APTrust 2026 Technical Roadmap: Building on Community Priorities

January 28, 2026 — Nathan Tallman
Technical

We're excited to share APTrust's technical roadmap for 2026; a plan shaped by your voices, grounded in operational realities, and focused on delivering meaningful improvements to the services you rely on.

This roadmap reflects a significant shift in how we approach planning. Drawing on lessons learned in 2025, we've created a deliberately focused plan that balances member-facing enhancements with the behind-the-scenes work needed to keep APTrust sustainable and secure for the long term.

What's Ahead: 2026 at a Glance

Here are the highlights of what we're prioritizing this year:

Member-Facing Improvements:

  • Accessibility upgrades to Registry, DART, website, and user guides
  • Easier content movement between storage classes and locations, no more restore-delete-reingest workflows
  • Better search functionality with wildcards, partial matches, and quality-of-life improvements
  • Enhanced reporting tools for file formats, deposit activity, and object statistics

Infrastructure & Sustainability:

  • New storage provider to expand preservation options
  • Technical debt remediation to improve long-term reliability

Security & Risk Management:

  • ISO 27001 evaluation to assess and improve our security posture
  • Formal risk management planning with community participation
  • Disaster response refinements to ensure we're ready for anything

How We Built This Roadmap

This year's roadmap emerged from one of our most collaborative planning processes yet. We started by listening:

  • Community-wide survey to gather broad input on priorities
  • Two facilitated focus groups that dug deeper into the highest-ranked items
  • Ongoing feedback collected at member meetings and throughout the year

What made this process different was our commitment to understanding not just what members wanted, but why it mattered, how urgent it felt, and what impact it might have. We then balanced that community input with internal realities: compliance requirements, operational risks, technical debt, and staff capacity.

The result? A roadmap that represents honest tradeoffs rather than wishful thinking. Everything here is something we believe we can actually deliver in 2026.

Our Planning Philosophy

We're working with these core assumptions for 2026:

  • Approximately ten four-week development sprints spread throughout the year
  • Each sprint focuses on one primary goal and one secondary goal—no more juggling too many priorities at once
  • At least one dedicated sprint for technical debt—the unglamorous but essential work that keeps systems healthy
  • Strategic use of contractors to expand capacity where it makes sense

This constrained approach might feel modest, but it's intentional. We're prioritizing quality, sustainability, and realistic delivery over an ambitious list that creates frustration when priorities inevitably shift.

2026 Technical Priorities

Software: Improving What You Use Every Day

Making APTrust Accessible to Everyone

Accessibility improvements aren't just a nice-to-have: they're a federal requirement and a core commitment. Throughout 2026, we'll continue upgrading Registry, DART, the website, and user guides to meet accessibility standards, ensuring that all members and their users can effectively interact with our systems. A specialized contractor will support portions of this work.

Moving Content Between Storage Classes (Finally!)

One of your most requested features is on the way: simplified storage class and location management. Currently, moving preserved content between storage options requires a cumbersome restore-delete-reingest process. We're building the ability to move content directly, which will make it much easier to respond to changing storage needs—especially important as we expand storage provider options.

Search That Actually Works the Way You Expect

We're enhancing search functionality across Registry and the API based on real-world usage patterns. Expect better support for partial matches, wildcard searches, and small quality-of-life improvements like easier ways to repeat or refine previous searches. The goal is to make finding your content feel natural rather than frustrating.

Reports You Can Actually Use

Reporting topped our survey rankings, and we heard you. In 2026, we're improving access to commonly requested metrics (file formats, deposit activity, object statistics) and making reports easier to export and integrate into your own workflows. Where it makes sense, we'll integrate proven third-party reporting tools rather than reinventing the wheel.

Other Software Improvements

  • DART 3 production release: Continuing work toward the full release of DART 3
  • Storage cost calculator: A planning tool to help you estimate costs across storage classes and providers—particularly useful for grant budgeting
  • Operational automation: Behind-the-scenes improvements like automated container re-queuing that reduce manual staff effort
  • GitLab migration and CI/CD: Completing our move to GitLab with more consistent development practices

Infrastructure: Building for the Future

Expanding Your Storage Options

We're adding at least one new storage provider in 2026. While this ranked lower than expected in the survey, focus groups confirmed it remains strategically important for geographic diversity, risk mitigation, and member choice. This work ties directly into our improved storage movement capabilities, making it easier to take advantage of new options once they're available.

Evaluating Our Tooling

We'll be assessing alternatives to some of our existing infrastructure tools (like MinIO) with an eye toward long-term maintainability and operational fit. This isn't about rushing to replace things that work—it's about making sure we're positioned well for the next decade.

Maintaining the Foundation

Not all important work is visible. We're dedicating development time specifically to technical debt, reliability improvements, and core infrastructure maintenance. This is the work that prevents future emergencies and keeps the service stable as it scales.

Security, Risk, and Disaster Planning: Trustworthiness as a Core Value

Understanding Our Security Posture

APTrust will undertake an ISO 27001 evaluation in 2026. This isn't a formal certification effort (yet), but rather a structured way to assess our current security practices, identify gaps, and prioritize improvements. Trusted digital preservation requires rigorous security, and this evaluation helps us understand where we stand.

Modernizing Identity and Access Management

We're beginning exploratory work on more centralized or federated IAM approaches. This is early-stage work, expect planning and research in 2026 rather than a complete implementation, but it lays important groundwork for future improvements in how members and staff authenticate and access APTrust services.

Formalizing How We Think About Risk

APTrust will finalize a formal risk management plan that identifies, documents, and prioritizes both technical and operational risks. This work will involve community participation because managing risk effectively requires a shared understanding of what matters most.

Being Ready for the Worst

We're continuing to refine and document disaster response and recovery procedures. The focus is on clarity, testability, and ensuring staff are prepared to execute plans effectively under pressure. Like the risk management work, this will include opportunities for community input.

What This Roadmap Means

This roadmap represents a commitment to doing fewer things better. It's grounded in what we learned in 2025 about the importance of realistic planning, clear priorities, and honest communication about tradeoffs.

Some things that might have made the list in previous years aren't here, and that's by design. By constraining our focus, we're creating space to:

  • Deliver on our commitments with higher quality
  • Respond to unexpected needs without derailing everything
  • Address technical debt before it becomes technical crisis
  • Build trust through consistent execution

What Happens Next

Work on these priorities is already underway, and we'll continue providing updates as projects progress. As always, our planning remains flexible—we'll adjust as we learn, as needs change, and as new information emerges.

We want to hear from you. Does this roadmap align with your expectations? Are there aspects you'd like to understand better? Do you have insights that might help us prioritize or execute more effectively? Let us know at the February 2026 Advisory Committee meeting.

Thank you for being part of the community that shapes APTrust's direction. We're looking forward to making 2026 a year of meaningful progress together.

Technical