of their processes prior to submission so that Office processes
and systems are adjusted to partner expectations
Improve User Interface
• Enlist the services of experienced web designers and completely redesign and
deploy a new copyright registration system user interface
• Gather the full breadth of requirements and determine “must haves” versus “nice
to haves.” At a minimum, consider incorporating the following features:
o Consider the possibility of using fill-in forms for application completion
o Take advantage of profile management capabilities
! Individual user customizations of UI will be retained and tied to user
profiles
! Users will not be required to repeatedly input static information
! Organizations can more easily manage organizational parent/child
relationships
! Develop authorization for users to remit on the organization’s behalf
o Offer views of the entire completed application prior to submission and
final registration certificate
o Offer the ability to transfer applications between parties for certification
prior to final submission to the Office
o Improve “Service Request” naming convention to provide pertinent
information (e.g., type of claim, receipt date, remitting organization, etc.)
o Improve file upload capability to allow significantly increased file sizes
o Provide tracking of individual copyright cases so the users can easily
determine status of submissions throughout the entire process
o Improve integration with pay.gov and/or deposit accounts
o Enforce section 508 compliance for user interface redesign
• Consider what, if any, functionality from existing Copyright Office systems can be
easily incorporated into any redesign and deployment efforts
• Deploy a solution that is non-browser specific
• Redesign and re-architect copyright.gov to offer patrons the ability to perform all
transactional activities
Empower System Users
• Identify existing Copyright Office services which could be offered as “self-help”
thereby freeing up staff resources within the office to focus on other activities
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while simultaneously creating an “on-demand” capability for external system
users
• Employ terminology that is easily understandable to both the copyright
community and individual users
• Deploy a point-in-time tracking capability throughout the entire work process
New Features
• Consider the policies and feasibility of using electronic copyright registration
certificates to replace existing paper certificates
• Consider the policies and feasibility of offering self-certification capabilities for
certified copies through use of digital certificates and file validations
• Improve historic case management capabilities for organizations so that they are
able to identify past submissions
• Develop rudimentary analytics (e.g., how many registration claims are in a
pending queue, how many documents were recorded in a given month) for
organizations based on previous submissions
• Engage in an analysis effort to implement artificial intelligence for the
examination of registration submissions beginning with claims in an individual
photograph
7.2 Enhance Public Record
Along with registration and recordation functions, providing an accurate, complete, and
up-to-date public record is one of the primary services the Office offers to the public.
The Register of Copyrights noted in Priorities and Special Projects that the Office seeks
to “improve the nature, accuracy and searchability of USCO public databases.”
In our meetings with the copyright community, stakeholders confirmed that the existing
public record is incomplete and that the search capability is inadequate for locating
copyright ownership information. They told the project team that the existing system
often crashes, times out, and cannot handle large volume requests. Most importantly,
they conveyed that data is missing from our existing public record and migration of new
data to the public record can be too slow. They further indicated that much of this
information is available from other internet sources, so they tend to use those sources
before the Copyright Office website.
The public record databases should show accurate, complete and up-to-date
information such as chain of ownership and ownership contact information. The Office
should consider whether it will allow the public to update some data directly, such as
change of address data. For certain works, the record associated with a copyright could
contain snippets of deposits or thumbnails (possibly watermarked), perhaps under an
opt-in system. Additionally, some of the community would like more information about a
given copyright registration such as whether a termination notice was filed, if registration
was made upon appeal, or if the work is in litigation. They would like to see the
complete ownership record, and chain of title, in one place. Finally, they would like
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more data, specifically metadata, for items such as images which could be relatively
easily extracted from the uploaded deposits. Of course the nature and scope of the
public record, though implemented through information technologies, is fundamentally a
question of law and policy. What information to make available to the public, and on
what terms, is largely driven by the Office’s obligations under Title 17, which is currently
the subject of a comprehensive review by Congress and about which the Office is
continually consulting stakeholders.
In addition to the inadequacies of data within the public record, the copyright user
community indicated that the search capabilities within the public record were not
optimal. Users “search” expectations are more sophisticated than in years past; they
expect search abilities which are common among most large data sets such as sorting
and/or filtering or faceted searching - a technique for filtering the data search in order to
obtain more refined results, (e.g., format of work, date of first publication, nation of
publication, subject matter, etc.). Users of the public record would also like the ability to
save searches so that they do not have to be recreated each time they use the records
and they would like the system to return all of the results without a maximum limit
(which is currently not available).
While certain limited improvements to the copyright public record may be possible within
the current environment, significant enhancements/improvements are dependent on
detailed and agreed-upon system requirements. As is the case when developing any IT
solution, initial discussions will help to define the business, functional and technical
expectations of a new copyright public record. Once firm requirements are established
and accepted, determinations can be made as to whether the existing Voyager database
system is capable of supporting the requirements of the proposed copyright public record.
7.2.1 Public Record Database
To achieve the overall objective of improving the copyright public record, the Office
should first consider whether Voyager is the best database system to suit the needs of
the copyright public record. The current copyright public record database is powered by
a Voyager database which is licensed and primarily operated (with limited consideration
to copyright system needs) by the Library Services division of the Library of
Congress. In 2007 the Copyright Office migrated the electronic copyright public record
from a Library of Congress mainframe system to the large-scale Voyager database
controlled by Library Services. The arrangement with Library Services offered one
individual Voyager database instance along with some limited amount of customization
to address Copyright Office requirements. Based on what the Office knows now, the
Voyager product is designed with bibliographic cataloging capabilities in mind (i.e., item
loan, library cataloging, overdue item tracking, and interlibrary loan of collection material)
and is not necessarily adaptable to Copyright Office needs.
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7.2.2 Data Sources
The Copyright Office must consider what data sources currently populate the public
record and should populate it in the future. The copyright marketplace creates and
manages a number of rich data models for a variety of content, including music, films,
and books. The project team believes the Office should consider these and other
verified data sources and incorporate them, as appropriate, into the public record.
Recordation
Significant improvements to the public record, while certainly achievable, are dependent
on other major Copyright Office initiatives such as the pending effort to automate the
activities of the Recordation Section. While eCO data is migrated to the public record
on a daily basis, data from the legacy CORDOCS system (and legacy CORCATS
system) migrate only once a week and are largely reliant on manual processes. As it
stands today, work flows and work processes for recording documents are primarily
performed in a manual fashion. Once the workflows and processes have been
reengineered and automated, data migration must happen seamlessly and can occur on
a much higher frequency. Until then, data migration for recording, indexing, and
accessing copyright documents will remain less than effective.
Public Access to Historical Records Project
Another major initiative of the Copyright Office is the Special Project for Public Access
to Historical Records. This project is related to, yet separate from, the ongoing effort to
scan and move to long-term storage approximately 60 million Copyright Office paper
records ranging in date from 1870 to 1977. The scanning effort was partially funded
through a multi-year appropriation, and digitization of the historic Copyright Card
Catalog – approximately 35.8 million cards – was 99% completed in fiscal 2014, with
only fragile cards remaining. Most of the pre-1978 paper records have no back-up
copies and comprise an irreplaceable record of late 19
th
as well as 20
th
century
copyright ownership.
Although the scanning project achieves the important goal of creating high-quality digital
preservation copies of the records, researchers still have to visit the Copyright Office in
Washington, D.C. to search the records. USCO is currently experimenting with Optical
Character Recognition (OCR) technologies to determine the best option to integrate
these records into the Voyager system. Ideally, data from the cards and other scanned
paper records, once extracted and indexed, could be integrated and linked with records
in the Copyright Voyager database to provide for a single, comprehensive search
interface covering the entire time period from 1870 to the present. “Smart” searching
that would automatically find and display multiple records reflecting chain of title of a
single work (e.g., original registration, renewal, one or more assignments, etc.) would be
highly desirable. Testing OCR of 1971-1977 cards is underway.
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7.2.3 Credibility of Data
As stewards of the official public record of copyright ownership information, the
accuracy and validity of data contained in the records is of paramount importance to the
Copyright Office. The Office must therefore undertake significant efforts to not only
validate the data which feeds the public record but also the processes which create the
data. It would be wise to routinely validate the data feeding the official public record and
also to ensure that we refrain from permitting sources other than those internal to the
Copyright Office (e.g., collective management organizations or other third-party
registries) to contribute.
Enhance Public Record Recommendations
To summarize, these are the steps that the project team recommends, on a schedule
and budget that would need to be determined:
Involve Copyright Community
• Establish a project team of both internal Copyright Office users as well as
external experts or “power” users, which are tasked with overseeing the effort of
creating a new official public record
o The team should develop the detailed requirements of a new official
copyright public record with improved search capabilities
o Establish data mappings and data flow to all relevant data sources which
will contribute to a new Copyright Office public record and develop data
integration plans
• Resolve policy issues surrounding requirements for populating, updating, and
maintaining a new Copyright Office public record
o Resolve policy issues such as whether or not the Office can provide
sample images of the deposited copy associated with a copyright record
o Consider ways of improving “official” public record update capabilities
(users desire an easy ability to update information in their own records
such as updated contact information)
• Ensure public record redesign is seamlessly integrated with the “Data”
considerations in section 7.3 of this document
Internal Considerations
• Conduct an alternatives assessment on database products capable of supporting
the enhanced requirements of the copyright public record
• Conduct a cost/benefit analysis for migrating to, and long term support of, a
dedicated, large scale database which houses the copyright public record versus
enhancement capabilities of the current incarnation of the public record
• Release RFI or Statement of Objectives to industry experts and technology
research organizations (i.e., Gartner, Forrester, etc.) to obtain input on
deployment of enterprise class databases.
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o Consider the possibility of investing in a new robust, large-scale database
solution that is designed to accommodate the requirements of a new
official copyright public record
o Consider partnering with known search utilities in providing search engine
capabilities for the public record database
7.3 Improve Data and Information
As an office of public record, the Copyright Office realizes the criticality of maintaining
useful, reliable information. The project team understands that quality records are
dependent on quality data and quality data is necessary for providing quality information.
We further understand that the Copyright Office needs to drastically improve what data
and information it wants to capture. With this in mind, the project team recommends the
Office focus on capturing the “right data” so that we provide the most valuable
information to the copyright community. As the Register noted in Priorities and Special
Projects, we need to understand “[w]hat kind of information should be captured . . . what
kind of metadata . . . the office should pursue.”
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Quality data is the underlying element which makes information useful and valuable,
and is therefore the key contributor to offering an effective and searchable copyright
public record. As mentioned previously, many users, both internally and externally, feel
the existing data (and records) of the Copyright Office are largely inadequate and
inaccurate for fulfilling intended purposes – keeping track of who owns rights to
particular pieces of copyrighted works.
Figure 3 is a conceptual diagram illustrating how data may be obtained from various
sources to provide a consolidated copyright data set which can be used as a reliable
central repository by the copyright community. A Copyright Office Public Repository
would accept feeds from multiple sources and be subject to change of control and
governance to ensure accuracy. In addition, since it is a duplication of data, loss of data
would be eliminated should the dataset be compromised.
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Priorities and Special Projects, at 13.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
MPAA
BMI
Sound
Exch
Other
Public/CO Repository
Internet
Copyright5Partners
B2B Data5Exchange
Copyright5Public Users
(Web Interface and Web API)
Copyright5Office5Publishing
Control and Security
Records Registra.
Cert.
Repos.
CIO/CTO
Data5Management
Figure 3 – COPYRIGHT OFFICE Data Model
A targeted effort which focuses on all aspects of data, specifically the establishment of
effective data standards, should be a primary goal of the next generation Copyright
Office and should be considered a key to the success in fulfilling the needs of the
copyright community. The Office must commit to effectively managing its current data
as well as determining what data it needs moving forward. Consideration must be given
to expectations and requirements for the future. The Copyright Office must identify both
the user community requirements and business requirements so that we enable a more
informed copyright community.
There are many questions to be answered but foremost among them are: what is the
universe of potential data elements, what data is available and from where, what data
standards should the Copyright Office adhere or establish, whether the data exists
currently and who, if an entity other than the Office, maintains the data. The Office
needs to establish who we receive data from and who we send data to; the Office must
develop a plan for integrating the data as well as how the data will be preserved or
archived. Finally, the Copyright Office needs to better understand how it will manage
the data, as well as how it plans to migrate data to future technologies which today may
not exist.
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7.3.1 Data Strategy, Data Management & Data Governance
Overall, it is critical that the Copyright Office invest appropriate resources in the creation
and management of a thoroughly vetted Data Strategy, Data Management Plan and
Data Governance Plan. The objective of a detailed Data Strategy simply outlines where
the Office is now, from a data perspective, and targets where we want to be in the future.
An effective Data Management Plan clarifies such information as what data currently
exists, where the data is maintained and archived, who owns the data, and how the
data is validated and used.
In an organization such as the Copyright Office, data must be treated as one of the
most, if not the most, valuable asset of the organization. Quality data must be
maintained using documented and agreed-upon data governance standards which
clarify what rule sets are used in managing the data (i.e., what happens in the event of
data conflict, which data supersedes similar data, who is authorized to update data, who
has access to what data, etc.).
It is common for large organizations to find themselves managing huge volumes of data
which can vary significantly in size, content, and established levels of support. Often
the data is stored in disparate systems with little to no thought being given to managing
the data effectively. Some neglect to leverage the information which may be gleaned
from the amalgamation of data in the form of analytics. Many organizations which
house these huge amounts of data do so without an effective Data Strategy and Data
Management Plan which should minimally address such information as:
• What data exists
• Who owns the data (data authority)
• What data should be captured
• How the data is maintained
• Who has access to specific data
• What the rules are for validating, managing, and archiving the data
• Specifications of data standards employed
• How data is exchanged and with whom (as well as whether they are a trusted
party)
• What measures are taken to ensure data validity
• How to ensures all policy issues and records management mandates are
adhered to
• How to structure the data
• What are the relationships of the data sources
• Specification of data access control (who is authorized to update the data)
Data is an organizational resource with intrinsic value internally and to Copyright Office
customers. Proper resources must be obligated for effective data management and
preservation. Thoughtful consideration must also be given to such elements as
governance and security.
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Currently, the Copyright Office maintains numerous data stores but lacks all of the
necessary policies for managing the data. The Office’s data is maintained in many
different forms and in many different locations and very rarely does one set of data
correlate to another. While there is much data that is missing or which goes un-captured,
the Office has great amounts of data which we simply need to do a better job of
managing and rendering accessible. Not only will the establishment of proper data
management practices benefit the organization significantly now and in future
generations but as an office of public record, managing the data fulfills the core mission
of the Copyright Office.
At a minimum, with effective data management in the form of a thoughtful data strategy,
a well-defined data management plan, and a detailed data governance plan, the
Copyright Office must:
• Provide accurate, robust, up-to-date and timely records to our copyright community
• Potentially answer many orphan works questions
In the short term, the Office can do a better job to:
• Leverage the information it already possesses
• Establish effective policies and practices for managing the data moving forward
In the future the Copyright Office can focus energies on partnering with copyright
community organizations, many whom have expressed an interest in sharing data with
us. The true benefit of sharing data with others is to enrich the data available so that
the copyright community as a whole benefits.
Two elements of the Data Strategy and Data Management Plans are worth highlighting
specifically due to the importance that these two areas hold within the plans: Data
Warehouse/Data Repository and Data Integration. These two elements will be briefly
covered below.
Data Warehouse/Data Repository
A data warehouse with associated data repositories is a key component to be considered
when developing the Copyright Office’s data strategy. As part of the data strategy, an
equally important component is how the data should be managed and governed.
A data warehouse is more logical (data grouping, access controls, etc.) in nature
whereas a data repository is more physical in nature (i.e., disk, servers, etc.). For
example, a data repository is much like a physical filing cabinet that has drawers, filing
folders, etc. A data warehouse may contain multiple filing cabinets that are logically
grouped together (i.e., each cabinet contains data that relates to other cabinets) under
one roof (see Figure 4).
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Figure 4 – Data Repository/Data Warehouse
Using this analogy, the Copyright Office needs to develop and manage the warehouse
that contains the filing cabinets of all the individual filing cabinets from its systems. The
warehouse needs include the necessary management plan, operations, and procedures
to store and retrieve information from multiple filing cabinets in an organized fashion.
The approach in providing this is covered in section 7.3.2.
Data Integration
A second critical element for consideration when developing data strategy,
management and governance plans is that of integrating data repositories together in
an effort to possess more accurate and complete data. Data sources can come from
both internal and external sources (e.g., performance rights organizations). Before data
is integrated and aggregated, significant consideration must be given to where the data
originates and the integrity level or quality of the data being aggregated (referenced
previously in section 7.2.3 Data Sources and section 7.2.4 Credibility of Data of this
document). The net results of merging known accurate data with potentially inaccurate
and/or incomplete data will result in an amalgamation of inaccurate data.
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The Office understands that the value of integrating data is significant but the Office, as
a trusted authority of record, has a responsibility to use the utmost care and caution
when integrating data. The Copyright Office will need to develop integration strategies
that provide client access while insuring data integrity.
7.3.2 Data Analytics
Business Intelligence uses Big Data (described in section 6.1.6) in an analytical fashion.
Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data in order to draw conclusions about
that information under review. DA helps organizations make better business decisions.
In most cases, DA is used in combination with Big Data as a necessary aid to process a
large amount of data. As we improve our data posture, the Copyright Office will
invariably be collecting higher-quality data. When the organization commits to collecting
the appropriate data, organization leaders will be able to make actionable and informed
decisions, in real-time, for such things as application submissions by type and
productivity levels for a given period, in a particular division or sub-division.
Data analytics could inform point-in-time information regarding workflow trends and
potential backlogs. For example, in an instant, management would be able to
determine how many visual arts registration applications are in a pending queue or how
many performing arts registrations were completed in the previous month. The
organization could track in-bound receipts as well as expenditures for any given period
of time. Copyright community information could be tracked to determine such things as
deposit account balances so that the community could receive more timely notification
of reduced balances. Appropriate data analytics allow timely and easy access to
meaningful business data. With effective analytics (and supporting infrastructure), the
types of information obtained are almost limitless.
7.3.3 Data Exchange
Before discussing data exchange, three conceptual elements pertaining to data
exchange must be considered: Data Standards, Data Schemas, Application
Programming Interfaces (API’s)/Web Services. A general concept of these data
exchange concepts are covered below.
Data Standards
Data standards enable organizations who want to exchange data with the Copyright
Office to know exactly how to communicate with us. Data standards spell out how data
should be organized in order to be exchanged between organizations, often likened to a
common vocabulary or predetermined semantics. Data standard formatting
agreements can be handled individually between the host and partner organizations or
the host organization, in this case the Copyright Office, can choose to publish a data
standard that simply allows trusted partner organizations to map their data to that of the
Office. In this instance, if the Office chooses to publish its own set of data standards, it
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can create one or the Office can elect to adhere to an existing set of standards which
were mapped out and agreed upon by one of several standards setting bodies.
Such standards have normally been vetted and are widely in use by numerous
organizations both nationally and internationally. If the Office chooses to follow OPM A-
119 guidance and adhere to existing industry data standards, careful consideration
must be given to which data standard(s) it aligns with. There are numerous data
standards available from numerous data standards governing bodies. It is important
that the Copyright Office take into account the standards used by the various industries
that interact most frequently with the Office (e.g., publishing, music, art). Most
organizations which operate in a particular industry adhere to industry standard data
models (ISDM), so the Office will need to be able to transfer data with relative ease
amongst like partner organizations. During our interviews, the project team learned
some organizations employ small teams of technologists whose job it is to solely work
on accommodating various data standards so that they can easily exchange with
various partners.
There are numerous and obvious benefits to establishing or adhering to a set of data
standards including allowing organizations the ability to data transfer bulk registrations
or documents for recordation, making it easier and faster to update copyright record
information (from trusted partners only) thereby improving the overall quality of the data.
As an added benefit, data which transfers from system-to-system is usually cleaner
since less manual keying is necessary. Establishing data exchange through
established data standards can also provide much more robust data even though, as
noted previously, the Office does not want to capture data just for the sake of collecting
data. Rather, the Office needs to ensure it captures the right data.
Data Schemas
Data schemas help depict the data an organization (or specific system) maintains. The
data schema identifies the data elements and depicts the relationships to other data
elements. Data schemas are usually published graphically and help to define and
depict all the levels of data elements (to include metadata) of a system.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)/ Web Services
An Application Programming Interface (API) provides a mechanism for disparate
applications to communicate and deliver expanded functionality. An API is a tool that
lets systems share existing functionality and allows disparate systems to share data
with one another. APIs can benefit the Copyright Office and remitters by enhancing
registration and recordation options for remitters but also allowing people to interact
more effectively.
In many cases APIs are developed by software companies and distributed so that they
can be used in third party applications. (As noted in section 6.1.1 Application
Programming Interface.) There has been considerable expansion of the API concept as
the Internet and mobile computing technologies have proliferated. Web based APIs are
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installed on a hosting organization’s servers and do not require distribution and end-
user installation. Commonly, web based APIs provide business-to-business data
exchange as well as mobile device communications. Hosting organizations publish the
method to communicate with their servers based on well-established standards. This
removes the burden of organizations having to develop client-side APIs in formats
compatible with multiple software languages.
A great example of a successful deployment of a web based API is the service that was
deployed by the IRS to allow for electronic submission of tax returns. For example,
users who prepare their personal tax returns using a third party application (e.g.,
TurboTax among others) have the ability to upload their completed tax forms to the IRS
web servers. The APIs installed on IRS servers also allow for processing of payments
from tax payers. The third party application companies also provide valuable feedback
to the IRS on system changes and operational modifications. The Copyright Office
would benefit from having similar relations with its data users.
Data Exchange
As noted by the Register in Priorities and Special Projects, the Copyright Office would
like to consider the “feasibility of connecting the Office’s database of registration and
recordation records to private sector data to facilitate licensing and use of copyrighted
materials.”
58
With regard to data exchange, the primary capabilities under consideration for the Office
as a result of an improved data posture would include, but certainly not be limited to, the
following:
Improving the accuracy and robustness of copyright records
There is far more robust data within the copyright community that the Copyright
Office could leverage and benefit greatly from. Likewise, we have significant,
critical data of which certain industry partners would welcome having easy
access. Currently, external organizations resort to crawling the Copyright Office
database through automated means but this is a time consuming and somewhat
arduous task. Partner organizations definitely prefer the ability to extract data
from the Office through automated data exchange methods. Obviously,
exchanging data with certain organizations - both transmission and receipt - will
make for richer data for everyone which, in turn, benefits the entire copyright
community.
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Priorities and Special Projects, at 13.
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Enabling bi-directional data exchange of copyright information
(transmission/receipt) with trusted parties
The Copyright Office should be cautious when receiving data from external entities
and needs to ensure proper security and data validation prior to any data
integration effort. The Office may need to consider the practicality of “certifying”
data sharing partners to ensure they are transmitting quality data that has been
validated before any data integration is considered. At a minimum, the Office
absolutely must consider the rule set which governs who can exchange, when,
how, and what before integrating into the Copyright Office public record.
Enabling update to an unofficial copyright public record
The Copyright Office should consider the possibility of establishing an unofficial
database which houses the vast amounts of copyright data from sources
throughout the copyright industry, thereby offering more immediate, yet unofficial,
results to the copyright community until such time as the information can be
validated and possibly incorporated into the official Copyright Office public record
database. Through various improvements mentioned previously in the Enhanced
Public Record section of this document, the Office will be able to vastly improve
the time with which it takes to populate the official public record. But even when
effective automation supports recently optimized work processes, there still may
be minimal, unavoidable delays in updating the official public record. This same
data will likely already exist in partner databases and will only require a data
transfer to bring our unofficial public record to a more current state. Again, this
connected unofficial public record supports the Register’s goal of “connecting
databases.”
Enabling remitting organizations the ability to bulk transfer copyright
registration applications and documents for recordation
The Copyright Office understands that the copyright community would like to improve
the data exchange capabilities, including but not limited to bulk registration and
recordation submission. The project team understands the benefits of such an ability
and we agree that such an effort needs to take place sooner rather than later, but we
also understand that such a critical initiative should not be undertaken without proper
planning. Not only will modifications be necessary for our existing eCO system and
storage, but the Office will require well-conceived data management, data
governance, and data standards. The Office needs to fully understand the internal
requirements as well as those of our business partners, and we need to understand
the range of solutions available. Nonetheless, the project team thinks improvements
to the data exchange capability of the Office should be a near term priority.
In the copyright marketplace, there are several remitting organizations that retain
teams of people who sit at terminals all day filling out registration applications
one-at-a-time. With effective data exchange capabilities in place these remitter
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organizations may require less staff to work on individual file submission.
Additionally, the Office will be better equipped to receive applications either
through dedicated transmission channels or improved management of resources
by possibly allowing bulk registration (or recordation) during off-hours, or
improved automated system monitoring to regulate the inbound transmissions.
Not only will such a capability allow for less manual labor, improved quality of
data, and an earlier effective date of registration (or recordation), the process,
once established, is easily repeatable and can be set up for automated transfer.
Additionally, partner organizations would be free to develop their own interface
for populating the data so that they aren’t dependent on the existing eCO user
interface.
Enabling data exchange with intellectual property law enforcement
agencies
Late in calendar year 2009, Congress directed Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) to initiate a project referred to as the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
Recordation Linking Project so as to report on the feasibility of connecting CBP
databases with those of the nation’s two intellectual property organizations, the U.S.
Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The capability of an
aggregated database would allow CBP agents to check shipments as they enter the
country from known pirating regions of the world.
In the end, it was determined that CBP, the Copyright Office, and the Patent and
Trademark Office all lacked sufficient resources to implement the Recordation
Linking Project during FY 2009. The final report also stated that until the two
intellectual property organizations are given the mandate, funding, and additional
resources to complete this project, CBP would be unable to implement the
congressional mandate. Such a request, with proper office-wide data posture,
should be achievable.
Offering external entities the option of creating their own interface for the
submission of copyright applications or documents for recordation
It is no secret that the user interface for copyright registration submission is less
than optimal. While the Office hasn’t given up on making major improvements to
the interface, having an API or a published set of data standards will allow
frequent remitters the option of creating their own interface for submitting
registration applications and documents for recordation to the Office. Offering
this option will hopefully encourage more copyright registration and recordation,
and with effective and well thought through data standards, will hopefully improve
the amount and quality of data received by the office. Also, having a published
set of data standards and/or an API will permit integration with popular
applications for content creation, making it more enticing for a user to submit
registrations and recordations.
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Offering compatibility with technology devices such as mobile
technologies (i.e., smart phones, tablets, etc.)
As most are aware, mobile technologies sales are on the rise and PC sales have
been on a steady decline. In many cases, the capabilities of mobile technologies
are equal to, or in some cases better than, those offered by their predecessor
equivalent technologies. Documents can be created on tablets and high-
resolution photographs, videos and audio can be captured with advanced smart
phones. Not only should the Office consider integrating metadata which is
automatically generated by such devices, the Office should offer APIs that allow
for the creation of mobile applications for the submission of copyright registration
and possibly copyright record search and update.
Data Section Note: Within the purview of this Special Project, the team facilitated
meetings with various data subject matter experts within the Copyright Office, the
Library of Congress, and external agencies to gain a better understanding of the types
of data standards already being used internally and by current partner organizations.
Even though a great deal of additional research should be conducted surrounding the
notion of copyright data and data exchange, the team felt that an additional level of
research and understanding was necessary to establish effective data
recommendations for moving the organization forward.
Improve Data and Information Recommendations
To summarize, these are the steps that the project team recommends, on a schedule
and budget that would need to be determined:
Commit Copyright Office Resources
• Establish and appropriately staff a data group within the technology office of the
Copyright Office to:
o Participate in working groups of data standards setting bodies
o Establish, or adopt, and publish data standard(s) for the office which cover
all of the possible data exchange entities within the copyright community
(and establish the process for maintaining such standards)
o Establish a data exchange working sub-group whose mission is to manage
data exchange partner relationships and technical logistics
o Establish APIs for use in the copyright industry or by third party software
developers eager in developing IT solutions for improved integration with
Copyright Office systems (and establish the process for maintaining such
APIs)
o Develop business models to partner with other software providers to include
Copyright Office-related products in their software suites.
• Develop a detailed long-term Data Strategy
• Develop a detailed Data Management Plan
• Develop a detailed Data Governance Plan
• Consult on strategy with data management experts
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
• Invest in the development of a detailed data “as is” document
• Invest in the development of an all-inclusive data model which minimally depicts all
of the data available, data relations, etc. to include, but not be limited to, COINS,
CORDS, CIS, eCO, CORCATS, CORDOCS, DOCLOG, and BCS
• Document the universe of data that is within the copyright community as a whole
and determine, of the universe, which is of value to the Office
• Leverage existing data stores and repositories to make additional data available
until a complete, robust data model can be completed
Establish a Data Repository
• Establish a secure data warehouse for all Copyright Office data and apply industry
best practice data management and archive principles
o Inventory the existing data stores and repositories and define future
repositories
o Research and satisfy all applicable federal data and records management
directives
o Identify and implement appropriate data security mechanisms and
infrastructure
• Establish the necessary infrastructure to support the future state of the copyright
data environment
• Pilot core business-side data analytics capabilities
• Pilot core partner-side data analytics capabilities
Involve Copyright & Technology Communities
• Establish a short-term pilot for secure, bi-directional data exchange of copyright
information with trusted parties with the long-term goal of establishing a process
by which data is transferred to/from select external entities routinely
• Establish a short-term pilot for secure, bulk submission with select parties with a
long-term goal of secure, open and easy bulk submission from ANY external
entity
• Engage in discussions with 3
rd
party application development vendors (including
mobile technology developers) who have contacted us (in the past) and who
have an interest in establishing copyright application submission software for
submission of registration or recordation applications or modifications
• Establish a secure data exchange test with Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
with the goal of routine and regular data transfer among any IP law enforcement
agencies
• Engage in an analysis effort aimed at identifying requirements and ultimately
implementing a robust video upload capability for receipt of digital video from
video production partners that allay security or pirating concerns of partner
organizations
• Develop an SFTP (Secure File Transfer) capability for large files and easy tie-in
to the registration system
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7.4 Architecture
In order to enable the improvements mentioned previously, and to manage the IT
resources of the Copyright Office in a manner which supports achieving its core mission
and statutory responsibilities, the Office will need significant improvements. In the view
of the project team, these improvements should be premised upon a new, copyright-
specific architecture and infrastructure. This infrastructure would then support such
initiatives as a certified digital deposit repository, an enterprise application solution, and
a mobile technology strategy. Deploying modern systems should take a holistic
approach. In addition, the Copyright Office will need considerable staffing resources. It
will need experts to support a systems development strategy and to handle
implementation of new initiatives. This staff will be fully integrated into the business of
the Copyright Office as well as the businesses that depend upon the Office.
7.4.1 Enterprise Architecture (EA)
The Copyright Office does not currently have its own well-defined architecture. Rather,
it follows the Library’s enterprise architecture (EA). In order for the Copyright Office to
deliver services to its stakeholders and improve efficiencies, a holistic IT modernization
is required. This begins with developing an EA specific to the Copyright Office. EA
minimally includes a well-defined practice for the following areas:
• IT Governance
• Systems Planning and Management
• Systems Analysis
• Systems Design
• Systems Development (including methodology, tools, hardware/software
standards, etc.)
• Systems Implementation
• Systems Operations and Management
A holistic and complete Copyright Office EA is required in order to guide the Office,
serve its twenty-first century customers, meet its business needs, provide IT strategic
direction, provide gains in efficiency, and ultimately reduce costs in operation. The EA
should organize the structure and views associated with the Office. This includes
defining the business architecture that drives the information architecture. The
information architecture will prescribe the information systems architecture identifying
the data architecture which ultimately will be supported by the hardware, software, and
communications systems (see Figure 5).
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
Figure 5 - Enterprise Architecture (NIST 2012)
7.4.2 Technology Infrastructure: Requirements and Alternatives
Currently, the Copyright Office IT systems reside on a combination of Copyright Office
and Library of Congress owned infrastructure components; however, the Copyright
Office technology staff does not have ownership or control of the overall technology
infrastructure that powers the Copyright Office’s systems and services. The primary
web-accessible system for registration submission and backend case management is
the eCO system. Virtually all elements of the eCO system were purchased by the
Copyright Office, including hardware and licenses. Several operational legacy systems
(e.g., COINS, CORDS, CIS) were originally built by, and are currently supported by, the
Library’s Information Technology Services (ITS) directorate. During the upgrade of eCO
from Siebel version 7.7 to Siebel 8.2 (in 2010), the Office purchased several elements
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of new hardware to enable such things as application servers, gateway servers, proxy
servers and database logical partitioning. Although the Copyright Office purchased this
equipment using its funding (fees and designated appropriations), the Library permits
Copyright Office technology staff limited access to the equipment; it allows application
level access only. In other words, because the servers reside on the Library’s network
and because they are located within the Library’s data center, it does not permit
Copyright Office staff, including the Copyright Office CIO, to control the underlying
hardware or operating system controls.
Additionally, Copyright Office staff are not able to establish or enforce IT security
policies for these systems (or the data they contain), cannot control maintenance
routines such as system backups or data migration, and have limited control of our
systems during system outages. The Copyright Office technology staff relies on the
Library’s resources for administering and troubleshooting Copyright Office system
issues. Library IT personnel are not experts in the needs of the copyright system.
Moreover, resources are routinely taxed with supporting other departments of the
Library (Office of the Librarian, Library Services, the Law Library, the Office of Strategic
Initiatives, and the Office of Support Operations). Unlike the Copyright Office, these
departments do not administer a federal law, are much less public-facing, do not collect
fees for services, and in most instances do not have a separate congressional
appropriation.
Because the Copyright Office serves and intersects with a major and global
marketplace of creative content, it must operate more like a business, essentially
twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. However, current dependencies with
the Library do not currently allow for a “hot” alternate computing site that, in a best case
scenario, would allow the Office to balance IT processing needs across primary and
secondary sites to achieve high redundancy and high availability.
The Copyright Office is dependent upon the Library’s IT shop for basic things as well,
including scheduled software releases. If a problem occurs outside of normal operating
hours, the Copyright Office must locate a Library technology representative before the
situation can be analyzed or solved. Many issues which arise in supporting the eCO
system could be resolved in a more timely fashion and be more easily administered if
the CIO and technology staff of the Copyright Office maintained primary administrative
access to Copyright Office system and network resources. And as noted previously,
there are policy and legal reasons as to why Copyright Office data should not be co-
mingled with the Library’s data.
In order to meet the availability needs of the copyright community, which largely fund
the Copyright Office, it is crucial that the Office’s website and systems remain open and
available as much as possible. This has not been possible under the current IT support
arrangement. To solve this, the project team is in favor of, and believes the copyright
community expects, a level of direct control over IT decisions, if not the autonomy
necessary to serve the copyright marketplace. There are several levels of IT autonomy.
At the very least, the Copyright Office could attain a logical IT autonomy. This would
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Special Project for Technical Upgrades Report and Recommendations
entail ownership and control of its own servers and network, even if they remain part of
the larger ITS infrastructure.
That said, the project team believes the best solution would entail some level of physical
autonomy, as well as logical autonomy. For example, the Copyright Office’s IT systems
(those it pays for and operates) could be housed within the Library’s IT environment,
however logically or physically isolated from the Library’s equipment, for example in a
locked cage. However, due to power and cooling limitations within the current LOC
data center, this is not a feasible option. At the highest level of autonomy, the Copyright
Office would have its own independent location in which to build and maintain the
Copyright Office IT infrastructure. This would likely require some combination of an
entirely separate physical space or office building while leveraging certain aspects of a
cloud model.
As the Register has indicated, we should “look to the technology sector” in improving
our technology solutions for the future.
59
To better support the IT needs of the Office,
system virtualization and cloud technologies must be strongly considered. The
technology industry has leveraged system virtualization for more than a decade and
many organizations are now also embracing cloud computing. Virtualization is an
underpinning concept that must be mastered (or well-conceived) in order to take full
advantage of cloud computing technologies.
For clarification, virtualization leverages network and server resources (e.g., memory,
processing power, etc.) by logically segmenting (using specialized utilities) one physical
device into many logical devices. For example, one physical server may be logically
separated into multiple servers so that the processing power and memory of any one
server can be fully utilized. Once virtualized environments are established, spinning-up
or ramping-down of needed environments can be performed in very short time period.
Obviously cost savings and speed of support are significantly improved in a highly
effective virtualized environment.
Cloud computing is one of the more recent advancements in the technology industry
even though it has been in place for several years, and is discussed above in section
6.1.2. Certain organizations have adopted cloud computing faster than others. With the
enactment of the presidential directive for government agencies to begin moving
systems to the cloud (cloud first), a greater number of agencies are successfully
leveraging cloud technologies. More cloud providers are available, cloud utilities are
more robust, government contracts offices are more adept at issuing cloud service
contracts, and agencies are finally beginning to reap the benefits of cloud technology.
Cloud models can be implemented as a private model (meaning isolated and walled off
to others) and/or a public model (meaning within a cloud provider facility or facilities and
likely co-mingled with other cloud customers or subscribers). While not technically a
cloud variation, discussion should be had around the concept of co-location and
59
Priorities and Special Projects at 13.
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managed hosting solutions and whether or not the solution should be managed by
Copyright Office staff or managed by data center staff to the specifications of a service
level agreement (SLA). Co-location and managed hosting should be considered as
alternatives when conducting an alternatives assessment and cost-benefit analysis for
infrastructure support.
Whether virtualized and/or in the cloud, industry best practices include that the
infrastructure should be comprised of at least four segregated environments: a
development environment, a test environment, a pre-production environment and a
production environment. These environments include both the necessary hardware and
software needed by the developers. In addition, the Copyright Office must provide
skilled, experienced developers.
To achieve the desired operational objectives of high availability, high redundancy, and
highly reliable and secure IT solutions, the Office should consider virtualizing its
environments while leveraging a cloud solution or managed hosted solutions for data
processing and data storage. Along with considering the options for backend
infrastructure, the Office must evaluate the options for the entire realm of technology
services to include desktop support services, security services, network and
telecommunications support services, application support services, telework services,
and help desk services.
7.4.3 Secure Repository for Works of Authorship
Approximately 85% of copyright applications routinely arrive through the eCO system,
and many of these, around 50%, include digital uploads of the works being presented
for examination. It should be understood that, for a variety of reasons, many applicants
mail their works to the Office using a specialized barcode linked to their applications.
Some of these registered works, approximately 10%, are selected by the Library of
Congress for its acquisitions each year. The Register transfers these works to the
Library according to provisions in the Copyright Act and applicable regulations. Once
transferred, they become part of the Library’s collection and are in the Library’s custody.
The rest of the works registered remain in the Copyright Office’s care and responsibility,
where among other things they may be needed by courts or parties to copyright
litigation.
In the current architecture, digital works which accompany applications, once approved,
are ultimately passed through the eCO system and on to a proprietary storage system
that is outside the control of the Copyright Office. This system is both owned and
operated by the Library of Congress. The Library’s IT staff provide very limited, almost
negligible, control to Copyright Office’s technology staff. The system file shares are co-
mingled with other Library of Congress systems, and are only as secure as the inherent
storage system configuration settings.
With this current configuration, the Copyright Office cannot provide 100% assurance
that a deposit submitted by a copyright owner has not been modified. Nor can it ensure
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that the deposit has been archived in a manner that is consistent with the requirements
of the copyright law or applicable regulations. In fact, in a worst-case scenario, under
the current configuration, the Office would have no knowledge as to whether deposits
are being accessed, deleted, removed, or appropriated.
The project team has reached the unequivocal conclusion that the Copyright Office
should have full control over all works of authorship that are submitted to the Register
for purposes of registration, other perhaps than with respect to those works selected by
the Library for its collection. With respect to the works selected by the Library, although
it is not the purview of this report, the team did hear concerns regarding whether or to
what degree the Office can track these works, or make certified reproductions, in case
they are needed for litigation. The current system is one that seems to have conflated
the Library’s needs and the Copyright Office’s needs as though they are one and the
same actor, despite clear areas of demarcation provided for in the law. To say the least,
when copyright owners entrust the Office with their intellectual property, they should feel
assured that the data and deposits submitted are maintained with the highest level of
integrity and security possible. They are, after all, registering to maximize the legal
protection of their works.
There are several policy and pricing considerations for storing of electronic deposits. As
the Register points out in Priorities and Special Projects, the Copyright Office needs to
know “what…the repository standards [are] for acquiring and migrating electronic
copyright deposits,” as well as how long the Office should “retain deposits and under
what practices and cost structures.” Consideration must be given to whether the
Copyright Office should simply provide the remitter with the exact deposit they
submitted or should we (or can we) have the ability to present them with a copy of their
work in an updated format? To what level does the Office ensure, or guarantee, the
validity of the deposit, and at what cost? Should it be providing file reader capabilities
so that all file formats submitted are able to be opened in the future? Should we enable
checksum, hashing, or digital signature capabilities upon deposit transfer to the Office?
It is the understanding of the Technical Upgrades project team that most of these issues
will require a formal rulemaking process. And we would take them into account when
designing and implementing a fully functional, Copyright Office-specific, repository
system.
7.4.4 Remote Workforce
The Copyright Office participates in the Library’s telework program, but because the
Office’s work is tied closely to customer issues, the technology infrastructure is of
paramount concern. Copyright Office staff who currently telework report much
increased productivity as well as reduced amounts of stress. There are many additional
benefits to implementing a robust telework capability including improved morale and
reduced levels of staff attrition. It can be an important recruiting tool, and an important
management tool when dealing with inclement weather or natural disasters.
Additionally, in the event of an unforeseen emergency such as a COOP (Continuity of
Operations Program) implementation or disaster situation, Copyright Office staff
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disbursed throughout the Washington Metropolitan area (or beyond), may still have the
ability to remotely perform their day-to-day functions without any loss of productivity.
Copyright Office staff who telework today experience frequent frustrations related to
technological disruption, some of which are caused by VPN connections into the Library.
The Office needs an easy to use but highly secure and highly redundant solution that is
platform agnostic and offers access by any number of remote technology systems such
as laptops, staff-owned personal computers, tablets, or other mobile devices. Any
remote access capability should be a high performance, seamless solution that allows
users who login remotely the same experience as logging in from the Office. The
organization will additionally need the ability to remotely manage Copyright Office-
owned systems and have the ability to push updates to systems without requiring staff
to haul machines back into the Office to update applications as they do today. The
Office will need a significantly robust and secure telecommunications network to allow
multiple, simultaneous connections along with the ability to tie into internet service
provider diagnostics so as to isolate issues encountered during troubleshooting.
7.4.5 Mobile Technologies
It is well publicized and documented that personal computer sales are down while
mobile technologies, including smart phones, laptops, and tablets, have realized a
steady upward sales trend. Keeping up with the latest technology is not the prime
reason for embracing mobile technologies, but understanding how our user community
may be submitting copyright applications is. The project team believes that the
Copyright Office should embrace a mobile device management (MDM) strategy in the
future from both the perspective of user community and the internal work processing
community. In a voluntary registration and recordation environment, Copyright Office
services must be available from as many operational platforms as possible including
smart phones, tablets, or even glasses.
The entire Copyright Office application suite should be developed with leveraging
responsive web design and/or adaptive web design in mind so that the user can
experience platform agnostic Copyright Office services. Establishing and publishing well
defined APIs, data standards, and web services will certainly aid the Office’s positioning
in the mobile marketplace. This will not only allow external entities to communicate
effectively with the Office, but it will allow developers to establish specialized front-end
applications which communicate with the Office. In the end, availability of Copyright
Office services is significantly improved, data becomes more robust, and inbound
submissions are made as easier.
As an example, the Office should be responsive to the growing number of people using
their mobile devices to take and share photographs, videos, and songs. With a few
clicks, these content creators should be enabled to register their works with the
Copyright Office from their mobile devices.
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7.4.6 Systems Development Strategy
The Copyright Office needs to consider benefits of moving toward service oriented
architecture (SOA) for its application portfolio. This approach provides the Copyright
Office with much flexibility when deciding to build or buy applications. The Copyright
Office currently has a very limited software development capability due to resources and
focus on COTS products. This has resulted in limited maturity in the areas of software
development methodology, process, and standards. However, the Copyright Office has
a higher level of maturity in the areas of operations and maintenance in processes. The
reliance on COTS has limited the Copyright Office from having flexibility in delivering
solutions based on custom-built software.
A significant amount of customization is required to COTS applications in order to meet
the Copyright Office’s and its stakeholder’s needs. The level of customization removes
the key advantage of deploying COTS products which includes a reduced level of effort
to build and reduced overall total-cost-of-ownership (TCO). In addition, reliance on
COTS software and absence of an SOA strategy have caused the following issues:
• Services and application functionality tied to release cycles of vendors
• Customization still requires software development but due to a lack of a formal
development capability, applications do not routinely or uniformly follow
standards or ability for reuse
• Must maintain licensing contracts and fees, and current version to retain support
• Periodically need to bring in vendor specialists
• Number of support personnel on open market are fewer because they require
vendor specific knowledge and are also more expensive
• The need to support and license Siebel and WebMethods products
The Copyright Office should establish a software development capability, so the Office
can deliver systems that better meet the Office’s and stakeholder’s needs in a more
cost effective and timely manner. Having an in-house software development capability
does not mean that COTS products cannot be leveraged when it makes sense. As
Apple and Amazon have done, the Copyright Office should take a holistic approach to
development, aimed at creating an integrated business ecosystem (see section 6.1.3)
based upon SOA principles. Therefore, as long as a particular selected COTS product
follows SOA principals, the components could be used as part of all software
development efforts.
7.4.7 Enterprise Solution
Among the most critical conclusions of the Technical Upgrades team is
to completely overhaul the eCO system, leveraging SOA. This includes providing
additional capabilities other than registration, which is currently the primary function.
This enterprise solution should be established as an integrated business solution.
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In the view of the Technical Upgrades project team, the best approach comprises a two-
phased effort. Phase one would address immediate improvements to the current eCO
system, to specifically address the challenges of the current registration system.
Several functional and cosmetic enhancements would be implemented to the existing
eCO user interface, as well as some adjustments to the supporting infrastructure.
These enhancements would improve the system, particularly for the public, and cause
minimal or manageable disruption to the internal office workflows and business
processes. These short-term improvements should provide some immediate relief to
registration applicants while the Office develops and implements its enterprise solution.
Concurrently, the Copyright Office should commence a copyright enterprise-wide
solution that focuses on automating the recordation functions, public information and
records functions, accounting and processing functions and acquisition and demand
functions, followed by a complete redesign and redevelopment of the registration
function. The document recordation function would likely be the first initiative, since it is
a vulnerable, paper-based process, heavily dependent upon legacy computer systems.
Architecture Recommendations
To summarize, these are the steps that the project team recommends, on a schedule
and budget that would need to be determined:
Develop and evaluate an Enterprise Architecture
• Engage in an analysis effort to itemize proposed improvements to the Copyright
Office architecture by first defining an “as-is” and “to-be” model for the architecture.
Assess Infrastructure
• Engage in an analysis effort to identify proposed specific improvements to the
Copyright Office infrastructure by first defining an “as-is” and “to-be” model for
the infrastructure.
Evaluate Storage for Works of Authorship
• Engage in an analysis effort aimed at certifiable standards for maintaining and
protecting works of authorship submitted to the Copyright Office for registration.
The Office would also need to define, develop, and implement an automated
system which records transfer and acceptance of physical and digital deposits to
warehouse and storage locations.
Develop an Enterprise Solution
• Develop a new enterprise copyright system that focuses on legal and client
requirements.
Resources
• To properly develop, implement, and support the recommendations of the
Technical Upgrades project, the Copyright Office should address staffing and
technology investments.
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New Features
• Engage in an analysis effort aimed at implementing a technologically sound,
secure, robust, state-of-the-art, upgradeable, and easily and seamlessly
managed telework capability.
Closing
In closing, the project team believes that the Technical Upgrades Special Project
has been a valuable endeavor. In order to manage the IT resources of the Copyright
Office in a manner that supports its core mission and statutory responsibilities, the
Office will need significant improvements. The project team has highlighted important
concepts and technologies that, if implemented, would optimize key services for
customers, including copyright registration, the recordation of copyright documents, and
the searchability of public records, and facilitate the exchange of legal and business
data with the global marketplace. We hope the recommendations set forth here will
inform the strategic direction of the Copyright Office.
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appendix a federal register notices
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VerDate Mar<15>2010 18:27 Mar 21, 2013 Jkt 229001 PO 00000 Frm 00096 Fmt 4703 Sfmt 4703 E:\FR\FM\22MRN1.SGM 22MRN1
srobinson on DSK4SPTVN1PROD with NOTICES
17722
Federal Register / Vol. 78, No. 56 / Friday, March 22, 2013 / Notices
committee shall be deemed to be
employees of the United States
Government for any purpose by virtue
of their participation on the committee.
Members of the committee will not be
compensated for their services or
reimbursed for travel expenses.
Authority: The authority for this notice is
granted by the FACA (5 U.S.C. App. 2) and
the Secretary of Labor’s Order No. 18–2006
(71 FR 77560 (12/26/2006)).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT
:
Paula Church Albertson, Division Chief,
Monitoring and Enforcement of Free
Trade Agreements, Bureau of
International Labor Affairs, U.S.
Department of Labor, telephone (202)
693–4789.
Signed at Washington, DC, this 15th day of
March 2013.
Carol Pier,
Acting Deputy Undersecretary, Bureau of
International Labor Affairs.
[FR Doc. 2013–06630 Filed 3–21–13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4510–28–P
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
U.S. Copyright Office
[Docket No. 2013–2]
Technological Upgrades to
Registration and Recordation
Functions
AGENCY
: U.S. Copyright Office, Library
of Congress.
ACTION
: Notice of Inquiry.
SUMMARY
: The United States Copyright
Office (hereinafter Copyright Office or
Office) is in the process of identifying
and evaluating potential improvements
and technical enhancements to the
information technology platforms that
support its registration and recordation
functions, including its online
registration system. These efforts are
part of the Office’s ongoing special
projects, commenced October 25, 2011
(available at the Office’s Web site at
www.copyright.gov/docs/priorities.pdf).
The information garnered through this
process has and will continue to inform
the development of the Copyright
Office’s long-term strategic plan,
scheduled to commence in October
2013.
At this time, the Office seeks
comments regarding existing
capabilities and future possibilities.
Broadly, the Office seeks comments on
(1) how stakeholders use the current
online offerings of the Copyright Office,
especially with respect to registration
and recorded documents, and how the
current offerings meet, fail to meet, or
exceed user expectations; and (2) how
stakeholders would like to interact with
the Copyright Office electronically in
the future, or, put differently, what
online services, or aspects of existing
online services stakeholders would like
to see. The Office appreciates the
comments and suggestions of those who
use the national registration and
recordation systems to protect their
intellectual property, as well as those
who regularly use Copyright Office
resources to identify copyright owners,
investigate the copyright status of works
and the public domain, and perform
other research, including statistical
analysis on aggregated data sets.
DATES
: Comments on the Notice of
Inquiry and Requests for Comments are
due on or before May 21, 2013.
Submission: All comments shall be
submitted electronically. A comment
page containing a comment form is
posted on the Copyright Office Web site
at http://www.copyright.gov/docs/
technical_upgrades. The Web site
interface requires submitters to
complete a form specifying name and
organization, as applicable, and to
upload comments as an attachment via
a browse button. To meet accessibility
standards, all comments must be
uploaded in a single file in either the
Portable Document File (PDF) format
that contains searchable, accessible text
(not an image); Microsoft Word;
WordPerfect; Rich Text Format (RTF); or
ASCII text file format (not a scanned
document). The maximum file size is 6
megabytes (MB). The name of the
submitter and organization should
appear on both the form and the face of
the comments. All comments will be
posted publicly on the Copyright Office
web site exactly as they are received,
along with names and organizations. If
electronic submission of comments is
not feasible, please contact the
Copyright Office at 202–707–8350 for
special instructions.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT
:
Douglas Ament, Director of Information
Technology, Copyright, by email at
[email protected]; Christopher
S. Reed, Senior Advisor for Policy &
Special Projects, Office of the Register of
Copyrights, by email at [email protected];
or call the U.S. Copyright Office by
phone at 202–707–8350.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
:
I. Background
In 2000, the Copyright Office initiated
a comprehensive business process
reengineering initiative intended to
update the Office’s technology platform
and improve operational efficiency.
With the assistance of outside
consultants and business analysts, the
Office identified opportunities for
efficiency enhancements and process
improvements. The most significant
recommendation was to convert the
existing paper-based copyright
registration system to an electronic
system, which included the
development of related new business
processes and the automated production
of public copyright records.
Funding available for the
reengineering effort was limited and
decisions made by the Copyright Office
and the greater Library were necessarily
constrained. Ultimately the Office
implemented a commercial off-the-shelf
software package. The Office piloted the
internal business process functions of
the software with a subset of
constituents in February 2005, followed
by full implementation of the Copyright
Office’s electronic processing system in
August 2007. The public-facing
electronic registration system—the
system that enables copyright
registration applicants to submit
materials online—was launched in July
2008. The Office implemented a
significant upgrade to its software and
hardware platforms in August 2010, and
implemented periodic upgrades and
enhancements to accommodate the
needs of the system’s stakeholders—
namely those that submit materials for
registration, those that search the
Copyright Office database for copyright
ownership information, and the
Copyright Office’s staff that process and
examine copyright claims.
Today, more than eighty percent of
the Office’s applications for copyright
registration come through the electronic
system, demonstrating the copyright
community’s widespread interest in
electronic registration functions.
Although the current system, and the
periodic upgrades and enhancements,
have allowed the Office to maintain a
functional electronic platform for many
types of works, there is room for
substantial improvement. Notably, the
Office’s recordation services were
included in the initial reengineering
plan, but were later dropped for
budgetary reasons. Recordation
processes are, thus, still paper-based
and are a top concern of the Copyright
Office. Thus, the Office’s current
systems represent the ‘‘first generation’’
of the Office’s electronic processing
capabilities.
II. Discussion
In recent months, project leaders from
the Copyright Office have engaged
copyright owners, users of copyright
records, technical experts, public
interest organizations, and lawyers,
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including through professional
associations and small businesses to
participate in a series of focused
discussions on issues relating to the
Office’s platforms for registration,
document recordation, and public
access to copyright ownership
information. Through these discussions,
as well as through its own expert
analysis, the Office has identified a
number of areas in which the current
electronic system could be improved.
For example, numerous interested
parties have observed that the current
user interface for electronic registration
is a challenge to navigate. Users have
told the Office that it would be helpful
to be able to customize the user
interface and workflow in order to
streamline the registration process to
accommodate their own internal
workflows. Moreover, users would like
to exercise some degree of control over
the nature and scope of information
they view in a personalized registration
system dashboard. The Copyright Office
is aware of similar requests from its own
staff, many of whom desire
customizable workflows to enhance
productivity and process efficiency,
which would result in improved
turnaround times for remitters.
At a global level, the Office is aware
that as mobile technology becomes
ubiquitous, an increasing number of
stakeholders desire to use mobile
devices to interact with the Office. To
that end, the Office is evaluating the
potential to deploy a mobile optimized
web interface, ‘‘apps’’ that support
popular mobile platforms, and the
development of an application program
interface (API) that can be utilized
within third party applications.
The Office has also heard that many
of its users would benefit from
improved tracking capabilities.
Remitters have indicated that the
existing electronic registration process
is cumbersome and are oftentimes
uncertain of their progress within the
application process; to improve that
aspect of the system, they have
suggested that the Office implement a
visual representation of the registration
workflow and the user’s status within it
(e.g., a status bar).
Beyond improvements to the
registration functions, the Office is
aware of opportunities for improvement
to its public record search capabilities.
Stakeholders have indicated that the
Office’s search function should be more
robust, allowing for more search criteria,
refining the display of the search
results, adding filters, and generally
making the search functionality more
user-friendly. Representatives from
interested parties also suggested the
Copyright Office make it easier to
provide updates to the public record to
ensure the data maintained is accurate
and up to date (e.g., address changes).
The Office is thus investigating methods
of secure and effective data sharing
between interested parties and the
Copyright Office in order to determine
if such functionality can be
implemented in a manner that ensures
integrity of the Office’s records.
The Office is also aware of the need
for long-term, scalable data storage and
archiving capability to accommodate the
growing volume of digital works that the
Office receives. The Office has received
recommendations to centralize the
various information clusters internally
within the Copyright Office to a central
data repository and establish a central
data warehouse. Implementing such a
warehouse presents a series of
challenges that the Office seeks to learn
more about, including determining
scalable infrastructure solutions to
accommodate vast amounts of data,
analyzing data standards needed to
establish a central data model, and
evaluating potential data archival
strategies.
One recommendation that the Office
frequently hears, and one that underlies
many of the areas of improvement noted
above, is the need for bulk data transfer
between the Office and interested
outside parties. Such transfer
mechanisms would allow more
widespread distribution of the Office’s
records, as well as permit remitters to
submit large quantities of electronic
material and associated application data
to the Office. Such ‘‘system-to-system’’
or ‘‘business-to-business’’ capabilities
are a central area of inquiry for the
Office. Interested parties have suggested
that the Office expose data portals
enabled to facilitate data exchange over
standards-based protocols such as
ebMS, SOAP, and AS4.
In support of potential bulk data
transfer capabilities, the Office is
investigating specific data exchange
standards, including those that already
exist as well as the potential for
developing a new standard based upon
the needs of the Office’s constituents.
Interested parties have told the Office
that it should continue to take an active
role and adopt existing standards that
support data exchange between the
Office and its stakeholders. This
includes defining or adopting metadata
standards that support particular
industries (e.g., IPTC for photography;
ISRC for sound recordings; ONIX for
books). Further, standards such as
CISAC’s Common Works Registration
(CWR) and DDEX digital supply chain
standards should be considered to help
develop the Office’s ability to provide
better business-to-business data
transfers. Interested parties have
suggested that the Copyright Office
publish a recognized list of data
standards so that users are able to
establish systems that support more
efficient interactions with the Copyright
Office.
III. Subjects of Inquiry
The Copyright Office is currently
evaluating what the ‘‘next generation’’
of its electronic services should look
like. Through a comprehensive
evaluation of its current technical
processing capabilities, and extensive
interaction with stakeholders, the Office
hopes to develop a complete picture of
how the Office currently supports the
needs of the copyright community, and
where its systems and services could be
improved. The Office hopes to achieve
a greater understanding of current
technical challenges facing the
copyright community as well as gain a
comprehensive understanding of how
the community hopes to conduct
business with the Copyright Office in
the future. This evaluation process,
which is tied to special projects detailed
in Priorities and Special Projects of the
U.S. Copyright Office released by the
Register of Copyrights in October 2011,
is intended to inform the development
of the Office’s next five-year strategic
plan that will commence in October
2013 and guide, among other things, the
technological evolution of the Copyright
Office. That plan will, in turn, inform
the Library of Congress’s overarching
strategic plan.
Because the Office’s evaluation of its
technology platform is intended to be a
wide-ranging review of existing
capabilities and future possibilities, the
Office seeks comments that present
conceptual frameworks with concrete
examples of future potential
applications or services. Broadly, the
Office seeks comments on (1) how
stakeholders use the current online
offerings of the Copyright Office,
especially with respect to registration
and recorded documents, and how the
current offerings meet, fail to meet, or
exceed user expectations; and (2) how
stakeholders would like to interact with
the Copyright Office electronically in
the future, or, put differently, what
online services, or aspects of existing
online services stakeholders would like
to see.
Although the Office welcomes
comments on the wide range of topics
germane to this inquiry, it is particularly
interested in comments that address: (1)
The nature and capabilities of the
Copyright Office’s public portals (e.g.,
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for electronic registration services),
including interface-based portals as well
as business-to-business portals, or
access to Copyright Office services or
data through application program
interfaces; (2) the nature and scope of
information captured during the course
of the registration and recordation
processes, including that which could
be captured through user input, or
through metadata harvesting; (3)
metadata standards in particular
industries that the Copyright Office
might adopt or incorporate into its
systems (e.g., IPTC for photography;
ISRC for sound recordings; ONIX for
books); (4) data storage and security
standards for electronic copyright
deposits, including the development of
policies and best practices for data
retention and migration; (5) new ways of
searching and accessing registration and
recordation data and/or registration
deposit metadata (e.g., image or music
search technology); and (6) the
integration of third-party databases of
copyright ownership and licensing
information (such as those maintained
by collective management
organizations) and related technologies
with data maintained by the Copyright
Office.
Dated: March 18, 2013.
Maria A. Pallante,
Register of Copyrights, U.S. Copyright Office.
[FR Doc. 2013–06633 Filed 3–21–13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 1410–30–P
NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION
[NRC–2013–0020]
Biweekly Notice; Applications and
Amendments to Facility Operating
Licenses and Combined Licenses
Involving No Significant Hazards
Considerations; Correction
AGENCY
: Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
ACTION
: Notice; correction.
SUMMARY
: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) is correcting a notice
that was published in the Federal
Register (FR) on February 5, 2013 (78
FR 8195), regarding the applications and
amendments to facility operating
licenses and combined licenses
involving no significant hazards
considerations. This action is necessary
to correct an erroneous date.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT
:
Cindy Bladey, Chief, Rules,
Announcements, and Directives Branch,
Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Washington,
DC 20555–0001; telephone: 301–415–
3667; email: [email protected].
Correction
In the FR of February 5, 2013, in FR
Doc. 2013–02352, on page 8202, first
column, correct the fourth full
paragraph to read:
Date of initial notice in Federal
Register: September 4, 2012 (77 FR
53927).
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 18th day
of March, 2013.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Cindy Bladey,
Chief, Rules, Announcements, and Directives
Branch, Division of Administrative Services,
Office of Administration.
[FR Doc. 2013–06545 Filed 3–21–13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590–01–P
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE
COMMISSION
[Investment Company Act Release No.
30427; File No. 812–14114]
Ivy Funds Variable Insurance
Portfolios, et al.; Notice of Application
March 15, 2013 .
AGENCY
: Securities and Exchange
Commission (‘‘Commission’’).
ACTION
: Notice of an application under
section 6(c) of the Investment Company
Act of 1940 (‘‘Act’’) for an exemption
from rule 12d1–2(a) under the Act.
SUMMARY OF APPLICATION
: Applicants
request an order to permit open-end
management investment companies
relying on rule 12d1–2 under the Act to
invest in certain financial instruments.
APPLICANTS
: Ivy Funds Variable
Insurance Portfolios (the ‘‘Trust’’),
Waddell & Reed Investment
Management Company (‘‘WRIMCO’’),
and Waddell & Reed, Inc. (‘‘W&R’’).
FILING DATES
: The application was filed
on January 18, 2013.
HEARING OR NOTIFICATION OF HEARING
: An
order granting the application will be
issued unless the Commission orders a
hearing. Interested persons may request
a hearing by writing to the
Commission’s Secretary and serving
applicants with a copy of the request,
personally or by mail. Hearing requests
should be received by the Commission
by 5:30 p.m. on April 9, 2013, and
should be accompanied by proof of
service on applicants, in the form of an
affidavit or, for lawyers, a certificate of
service. Hearing requests should state
the nature of the writer’s interest, the
reason for the request, and the issues
contested. Persons who wish to be
notified of a hearing may request
notification by writing to the
Commission’s Secretary.
ADDRESSES
: Elizabeth M. Murphy,
Secretary, Securities and Exchange
Commission, 100 F Street NE.,
Washington, DC 20549–1090;
Applicants, 6300 Lamar Avenue,
Overland Park, Kansas 66202–4200.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT
:
Bruce R. MacNeil, Senior Counsel, at
(202) 551–6817, or Daniele Marchesani,
Branch Chief, at (202) 551–6821
(Division of Investment Management,
Office of Investment Company
Regulation).
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
: The
following is a summary of the
application. The complete application
may be obtained via the Commission’s
Web site by searching for the file
number, or an applicant using the
Company name box, at http://
www.sec.gov/search/search.htm or by
calling (202) 551–8090.
Applicants’ Representations
1. The Trust is a Delaware statutory
trust registered under the Act as an
open-end management investment
company. WRIMCO, a Kansas
corporation, is an investment adviser
registered under the Investment
Advisers Act of 1940, as amended (the
‘‘Advisers Act’’) and serves as
investment adviser to the Trust. W&R is
organized as a Delaware corporation,
and is a registered broker–dealer under
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as
amended (‘‘1934 Act’’); W&R is the
principal underwriter of the Trust.
2. Applicants request the exemption
to the extent necessary to permit any
existing or future series of the Trust and
any other registered open-end
management investment company or
series thereof that (i) is advised by
WRIMCO or any person controlling,
controlled by or under common control
with WRIMCO (any such adviser or
WRIMCO, an ‘‘Adviser’’),
1
(ii) is in the
same group of investment companies, as
defined in section 12(d)(1)(G) of the Act,
as the Trust and invests in other
registered open-end management
investment companies in that same
group (‘‘Underlying Funds’’) in reliance
on section 12(d)(1)(G) of the Act; and
(iii) is also eligible to invest in securities
(as defined in section 2(a)(36) of the
Act) in reliance on rule 12d1–2 under
the Act (each a ‘‘Fund of Funds’’), to
also invest, to the extent consistent with
its investment objectives, policies,
strategies and limitations, in financial
1
Any other Adviser also will be registered under
the Advisers Act.
                     u.s. copyright office · library of congress · 101 independence avenue se · washington, dc 20559-6000 · www.copyright.gov