Kevin Ashley

Kevin Ashley joined the DCC as Director in April 2010, succeeding the first permanent Director Chris Rusbridge. He serves on a number of advisory and guidance bodies in the field of digital preservation and research data infrastructure and is vice-chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition. Kevin was formerly (1997-2010) Head of Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) where he was responsible for a multi-disciplinary group that provided services related to the preservation and reusability of digital resources on behalf of other organisations, as well as programmes of research, development and training. Customers included the UK National Archives, the British Library and AIM25, the collaborative network of over 100 archives in London. His group developed and operated NDAD (the National Digital Archive of Datasets), which captured, preserved and provided access to UK government datasets, the first service of its type in the world. His group also developed and delivered training in digital preservation, including the award-winning digital preservation training programme (www.dptp.org)

He was a member of the RLG/NARA task force which developed the TRAC methodology for repository audit and was chair of JISC's Repositories and Preservation Advisory Group. Other advisory, steering and expert group memberships include: JISC's Infrastructure and Resources Committee & JIIE; the Advisory Council for ERPANET; the Archives Hub Steering Committee; expert group on policy for DL.ORG; GRDI2020 expert committee and the advisory group for the Digital Preservation Handbook (Beagrie & Jones.) He was previously involved in the development and standardisation of network protocols, active in bodies such as ANSI, BSI and EWOS. He began his career in a medical research unit devoted to innovative uses of IT in the support of clinical research and practice.