Delivering the value of digital archiving for the agency partners and the public required both an accessible repository and a way to populate it, i.e., both a place and a process. The planning and development for these two components went forward in parallel. Once the financing arrangements were completed in early 2002, the plans for the repository itself went forward. Early discussions took place with Washington State University about siteing the facility, but the University later declined. Secretary Reed then approached the administration of Eastern Washington University with the same proposition, which they accepted. With a site and financing in place, planning and construction continued through late 2002 and 2003.

Developing the process and supporting technology took much longer. Once the “no top-down mandate” compromise with the CAB was decided in 2002, the WSDA team began searching for suitable technology solutions. The constraints embedded in that compromise were quite limiting. According to Adam Jansen, “We need to have as minimal an impact on state agencies’ and local governments’ main operation as we possibly can. They are not mandated, they aren’t funded, they do not have the staff resources to deal with this.” The record archiving process and its supporting technology had to accommodate the enormous diversity in data systems and formats existing in the counties and state agencies.

The search for a workable solution extended well into 2004. Early in that year the state hired a consulting firm with digital archiving experience to transform the existing plans and requirements into a formal feasibility study to present to the ISB. The firm, Glasshouse Technologies, began in March of 2003 and submitted their report the following June. The report contained detailed cost and performance estimates for the repository and details of the facility layout and phasing in of record acquisition. The report did not, however, describe the information processing methods to be used to actually acquire the digital content of the WSDA.

The actual solution employed resulted from consultations between Adam Jansen and Microsoft. By early 2004, Microsoft had developed Web services and their BizTalk application to the point that it could possibly serve as the record acquisition platform. With assistance from Microsoft staff, the WSDA team and technical staff developed a system design that could accommodate the diversity among record senders and maintain consistent content formatting and data standards for the WSDA content itself. The system consists of a relatively simple Web services application running on the sender’s server and the BizTalk server to handle the reception of records at the WSDA. An MOU for each record series (birth records, etc.) establishes the data standards and metadata to be provided by the sender. The Web services application creates an encrypted XML version of the record with metadata and sends it to the BizTalk server, where it is converted to the standard format and archived. The XML wrapper and encryption preserve the record’s integrity and security. The sender’s legacy systems are not affected. As Jansen put it, “we went to the agencies and told them we don’t care how you give us the data, but give it to us consistently. We will build everything around what you send us and take it all in.” This approach, according to Excell, had the counties “singing our praises,” and quite willing to participate in the project.

The WSDA investment plan was approved by the ISB in September of 2003. By June of the following year, the Office of the Secretary of State had selected and begun implementing the final technology solution. By that time, construction and equipping of the facility in Cheney were well underway. The way was then open for the grand opening on October 4, 2004, and proceeded with the phase-in of record acquisition, which is still underway.