Transforming digital legacy estates to create a more sustainable future

The proliferation of digital projects contributes to ever-growing legacy estates for RSE Labs and the management of these estates can present an ongoing challenge. 

In this presentation two RSE teams will discuss how such legacy estates were formed in the King's College London and University College London contexts, what defines them in terms of size, number and type of projects, the different stakeholders involved, and the resources available to manage them. We will share the wide range of challenges that we encountered, including the time required to undertake such work, lost connections with project leads and the sometimes-difficult conversations needed to make progress. We will discuss other considerations, such as reputational and impact risks, preservation, ethical concerns in terms of what may be best for the project and its users, investigators and other contributors, as well as environmental considerations. 

We will discuss our past and current approaches to addressing these challenges and considerations within each context and the impact these approaches can have on project life cycles and technical strategies. 

We will also address how our experiences inform new project design and funding applications, building long-term planning in from the start. 

Finally, we have a call to action – why you need to begin addressing your legacy estate right now! – and consider long-term sustainability when planning new projects. We will detail the reasons why RSE practitioners, Infrastructure Management roles and RSE Lab management staff should undertake this work - don't leave it to languish and allow the challenges to grow.