Stakeholders

In the ArchiMate® specification, a Stakeholder represents the role of an individual, team, or organisation (or classes thereof) that represents their interests in the architecture's effects. This definition is based on the TOGAF® (The Open Group Architecture Framework) definition where a Stakeholder has one or more interests in, or concerns about, the organisation and its enterprise architecture. To direct efforts to these interests and concerns, stakeholders change, set, and emphasise goals. 

The CEF eArchiving Building Block has defined three generic stakeholder types of the Building Block: archives, data producers and solution providers. The reference architecture's stakeholder list is extended with two additional stakeholders: regulatory agencies and the data consumer. In a very high-level view, these stakeholders can include various institutions, groups or even individuals.

Data Producers
Those entities that are, or expect to be in the future, directly or indirectly responsible for depositing content in a digital archive for long-term digital preservation, which guarantees that information remains available, have not changed over time and retains the legal value. This might include any entity that, in its business activities, is producing or receiving information that is subject to the requirements of long-term access. Examples include:

• Public sector agencies creating valuable long-term and archival records (such as, government departments that are obliged to transfer their records to local, regional or national archives for long-term digital preservation).

• Any organisation that produces information that needs to be stored (such as private sector organisations/businesses).

• Organisations producing any type of digital material (such as museums with digital displays, art galleries with software art, etc.).

• Service providers who are carrying out operations on behalf of the organisations mentioned above.

Archives
Those entities that are, or expect to be, directly or indirectly responsible for the governance of a digital archive, which provides long-term digital preservation. Examples are:

• Public archives (national, regional, local);

• Long-term preservation and access units/departments in public and private sector agencies;

• Private archives (including long-term preservation and access service providers).

Solution Providers
Those entities that are, or expect to be in the future, providers of technology or services for digital archives or for data creators. Examples are: 

• Software providers;

• Cloud-based archiving service providers;

• Digitisation, technology integrators, etc.

Regulatory agencies and policymakers
Those entities (public authorities or government agencies) that are, or expect to be in the future, responsible for preparing, issuing and/or supervising the execution of regulations and policies related to the long-term preservation of digital information. Examples are:

• Ministries or public administration bodies responsible for information governance; cultural heritage; cyber security, etc.

• National archives.

Data Consumers
Organisations or individuals that want and/or need to reuse the information kept within an archive. Consumers are a broad stakeholder group with further subgroups. The most common ones are: 

• Organisations accessing information they had earlier archived within the archive;

• Individuals accessing information stored in the archive about themselves to prove identities or rights;

• Individuals accessing information about their relatives, municipalities or past events as a hobby or personal interest;

• Researchers accessing public or restricted information needed for their research.