Dear Nick,
Interesting speech and certainly stimulates some thoughts - I agree with
some of your points and to a lot of what has been said by other respondents,
however I did want to pick up on three actions that you make (paraphrased):
a) Moratorium for 2 years.
b) Don't invest in technology
c) Invest in a handful of central resources
a) Dangerous strategy - fine if you want to leave the culture world behind -
the web is moving at a fast pace. Forget Web 2.0 most of the sector has not
even grasped Web 1.0 fully yet!!!
Interesting that in the last 2 months - Vodafone announced it was re-working
its channel strategy as *much of its business came from the web*; Norwich
Union announced that it was making redundancies as a result of *increased
internet trade*; Portland Direct (the direct arm of Thomson the travel
company) is laying off staff as the *web is accounting for more of its
business*; even the current debate around Post Offices is being influenced
by the more widespread use of e-mail and web-based services. Whilst some
might ask what this has to do with the culture sector, the point is that
there are some clear messages here - the web is ubiquitous and society is,
as a whole using it in a way that it has not before.
Against this background - is it really sensible to hold projects for two
years? Can you imagine that Vodafone, Thomson, Norwich Union would entertain
delaying their plans for two years? Of course not! And the viewing/browsing
public will have increasingly sophisticated demands - the culture sector
needs to meet these expectations. If anything this is a time to invest and
to understand the market's needs better.
Also - why two years? What is the significance of that time period?
b) My observation is that despite all the investment, the culture sector
still needs to seriously invest in technology. The national institutions, of
course are in a stronger position, but off the top of my head I could name a
dozen cultural organisations of my acquaintance where they have 5+ year old
PCs (that would not be entertained in any other modern organisation), out of
date software, one computer between many staff, servers that are so
constrained on space that they are having to juggle and make compromises or
simply have very little or no infrastructure at all.
Most local authority owned bodies are way down the organisational food-chain
from an IT perspective, are ignored or left to do their own thing with tiny
budgets. In the independent arena, funding for technology is scant.
Ceasing or limiting investment in technology is the kiss of death for many
in the sector - things will slip even further behind.
Yes NOF Digi and other recent programmes provided investment into the
sector, but NOF Digi had its problems and did not meet all of the needs.
Culture Online represents a different type of project in terms of scale and
focus. The need is for some more grass roots funding to stimulate
improvement in knowledge, support basic infrastructure, promote and support
standards and encourage collaboration. You'd be amazed how many
organisations I talk to who get excited by the impact that relatively small
funding like Awards for All can have in terms of getting more modern
equipment and helping offset the costs of training people and using it. A
few thousand pounds goes a long way.....
What would help is if DCMS could use its buying power on behalf of the
sector to negotiate lower cost-technology (hardware, software and services)
meeting certain minimum standards and investing also in research, training,
developing centres of excellence and encouraging collaboration.
Examples could include: support or subsidise accredited training, get better
deals on collection management and digitisation tools, negotiate deals with
the likes of Microsoft, develop a centralised publishing platform allowing
easy and cost-effective publishing of web-based information for those
cultural organisations that cannot afford infrastructure (this also improves
integration and raises the quality of the finished product), create areas
where people can collaborate, negotiate sustainability resources - e.g,
deals with online picture services, online shop providers.... etc, etc
I feel there is a danger also in ignoring all of the good things that have
come out of these programmes in terms of collaboration - making schools more
aware of cultural resources, even the millions of extra hits that the sites
are generating in a market where physical visitor numbers have been in
decline. Some of these benefits are more intangible but have had a very real
and positive impact.
c) Invest in central resources - this seems to follow the current
Government's theme of centralisation (e.g. hospitals, police bodies, etc)
and is part of the usual cyclical process of
centralisation/decentralisation.
Central resources are all well and good but how does this help the volunteer
run independent museum or local archivist trying to make the most out of
ever more constrained budgets?
Yes, develop improved portals, yes invest in resources like the excellent
TASI, HEDS, AHDS, BUFVC, etc - but again don't ignore the real needs out
there for support, training and basic services/infrastructure.
Imagine if 90% of the sites that Google links to were dead links or only
single pages? Would people use it? What value would this have then? Apply
that to this sector and yes, have portals, etc but at a local level invest
too in having something that it can link to!
You are at a crossroads and some of the choices being made have far-reaching
implications - a lot of careful thought and consultation is needed.
As a footnote I should add that I wear two hats, operating both as a
consultant and practicing what I preach, being also the Head of Technology
for the Royal Academy of Music. I can't underestimate the impact that
investment in technology has had on our museum, archive and library, the
Academy's digitisation programme and end users. I've seen first hand what
targeted investment can achieve....
Regards
Chris Meaney
Managing Director
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