Creating and Sustaining the Market

Introduction

In any debate about interoperability and the co-ordination and national strategies for content creation, it is important to consider the leading role of public sector investment within a context of the emergence of a self-sustaining market with an active and robust private sector.

Put more simply, in building the technical structures for interoperation and the evaluation of programme priorities we should not exclude from the ‘equation mix’ a variable that encompasses supply and demand. If the past has been about experiment and exploration to demonstrate proof of concept, the future must be about viable business models as much as it is about technical standards.

This document is designed to encourage a debate on what the Level 7 group would wish to say (if anything) about the supply and demand variable and whether there is any co-ordinated work that can be done (or shared) to assist with this vital dimension to the future. It is a personal view.

Background

Until now much of the work that has been done on digital cultural content has at best been based on the extrapolation of our understanding of demand within traditional services. Examples include the digitisation of collections in museums or the creation of resources to support learning within higher education institutions. This is not surprising since early work has focused on testing hypotheses rather than the creation of useful, self-sustaining products. Process has been paramount. It is also unsurprising since the majority of venture capital available has been within the public sector, much of it focused on the support for education. The sharing of digital learning resources and the widening of access to secondary materials offers the chance to improve opportunity and effectiveness within an environment that is controlled and measurable – in theory anyway.

In reality much of what has been done in developing to our present state of knowledge and experience is based very much on proving that the technical problems are tractable and that useful things might be possible. In the UK this is apparent in the development of the Distributed National Electronic Resource within the UK HE sector (www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/). What originally pulled together a disparate range of experimental services is now emerging as a possible medium for a common information environment embracing services from a range of different sectors, in an integrated and transparent way.

That kind of shift or transition has implications for the way in which services will be planned and operated to be sustainable. It seems to me very unlikely that any government will wish to maintain levels of investment in digital content creation. More likely there will be the search for confidence for opportunities to shift investment and reasonable risk into the private sector or to fund projects that support particular markets, eg tourism.

Stepping Stones to the Future

There are a number of factors to be taken into account when translating relatively small-scale developments into product fit and relevant for that global market. The relationship between national policies and international co-operation is one while the attitudes and the priorities of individual cultural institutions is another.

Public investment in culture must demonstrate outcomes in the form of individual and community change – “social transformation through personal development” is a much-bandied phrase in the UK at present. By and large, do our cultural institutions do that now? Or are they supply driven, relying on the latent demand of regular, established audiences? These are not trivial issues, certainly given the amount of money the commercial sector invests in market research to establish product demand, etc. And not, of course, issues that relate solely to digital content.

Many countries remain at the stage of examining and exploring the implications of ICT and the emerging concept of an Information Society (however defined). Few seem yet to have gone beyond the stage of implementing policies to raise universally standards of ICT literacy and of translating traditional resources and collections into digital form. Those resources may never have had wide public appeal and relevance and may never do so unless designed digitally with understanding of what that appeal or relevance might be to the reluctant user.

This brings us to the heart of what I raised at the July meeting – what do we need to know about public need to design digital products to appeal to the widest possible audience? This will help to avoid merely the replication in Cyberspace of what we already do in real space, using the medium to reap maximum value from public good investment. It would, incidentally, help to develop the framework that will foster a viable market and industry, essential for sustainability.

The difference between innovation within the public sector and the private sector sometimes appear as public institutions trying to preserve a status quo (preserving traditional values, services) while the private sector tries to upend the status quo (taking market share from someone else with a better mousetrap). Neither is necessarily wrong or right, but if cultural institutions such as museums, archives and libraries want to create digital resources that potentially could touch the lives of everyone in some way (public good) then the design of those products must follow only after close study of audience need and behaviour.

It is evident that people do not use networked resources in the way that they might use traditional institutions. It is already true of Internet searching where hits may come from many different places (hopefully with some quality assurance available). Decisions about accessing sources are not made BEFORE the search, but rather at the point where some options are presented. Given a list of hits in answer to a search enquiry I might choose a reputable cultural site over the site of, for example, a single interest group. Many people might not! I am confident that to design resources to emulate the experience of a traditional visit or to look like a catalogue of resources will become less and less relevant to what ordinary people really want. We need to understand how cultural resources might change people’s lives on a day-to-day basis. That means creating networked resources that can at once answer mundane, practical questions and at the same time act to inspire and excite.

We may need to de-institutionalise the cultural resources, to make invisible many of the values we have held in delivering service until now. More than anything, to change the culture of culture, to make the objects of cultural life relevant to everyone, without the baggage of particular world views that so many institutions retain (whether of interpretation, conservation or scholarship). Benefiting from cultural assets ought to be as easy and as invisible as using a telephone, not requiring large quantities of confidence, motivation and time to make it happen.

Any Conclusions?

What does this stream of consciousness suggest in terms of practical activities for Level &? Here are a few thoughts that come to mind and might offer hooks for discussion:

1. It is a time for mapping in all areas of ICT development and I am confident that value will be delivered by doing so with cultural content creation. Shared maps, both national and international will be the only way to encourage great co-ordination, understanding and critical mass. However, at the heart of what I am describing is a hypothesis suggesting we need to compare the date on what is happening (and what is planned) against a market-based supply and demand model. In many aspects of our behaviours the balance between space and place is already changing as people use online information resources, email, factual television and the mobile phone as core parts of their everyday activities.
   There needs to be a debate about the ways in which our services, real and virtual, will need to change as demand changes. How do we change the culture of culture for example and what impact will it have on cultural heritage in the future?

2. Are there good examples of private/public partnerships have produced products that bridge the divide between the traditional institution-centric view of service provision and the need/answer model that seems to be apparent in the use of networked resources by the general public?

3. Is it possible to design one or more project briefs to enable work already being done to be tested more actively across larger population bases?