00:01.96 archpodnet Welcome back to episode 210 of the archeology. That's not the right podcast. Let me start over to too many podcasts. Ah all right? Let's there. We go. 00:04.72 Keith Kintigh Oh. 00:13.37 archpodnet Welcome back to episode 210 of the archaeo tech podcast and we're talking to Dr Keith Kinag about tr and some other things. So I'm curious before we get into data ownership as we were talking about in the last segment you mentioned t r getting some pretty substantial funding from a couple sources early on how is Tdr funded. 00:13.56 Keith Kintigh Um. 00:32.73 archpodnet Now And what do you think the security of that is going into the future. 00:39.94 Keith Kintigh Ah, this sustainability is is is of digital resources in general as you're probably aware is really a challenge. Um Tdr is funded now. Ah primarily through ah grants and contracts. So we have contracts. Basically. 00:58.84 Keith Kintigh We've been committed from the very beginning to making data available for free so that is it. It never costs anything to download data and we charge for the upload of data. 01:01.39 Paul E. 01:10.95 Keith Kintigh Ah, if you want personalized training we charge for that. Um, but there's lots of free training that's available online. Ah and we charge for what we call data curation. So for for contractors or agencies that have. 01:20.54 archpodnet In. 01:27.28 Keith Kintigh Ah, bunch of data that they want to get deposited. Basically it's it's important or it's critical really for the usability of of and find ability of data to have good Metadata. So The metadata is the information about the data you know who did it where did they do it. Why did they do it. What's the location. What's the time period and so forth so creating good metadata allows the data to be found but that takes some time and that's actually the most time consuming part of it uploading it as you can imagine doesn't take very long at all but creating the metadata is something that really takes some time in many cases. Ah. 01:58.50 archpodnet Um. 01:58.76 Paul Me. 02:04.60 Keith Kintigh Agencies or whoever wants to deposit the data. Don't have the personnel to do that or they'd rather simply pay somebody else to do it so much of our revenue is doing just that that is taking a whole bunch of of reports sometimes in paper and other times digitally. 02:11.46 archpodnet Right. 02:21.30 Keith Kintigh And our data curators will go through those and extract the relevant metadata do the uploads check everything that is correct and um, then deposit the data with tidar will actually deposit it sort of provisionally send it to the contractor. Whoever our client is for review. And then it'll be made Publicly available. So That's that's the in some cases we get grants specifically to do ah the curation as a part of the Grant. This is often the case for National Science Foundation grants. 02:41.97 archpodnet Oh. 03:00.13 Keith Kintigh Ah, the grantee will do the data upload and do the metadata creation so we designed tdar so that people could do the metadata creation on their own and then there's an upload fee associated with ah depending upon the size primarily of the data set and type. 03:06.10 Paul E. 03:16.27 archpodnet Ah. 03:17.90 Keith Kintigh Ah, so it's a combination of those basically labor services which are the data curation and then the upload cost on a per basis are. 03:29.68 archpodnet Okay. 03:31.81 Paul I Have a question about that upload cost. Um, you've mentioned it a couple times now. Is there an ongoing curation cost or is it all encompassed by that single upfront cost. 03:42.81 Keith Kintigh Um, the way we designed it and the way it continues to be was. There's not an ongoing cost. it's it's it's a 1 time fee for doing the upload and the the goal um was to. 03:50.34 Paul Um. 03:55.35 Keith Kintigh Try to make that sufficient to cover. Not just the initial costs. But I mean the the original goal which I don't think we've met was to basically endow a data set I mean so that is you you try and I think. 04:06.17 archpodnet Yeah. 04:09.34 Paul Um. 04:10.66 Keith Kintigh And our model here is from the archeology data service in the Uk which has been quite successful. Um, is you basically charge enough that when you sort of consider that that the storage costs are decreasing over time if you were to sort of invest some of that money. Um, you obviously don't invest that individually per data set but sort of put that in a pool. You then are providing enough enough revenue to do it. We haven't ever been able to meet that yet. But what we're what we're doing now is is basically the the ongoing costs are mostly the storage costs are fairly small. Um data migration. Can be more expensive. You know if all of a sudden Microsoft changes. How its you know database files are organized then you know or how Pdf documents are done or something that Adobe does. Then we need to migrate those data sets so they continue to be readable and useful and that's that's a more challenging and more expensive proposition. But where the idea is to try to have a 1 time fee that will cover both the ongoing storage and maintenance costs and part of it is just the software maintenance because as you know you know this. 05:23.29 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 05:25.83 Keith Kintigh Is a big package that depends on lots of open source other software packages that get security updates and other kinds of updates or that stop being supported and so there's an ongoing software maintenance cost which is actually probably our our largest. Um, sort of technical costs associated with with the with the with the structure. Um. 05:47.11 archpodnet Ah. 05:51.44 archpodnet Yeah, that can be that that's usually software ongoing software development and maintenance costs are usually the thing that people don't even think about the most we've talked to yeah, we talked to other people that have put together software packages whether they're open source or not or something they're trying to sell um and they're like oh yeah, so we're going to put this together I'm like. 05:56.40 Paul Right. 06:01.73 Keith Kintigh Oh. 06:08.77 archpodnet Great. What does this look like in a year when ios 17 comes out or when you know the next Android operating system comes out or you you know the the next operating system for your computer for that matter. You know what's ah, what's that look like. So yeah, that's absolutely huge and then along those lines is you know seer again I have a ser m focus. But. 06:10.66 Paul Pin 4 06:12.60 Keith Kintigh Right? um. 06:27.94 archpodnet M companies are just used to paying for stuff you know subscriptions you know as Recos and in all kinds of stuff that we have to pay for has there ever been any discussion about like ah I don't want to I don't want necessarily call it a tax but like a T R tax here up firms like like if you plan on getting federal permitting then. 06:33.94 Keith Kintigh Um. 06:45.22 Keith Kintigh Um. 06:45.81 archpodnet You have to pay so much into tdar as ah as as a part of this or something like that right? Um I'm just curious as to doing something like that would maybe encourage them to use tdar. But then also provide ongoing revenue right. 06:56.24 Keith Kintigh Um, oh yeah I mean and basically that's something like that has been our model from the beginning our idea was that basically. 07:01.25 archpodnet Okay. 07:05.87 Keith Kintigh The agencies would put into ah rfps that just like they put in curation costs for artifacts they put in curation costs for Tr So that an rfp would say well and each any contractor wants to bid on this has to. 07:07.77 Paul A e. 07:08.18 archpodnet Um, ah right. 07:21.75 Keith Kintigh Have a plan for the data curation and T R would be the obvious place for that and budget for it. We've talked as ah as a way of implementing that we've talked about also just having a subscription so it would cost either an agency. We've talked to the agencies about this a bit you know if they would come up with. 07:22.00 Paul Um, yeah. 07:26.20 archpodnet Okay. 07:40.93 Keith Kintigh You know if it's a big agency. Ah yeah, some substantial amount of money every year and that would cover all of their contractors. So that's another model that we've thought of and that that way but part of our original idea with the. 07:41.43 archpodnet Oh. Um, right. 07:54.00 Keith Kintigh Ah, just having it part of the rfp was that there wouldn't be any new money involved that is We weren't trying to get money from the agencies. The agencies always complain that they have you know, not enough and not enough money. But if we just put the costs into the ongoing contracts that doesn't take care of the legacy data but it would take care of the ongoing data. 08:03.89 Paul Um, hidden. 08:07.34 Paul Yeah. 08:12.82 Keith Kintigh We haven't gotten there yet. We had a big meeting last March I think with the lead people and almost all the federal agencies about how to sort of implement something like this to sort of get there. Um, the problem with having. 08:25.89 archpodnet Ah. 08:30.00 Keith Kintigh Doing it with the sear M firms which we're very happy to do and we can do right now is that the the feedback we get is that Yeah, as soon as as soon as the government requires it. We'll be happy to do it but otherwise but otherwise our bids are going to be noncomp competitiveive because our competitors. 08:39.21 archpodnet Exactly. 08:45.91 Paul Right. 08:46.96 Keith Kintigh Across the street or and the other are going to not do it and it's going to cost them less to do the same project. So basically we've gotten I gave a presentation a few years ago and Spokane I think to akra about about t r and. 08:50.85 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 09:00.20 archpodnet Um. 09:01.90 Keith Kintigh You know we get a lot of sympathy about yes, this would be really good because I know in Cr inference people spend a lot of term a lot of time on a new project digging up all the reports from other contractors who've worked in the same area and stuff like that. Um, so you know it would It would be a good thing but we haven't. 09:10.56 Paul Oh. 09:19.58 Keith Kintigh Even though we have a lot of sympathy from the contractors and actually Acra has a nice statement about what what ought to be done in terms of digital that the board adopted Um, there's you know there hasn't been much action. With a few exceptions on from the from the contractors themselves for reasons I completely understand are. 09:37.57 archpodnet Sure. 09:40.00 Paul Yeah, no, it's ah it's interesting to me that you're mentioning building it into the contracts not related to tdar at all but similar sort of thing is that on academic projects I've worked on part of the Grant application process is now. 09:52.36 Keith Kintigh Are. 09:53.55 Paul Describe you in detail. What your your digital management plan is your dmp ah because without it. You're not going to get that grant because they don't trust that you're going to curate the ah the data effectively. So you know those also are coming out of you know and Nsf and other federal agencies. So I would expect that. 10:11.32 Keith Kintigh Me. 10:12.52 Paul There's already some purchase I don't know within the ah the agencies that Govern Crm work but I expect that there's already the knowledge of the the need for such a thing in in you know, funding agencies and regulatory agencies. 10:14.45 Keith Kintigh Are. Yeah I mean they recognize the need but they they also have haven't come up with any way. You know it's amazing to me that really you know we I think our first production ah version of Tiar was in 2010 or so. 10:44.70 archpodnet Yeah. 10:46.70 Keith Kintigh So it's been thirteen years and we've been pushing this since before then um and you know it's just if you talk at the local level. They'll say well um, you know, whatever this the state. Let's say bureau of land management or whoever it is um well you know, somebody else needs to tell me to do this. 10:50.14 Paul Um. 11:05.58 Keith Kintigh And then you talk at different levels and we've talked at the national level and people sort of saying well yeah, we we should do something but there's all these problems and you know there's always some sort of impediment to to doing it I mean everybody says yes, we need to do something nobody says it's a bad idea. Nobody says t r doesn't work. But getting them to actually do something has been a a real challenge. Um. 11:31.33 Paul Um. 11:31.61 archpodnet Um, okay, all right? Well with that. Let's take our last break and we'll have a little bit laundage discussion on the other side of was who wrapped this up with Dr Keith can take back in a minute.