Updated 19/4/2010
Encouraging Digital Access to Culture - [2.5 MB PDF] - went on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport web site just before the election was called, and though it has a Ministerial Foreword, its publication will not be announced till after the General Election, if at all. (As a precaution I've uploaded a copy here.)
Jonathan Drori's excellent Being mighty: how mortals can make learning technology projects that cause real impact at the 2009 ALT conference should be compulsory viewing, and Encouraging Digital Access to Culture makes some of the same points, albeit in a more restrained way.
The report has several good features. It is clearly written, and has been designed elegantly for reading on screen, with the contents page forming a hyper-linked running sidebar that indicates where in the report the reader is. It takes a fairly progressive line on copyright, and it understands the way the digital world works, giving the impression that policy-making in a Government that has just pushed through the deplorable Digital Economy Act 2010 is not joined up. (For more on the Act see Cory Doctorow's piece in the 16/4/2010 Guardian.)
Here are some excerpts:
Wherever an organisation has rights to material that has been paid for out of the public purse, our goal should be rapidly to make this material available to the public. (Page 12)
There is over-optimism about possible future financial value as opposed to present public value. Organisations are overly concerned about detracting from commercial sales when making more material freely available would promote the development of valuable services and may even increase interest and income. Further thought should be given to measures of ‘present public value’. (Page 26)
Organisations need to relax their tight grip on content and services, for example, by making data more available, and understanding that other bodies, and indeed the public, will be able to contribute significantly with their own useful insights and expertise. There are also worries about giving away something of value for which a charge could be made in future, but this mindset needs to shift if we are to achieve the desired step-change in access. (Page 15)
The shift is towards sharing rather than owning, with the default assumption that assets should be made available, unless there’s a particular reason not to. (Page 15)
The digital world is a networked world. Our institutions should further develop a culture of collaboration, particularly across traditional boundaries, for example between different parts of the sector, between different sectors and between local and national bodies. (Page 18)
Organisations, led by their trustee and executive boards, need to develop a new ‘ego-lite’ approach to collaboration where they are willing to share organisational and individual credit and discuss in advance how they intend to do so. (Page 17)
One section that was weaker than the rest was the overly brief one on the user experience, which would have benefited from some pointers to services that exemplified the points being made, and needed a deeper discussion about design and information architecture. Likewise I think insufficient reference was made to the interaction between content services and commercial search (principally Google).
The report ends with the following 10 Essential Things To Do, in which it would have been worth also to have included the key points made in the Technology section, viz: Expose data publicly, including the metadata, at the lowest possible cost, with every object given a unique identifier. However, overall, this is an unusually good report which deserves to be very widely read.
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Ensure that you have a
digital strategy, in line with
the vision and mission of
your organisation.
- Make it easy and enticing
for other individuals and
organisations to use your data.
Allow and encourage others
to share, use and re-distribute
public content. Celebrate
when they add value to it.
- Remember that innovation
happens at boundaries. Put
together multi-disciplinary
teams from across
organisations, the sector
and involve commercial and
other public sector bodies.
Try new combinations.
- Tame your ego and that of
your organisation. Be willing
to waive or share credit and
discuss in advance how you
intend to do so. Take out
all public references to
Lead Partner.
- Consider user experience in a
holistic way. Don’t think of
digital services in isolation but
how they might be integrated
into real-world experiences.
Develop user-journeys to help
you consider how digital and
real-world experiences will
complement each other.
- Ensure there’s a critical mass
of people who are at ease with
the digital world among
trustees and executives and
that the latter isn’t wholly
concentrated in the CIO/CTO.
- Be playful. Encourage rapid
experimentation on small
scale, whether that’s in-house
development or making
material available to the
public – you don’t have
to do it all at once!
- Remember to integrate
technology – it’s not a
bolt-on extra.
- Be user-focused, not driven
by management structures
or technical ‘solutions’.
- For each new partnership, be open about how you’re hoping to increase revenue, audience reach or reputation (personal or organisational) and exactly what your expectations are.
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