The Strategic Content Alliance vision
The Strategic Content Alliance vision
To build a common information environment where users of publicly funded 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 digital content.
The rapid growth and development of digital content offers enormous and ever-growing possibilities for all citizens in the UK. But for this country to realise the full potential of the web, and for each citizen to realise 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 among the low-quality information that clutters the web or is still in a non-digital form.
A number of key public and not-for-profit bodies also recognise that parallel investment has taken place in 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. They 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.
The Strategic Content aims to work on behalf of the public and not for profit sector holistically, from content creation to curation in a spirit of collaboration and co-ordination. It aims to look at how this Vision can be realised through providing a set of principles and guidelines for best practice at a practitioner and policy-maker level: The UK Content Framework
The challenge is to move from a fragmented and uncoordinated approach to one which takes a holistic view of management and provision of digital content to the UK citizen. Areas to be tackled include: - supply an overview of the different digital content strategies across the public and not for profit sector in order to identify opportunities for co-operation and maximising value
- recognise the priorities, inhibitors and focus for each public and not for profit sector organisation
- understand and address the cultural, policy and technical barriers that may impact on the development of a common framework
- build up and share market intelligence about the digital content requirements of citizens
- strengthen the commitment and coordination of further development
- find affordable solutions for the ongoing sustainability of the services
- remove uncertainty about the amount of duplication taking place and provide potential for joint ventures
- document and disseminate the processes that public and not for profit sector organisations might set in place to develop and deliver their digital content activities and services in a optimal manner
- identify and exploit opportunities outside the public and not for profit sector that provide the ability to exploit the full potential of digital content
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