The aim of the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) is to build a common information environment where users of publicly funded e-content can gain best value from the investment that has been made by reducing the barriers that currently inhibit access, use and re-use of online content.
The SCA is a 3 year initiative funded as part of JISC’s capital programme. It began in March 2006 and will conclude its current phase of work in March 2009. JISC is taking forward this work in collaboration with a set of key organisations across the public sector:
The first phase of this work has taken place under the banner of the Common Information Environment. The Strategic Content Alliance aims to take this work into the next stage and look at how this vision can be realised through providing a set of principles and guidelines for best practice. This content framework will:
- enable key public sector organisations to collaborate and coordinate their online content activities so they can make the best use of the limited funds available and fully realise the potential of this content to benefit the UK
- reference the key barriers currently inhibiting closer coordination and develop an action plan to address these
Vision
The rapid growth and development of electronic content offers enormous and ever-growing possibilities for all citizens in the UK. But for this country to realize the full potential of the web, and for each citizen to realize their own potential - in the workplace, in their places of learning, and in the home - the full range of online content needs to be made available to all, quickly, easily and in a form appropriate to individuals' needs.
Organisations in different sectors are making significant amounts of online content available to their respective communities - in health, education, museums, archives, research, public libraries, and so on. However, the barriers between sectors means not all this content is accessible to all who might need it or want it. Too much remains hidden amongst the low-quality information that clutters the web and behind technical, commercial and administrative barriers.
A number of key public sector bodies also recognise that parallel investment has taken place in the digital educational assets, infrastructure and services to support enhanced engagement with online resources for formal and informal learning. There is clearly a risk that without much greater common working our respective contributions in providing access to new digital resources will be limited to individual branded networks, and that users will not fully benefit from the central investment that has been made in these initiatives. Overcoming these barriers requires concerted action on the part of all organisations in the field.
The need for a e-Content framework
The ‘e-Government Agenda’ in the UK, the DFES e-Learning strategy and the wider European Union context seeks to embrace and maximise consistent creation and delivery, use and reuse of electronic resources created by and for the public sector. There has been significant effort made to establish technical standards for interoperability to underpin a more coherent information environment and these standards are gradually being adopted both by public sector and commercial sector content providers. The need now is to consolidate this work, while taking a broad overview of the online content activities in the public sector with a view to establishing a national framework for information provision that fully supports lifelong learning, teaching, research and cultural use.
Public sector initiatives have so far been largely fragmented. Coordination has not taken place on any significant scale between initiatives to share expertise, identify suitable content and avoid duplication of effort. The uncoordinated nature of the activities to date is resulting in a patchy network of online content with different management and business models, with no comprehensive gap analysis or tools to support previous, current or planned activity.
To achieve the best possible return on investment, avoidance of duplication of effort, and to empower the e-citizen, key stakeholders need to be brought together to work towards a common set of principles and guidelines for best practice that will provide a common policy framework for online content activities across the domains of lifelong learning and teaching, research, and cultural heritage.
Moving from fragmentation to convergence
The Strategic Content Alliance needs to actively tackle the issue of content silos if real progress is to be made in realising the potential of online content for the citizen. The vision is that public sector organisations should be able to work together to ensure that citizens have access to high quality online content that is appropriate to their needs and should not be inhibited in this activity by the technical and organisational structures that dictate, what content can be accessed and how it is presented to the user online.
In recognition of this challenge, the Common Information Environment undertook some important work which provides a stepping stone for the Strategic Content Alliance activity:
- provided market intelligence through the MORI survey of user behaviour
- developed an advocacy framework and targeted this at key government departments to raise awareness of the importance of a more co-ordinated approach between public sector organisations with responsibility for the provision of on-line content
- developed demonstrators to exemplify the benefits to the user in being able access high quality content from a variety of providers through a common environment
The Strategic Content Alliance aims to take this work to the next level through:
- assessing and documenting the political, technical, cultural and organisational barriers which currently inhibit closer coordination and recommending how these should best be addressed
- analysing and modelling the potential for real convergence between the infrastructure and services provided by the sponsoring organisations to support enhanced engagement with online resources
- synthesising these findings into the content framework, of standards and good practices which will include an action plan for future coordination
The challenges
The challenge is to move from a fragmented and uncoordinated approach to one which takes a holistic view of management and provision of online content to the e-citizen. Issues to be addressed include, we need to:
- have an overview of the different online content strategies across the public sector and identify opportunities for co-operation and maximising value
- recognise the priorities, inhibitors and focus for each public sector organisation
- understand the organisational barriers that may impact on the development of a common framework
- build up and share market intelligence about the online content requirements of e-citizens
- strengthen the commitment to the Common Information Environment and to the coordination of further development of standards and interoperability
- share a common approach to IPR, Licensing and Digital Rights Management to facilitate access, use and re-use of online content by e-citizens
- find affordable solutions for the ongoing sustainability of the services which provide online content to the e-citizen. The potential for affordable solutions through economies of scale
- undertake a UK audit of online content created or licensed by the public sector for use by the e-citizen and establish a register to provide a source of reference, remove uncertainty about the amount of duplication taking place and provide potential for joint ventures
- document and disseminate the processes that public sector organisations might set in place to develop and deliver their online content activities and services in a more common way
- understand and document risks inherent in this area, in particular from online content services outside the public sector which may offer both opportunities and threats
Strategic Content Alliance stakeholders
They key stakeholders for this work are seen as:
- The user who stands to directly benefit from the greater level of coordination planned
- UK public sector organisations concerned with online content provision who recognise the benefit to the communities they serve through seeking a higher level of convergence in their activities to achieve more impact and better value for money
- International public sector organisations involved in this area
- Providers in the publishing and content provision industry who are providing a range of online content services to the citizen
UK sponsoring organisations
As well as a commitment to achieving a higher level of coordination of onlinecontent provision activities, the current sponsoring organisations share the following characteristics, they:
- provide a major set of online content services to their constituency of users
- are in command of significant resources and can directly influence the quality and direction of online content services in their area
Strategic Content Alliance will also convene advisory forums to discuss the initiative with a range of other public sector bodies and other content providers.
International stakeholders
While focused on the needs of the UK citizen, the creation of a content framework needs to be mindful of overseas developments being undertaken by similar agencies in the United States, the Commonwealth and other countries (e.g. Mellon Foundation, Digital Library Federation, Library of Congress, National Library of Australia, Minerva project, etc). The European Union has recently launched a ‘dynamic action plan for the European Union coordination of digitisation of cultural and scientific content designed to make Europe’s cultural and scientific resources more accessible to a broader public by using digitisation technologies and the internet’.
Stakeholders in the publishing and content provision industry
While the Strategic Content Alliance is primarily concerned with better coordination of initiatives within the public sector, it is important to acknowledge that commercial content providers play a vital role in the provision of resources for research and lifelong learning. So it will be important to engage with a range of relevant commercial providers, including publishers and Internet Service Providers to provide a framework which reflects the range of models and mechanisms via which online content is made available to the citizen.
Outputs and benefits
Outputs
The Strategic Content Alliance will deliver the content framework of principles and good practices comprising:
- Audience analysis and modeling synthesis of user characteristics and requirements derived from data available from sponsoring organizations
- Policy and procedures synthesis of findings from analysis of sponsors policies; identifications of common areas for action, identification and dissemination of best practice
- Audit and register scope and develop a pilot online register of collections and materials, born digital, digitised, or earmarked for digitisation
- Standards and good practices common technical standards and good practices document; 'advocacy' strategy to promote further adoption of documented standards
- Service convergence modeling document recommending where more converged online content services would offer benefits to users and the steps to achieve this
- Exchange (interoperability) model development a number of interoperability pilots testing: scalability, sustainability and market/user need for a more common information environment
- Advice, support and embedding a report presenting current support services landscape and recommendations for future support
- Advocacy, dissemination and policy development a range of communication mechanisms geared at key stakeholders in the online content arena including advocacy documentation and events to publicise the framework
- Business models and sustainability strategies for online content work a report reviewing and presenting the sustainability issues in the context of the broader online content environment, online content framework itself and the more converged online content services envisaged in the future
Benefits
- reduction in the technical, political, and administrative barriers which currently inhibit the use of public sector online content
- increase in the use of public sector online content from audiences who may not currently be actively engaged with the online content currently on offer and ultimately a richer and more personalised searching environment
- streamlined and easier access to users of public sector online content resources irrespective of location
- coordinated approach to the identification and funding of public sector online content and greater interoperability between online content and online collections
- through sharing intelligence - an improvement of the quality of the outputs and quality of the online content activities of the sponsoring organisations
- an enhanced overview of the different online content strategies across the public sector and opportunities for cooperation and maximising value
- better market intelligence about the public sector online content requirements of our users
- stronger commitment to the Common Information Environment and to the coordination of further development of standards and interoperability
- clear sense of shared direction for the sponsors and the articulation of a set of coherent messages about public sector online content provision
- common understanding and, where possible, a common approach to IPR, Licensing and Digital Rights Management to facilitate access, use and re-use of online content by e-citizens
- identification of affordable solutions for the ongoing sustainability of services that provide online content to the e-citizen and an understanding of the potential for affordable solutions through economies of scale
- common understanding of the risks inherent in this area, in particular from online content services outside the public sector that may offer both opportunities and threats