Procurement readiness · Field guide 07
A DAM buyer’s guide for public agencies.
Evaluate systems with your own difficult records. A feature list cannot prove that metadata, permissions and institutional context will survive implementation.
Begin with outcomes and constraints
Define what the agency must improve: recovery of a legacy catalog, faster retrieval, controlled public reuse, shared communications access, wildlife image review or records continuity. List nonnegotiable constraints such as storage location, identity provider, accessibility, retention, sensitive-location controls and procurement rules.
Then build demonstrations around real tasks. Ask vendors to import a representative sample and show the exception report. Require staff to find a known image, confirm the credit, locate the original, assemble a collection, restrict a sensitive record and export its metadata.
Score seven areas
| Area | Evidence to request |
|---|---|
| Migration | Field map, sample results, exceptions, reconciliation process |
| Metadata | IPTC/XMP support, custom fields, controlled terms, provenance |
| Search and workflow | Your retrieval benchmark completed by intended users |
| Access | Role tests, audit history, restricted-location handling |
| Interoperability | Documented bulk export of files, metadata and relationships |
| Operations | Backup, restoration, support, monitoring and update responsibility |
| Cost | Implementation, migration, storage, users, egress, services and exit |
Ask migration questions that expose risk
- Which source versions and formats have been tested?
- Which fields, relationships and custom values are unsupported?
- How are duplicate filenames, missing originals and conflicting metadata handled?
- Can the agency see every transformation and exception?
- Who performs reconciliation, and how is acceptance documented?
- Does the original collection remain untouched until validation is complete?
Test permissions as a workflow
Role matrices look clean on paper. Test a communications user, archive administrator, program contributor, contractor and public viewer against real records. Confirm who can see previews, originals, metadata, exact coordinates, rights notes and audit history. Test both search results and direct links; restricted assets should not leak through thumbnails or exports.
Make the exit part of the purchase
Request a documented export containing originals or references, descriptive metadata, rights, stable identifiers, collection relationships, user-created annotations and audit information where appropriate. Ask for a sample export during evaluation. Record format, API limits, professional-service requirements, egress costs and expected time.
If the agency cannot verify a usable exit, the system’s convenience is partly financed by future lock-in.
Calculate total ownership
Include discovery, cleanup, migration, configuration, integration, identity, storage growth, backup, training, administration, accessibility remediation, support and periodic exports. Separate one-time implementation from annual operation. Assign internal owners; a system without ongoing governance will decay regardless of vendor quality.
Run a scored pilot
Use the same data and tasks for finalists. Weight criteria before demonstrations. Capture failures and workarounds. Include end users and records, security, accessibility and procurement stakeholders as required. The pilot should end with evidence: completed workflows, exported records, performance notes and a list of unresolved risks.
This guide supports product evaluation and does not replace an agency’s procurement, legal, security, accessibility or records-management requirements.