A consortium including the PDF Association wins phase 1 of an EU Commission tender to create an industry-supported PDF/A validator

VeraPDF consortium partners the Open Preservation Foundation, the PDF Association, Dual Lab, the Digital Preservation Coalition and KEEP SOLUTIONS, have been awarded the PREFORMA first phase design contract for PDF/A.

PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission, under its FP7-ICT Programme. PREFORMA’s objective is to develop open source validation tools for three file format standards including PDF, TIFF and a video format to support long-term preservation in memory institutions.

Starting work in November 2014, the VeraPDF consortium will gather requirements from their members and the community in memory institutions and industry to build an authoritative conformance checker for PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3.

The proposed software architecture will be presented to the PREFORMA panel in March 2015. The panel will then make a further selection amongst suppliers from phase 1 (research) to proceed to phase 2 (development).

Consortium members have extensive experience in both PDF technology and open-source development necessary to ensure long term sustainability of the product. The Consortium is uniquely well-equipped to engage with the wide range of communities and interests with a stake in PDF/A.

About the VeraPDF consortium

• Open Preservation Foundation: http://openpreservation.org
• PDF Association: https://de5.pdfa.org/
• Dual Lab: http://www.duallab.com/
• Digital Preservation Coalition: http://www.dpconline.org/
• KEEP SOLUTIONS: https://www.keep.pt/

More information

Please contact PDF Association Executive Director Duff Johnson with any questions.