The information package itself is when you have the knowledge easy to create. But when we talk about the content, the challenges grow. For the content, the different content experts need to support creating the specification for the specification. A group of experts is not always easy to find since they need to know the content. They also need to understand the concept of specifications being able to use in different settings and by different users. For now, the creators of the specifications are part of the project. In the future, endorsement of specifications already in use and connections with content experts creating new specifications will be crucial to extend the numbers of specifications to cover all the content that can be found.
At the same time, the CITS that have been developed and are in development have shown the need for different ways of creating a CITS. The different ways also give different possibilities in validation services possible to create. Not to forget, how do we get this content out of a proprietary system?
The different ways are easiest described:
The specification endorses the use of an already created and widespread specification and provides minor detail on how it is placed into an information package.
The specification focuses on the placement of content in an information package. Some ordering of the content to make it understandable in the long term is described.
The specification gives thorough information on how the content itself is structured and how its content and files are placed in the information package.
This means that the challenge of defining a new CITS needs to not only being able to find the real experts on the content it is also about how many of the requirements will be placed in the specification where a different type of expert is needed. The number of requirements needed to be specified usually solves itself based upon the type of content and the prior work describing it. At the same time, an endorsement will be an important mechanism moving forward. An endorsement will include a description about how to place the content in the specification and then point to the content specification being maintained by an expert group on the content. An example here is the CITS for Archival Information which only gives a list of possible standards to use. The use of the archival standards is described at an expert group managing profiles for this.