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2 Summary
2.1 Context
An audit of digital media services in the tourist, sporting and cultural sectors in Scotland was commissioned by the Scottish Executive. This report presents the findings, conclusions and recommendations from it. The information from the audit will go towards helping the Scottish Executive develop a new digital media services strategy, one that is well informed as to the current situation. There is presently a lot of activity in the Scottish cultural sector regards developing a new strategy for Scotland's cultural and creative sectors, spearheaded by the Cultural Commission. Recently the Cultural Commission published its final report. That report did not perform an audit of digital media services specifically, and this audit provides baseline information in that regard.
2.2 Aims / Objectives
The fundamental reason for the audit was to provide a baseline from which the Scottish Executive could assess the extent of the use of digital media services ( DMS) in the sporting, tourist and cultural sectors in Scotland. This would allow for the development of a suitable digital media services strategy in these sectors. Taking account of where Scotland is at present the audit will facilitate a well informed strategy that will take Scotland forward in as an efficient and effective a way as possible.
To this end, the objective was to acquire information of how a variety of sporting, tourist and cultural organisations (largely in the public sector) use digital media services to carry out their business. The aim was not to acquire information on the platforms, operating systems, and other technical nuts and bolts of DMS. Rather the focus was on why people are developing DMS, what the context is of that development, who those DMS are for and how they relate to the organisation's strategy and business plan. This can be summarised in saying that this audit is more of a 'strategic' audit than a 'technical' audit.
2.3 Methods of Research
Obviously an audit is only as good as the number of consultees taking part and the extent and quality of the information provided. To try and get an audit that was as comprehensive and user-friendly as possible it was decided by the Scottish Executive that the majority of the data collection in the audit would be accomplished via an online questionnaire. This was to be supplemented with interviews of a selection of the consultees to give more dynamic, reactive and, perhaps personal, responses. This mixed approach was the one employed. More than 60 of the most important organisations in Scotland's tourist, sporting and cultural sectors were contacted to be asked if they would like to participate in the audit.
The online questionnaire was accessible via a URL address, and was hosted on Simulacra's main web servers. The online questionnaire was broken up into distinct sections, represented as separate web pages containing several questions. Most questions were of a yes / no / don't know type to facilitate the acquisition of categorical data, with a free-text box to facilitate prose explanations if so applicable.
As mentioned, there was also an interview part to the audit where approximately 20 of the organisations were invited to be interviewed.
2.4 Findings
Of the approximately 60 organisations contacted, around 45 decided to take part. Of those, 42 actually ended up either completing an online questionnaire or taking part in a telephone interview (representing 58 individual consultees). That represents around three quarters of those initially addressed, which for a voluntary audit is a respectable percentage of participation. Most of the contacts completing the online questionnaire answered all 43 questions.
2.5 Conclusions
The central conclusion of our survey is a positive one: that is, digital media services in Scotland seem to be in a healthy state. In terms of the creative development of ideas for DMS, there seems to be little required from outside the organisations. One rider to this is that the sector is a diverse one, from very small organisations employing a few people, to those that are highly distributed, utilising a small HQ, to those larger institutions with large HQs. The needs of these different organisations can be diverse. However, they share common goals, in that they try to:
- Deliver value for money to the public
- Deliver quality services and DMS
Most of the organisations audited in this report and that work in the tourist, cultural and sporting (although primarily the cultural) sectors are publicly funded. If there is one note of concern it is in how integrated and coordinated some of the development seems to be. It is our conclusion that there could be more done to share services and data within a common framework so as to help the sector not reinvent the wheel several times over, and have it use quality, trusted and tested DMS, thus potentially saving public money and helping to realise the two goals bulleted above.
We make 11 recommendations arising from analysis of the findings of the audit:
- Investigate ways in which smaller organisations in the sector can have access to 'start-up' or 'pump-prime' skills which will allow them to connect with external services in an informed and appropriate manner.
- Investigate the potential for market research and user evaluation to be disseminated across the sector in order to ensure that work is not repeated.
- Review the skills gap required to support digital culture / art.
- Review a common information environment for Scotland, how it affects the Scottish Citizen and what the benefits to them would be.
- Develop a clear map of the information services being offered in the cultural sector, ensuring that this presents a cohesive view to users.
- Review how digital media services can be made more seamless and better integrated into the local infrastructure.
- Investigate ways in which smaller and distributed organisations can gain access to digital media services to enable them to share knowledge, information and content more effectively.
- Review how standards-compliant are current learning resources provided by TCS organisations.
- Review Scran's business model in a way which reflects the current organisational needs across the cultural and educational sectors.
- Identify and facilitate the sharing of best practice in the development and use of digital media service across the cultural sector.
- Review what technical standards for use in the common information environment are required in Scotland's TCS sectors.
We now explain most of these recommendations a little more. But before we do that, we would like to add that the following from the Cultural Commission's final report [1] supports the spirit of our recommendations:
" All recipients and programmes that receive public funding from Scotland, or are being supported by Scottish public bodies, have a responsibility to provide access to any and all digital materials generated.
And the corollary:
The citizen has a right to all digital publicly available cultural materials through channels that are clearly defined and suitable for purpose."
2.5.1 A Common information environment
From the evidence in the audit of uncoordinated development of potentially sharable services, we recommend that there should be some kind of environment for public information in Scotland, which allows for the open, trustful and free access to information that has been developed using public money. Such an initiative could really focus and lead not just the TCS sector vis-à-vis DMS but public digital information generally for the benefit of the Scottish Citizen. Such an endeavour would require government-level leadership and sponsorship.
To this end, we recommend a review of the nascent common information environment that has been developed in Scotland, apparently almost by stealth by interested parties. There is currently a similar initiative in England being undertaken, led by JISC; it has a large number of cultural and heritage institutions interested already. We believe that such a framework has several characteristics which are favourable to the development of Scotland as world-leading digital culture. Those characteristics include:
- A high profile environment for championing the development of interoperable DMS and DMS in general to the Scottish Citizen
- An environment of re-usable services helping to level the playing field for smaller organisations to provide better DMS
- An integrative framework for all publicly funded digital information and services
It should be clear that we are not recommending a portal or gateway or any solution. We are recommending an interoperability framework and collection of common services and data from which gateways / portals / other DSM solutions could be developed on the back of.
2.5.2 Providing information to support smaller organisations
From the evidence of the audit, many of the individuals contacted were keen and positive with regard to their chosen profession and to the possibilities of DMS for their organisation, sector and nation. There are many talented people working in Scotland's TCS- DMS sector, as well as the private sector, and they together could drive Scotland from the burgeoning situation it finds itself in at present to a more integrated, trusted and useful environment for the Scottish Citizen. However, from the evidence, we did perceive a shortage of skilled staff, partly due to a lack of resources but partly due to a lack of correctly skilled people. One idea is, for smaller organisations, to provide a 'skills pump prime' which would allow them to understand more clearly the landscape of DMS currently, allowing them to solicit better help from outside companies.
2.5.3 Digital media services skills gap
Another problem was a gap identified in regards to the mix of technology and artistic flair required to support creativity via digital media services. Given that the goal for cultural life in Scotland is a vastly increased sense and capability for creativity, and given the way a large amount of such creativity will be supported and facilitated via DMS, it makes sense to have people who can creatively exploit novel DMS and new technology / media to the maximum effect. We therefore recommend a review of the skills required to support Scotland's impending cultural redevelopment via DMS.
2.5.4 Seamless services
From the evidence obtained Scotland seems to have many informative websites and portals and gateways for the accessing of collections and information. What was less evident were those DMS that could be described as seamless or hybrid; that is DMS that can be said as integrating online DMS with novel hardware embedded in the local public infrastructure. There are initiatives such as smartcards being developed, but the idea of seamless services can be taken further. That is, how can DMS, accessed at home or using mobile telephony, be integrated into the local infrastructure such as theatres, museums, tourist attractions, etc. for the benefit of the local citizen?
2.5.5 The need for a learning standards framework
On the evidence from the audit, many consultees seemed to be unsure of what standards they were supposed to be complying to, or what standards would make their efforts in DMS more open to use and reuse. One particular area was that of learning resources. Our recommendation is for a review to take place into how standards-compliant current and future educational resources offered by TCS organisations are. That is, with the overriding concern of the Scottish Executive being to bring creative endeavours into the mainstream education of Scotland's children, it would seem sensible to have in place a framework or policy ensuring the compatibility of those learning resources offered by Scottish TCS organisations with Scotland's primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions' digital learning environments. Such a framework could greatly increase the accessibility of the creative and cultural / heritage sectors to Scottish school-children.
2.5.6 Communication of marketing information
Allowing smaller organisations access to best practice marketing advice or, indeed, access to already completed marketing would be a huge help to many of them.
2.5.7 Communication of services available to users
Continuing that theme of open communications, we also think it would be a good idea to have a map of the information services being offered in the cultural sector, ensuring that this presents a cohesive view to users, as the array of colections on-line and other DMS can be confusing.
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