Improving Access to Cultural Heritage (RO0043)

Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment Romania has submitted only 7,66% of the digital material that should be published on Europeana.eu, the Digital European Library, as pledged in the National Strategy for the Digital Agenda for Romania (2014). According to Romania’s targets, 750.000 items should have been submitted by 2015. Given the fact that some of the public cultural institutions have already digitised a large part of their specific cultural resources, but did not report or communicate this fact, there is a clear need to analyse the publishing conditions for this digitised material, under the provisions of the PSI directive (implemented in national legislation through Law no. 299/2015 on the re-use of public information). Main objective Improve accessibility and re-use of cultural heritage through digitisation. Brief description of commitment The massive digitisation of cultural resources (particularly the movable heritage) that will be done within the eCultura project will focus on: - development of a single online platform that will host a catalogue and a digital library and will be available to all cultural institutions in Romania and open to the public; - digitisation and publishing online (until 2020) in the Digital Library of Romania and the European Digital Library (europeana.eu) of over 750.000 digital objects. Drafting the analysis regarding the publication of public resources in an open format and under an open license, followed by the actual publication, will result in boost of the access to knowledge, creativity and innovation. OPG challenge addressed by the commitment Improving public services; More Effectively Managing Public Resources Relevance Access to information; Civic participation; Technology and Innovation; Ambition Improving the visibility of the national cultural heritage; Implementing a national shared catalogue of the collections owned by public cultural institutions, ensuring a uniform update of the indexing system and eliminating double recordings; Identifying the collections that can be published as open works.

14. Improving access to cultural heritage

The massive digitization of cultural resources (particularly the movable heritage) that will be done within the eCultura project will focus on (1) the development of a single online platform that will host a catalogue and a digital library and will be available to all cultural institutions in Romania and open to the public; (2) the digitization and publishing online (until 2020) in the Digital Library of Romania and the European Digital Library (europeana.eu) of over 750.000 digital objects.

Main Objective:

Improve accessibility and re-use of cultural heritage through digitization.

Milestones:

6. • Development of a single online platform that will host a catalogue and a digital library and will be available to all cultural institutions in Romania and open to the public
   • Digitization and publishing online (until 2020) in the Digital Library of Romania and the European Digital Library (europeana.eu) of over 750.000 digital objects.
   • Analysis and drafting of an action plan for the development of a collaborative tool regarding the publication of cultural digitized resources of public cultural institutions as open works

Responsible Institution: Ministry of Culture and National Identity (MCNI)

Supporting Institution(s): Public cultural institutions under the subordination of the Ministry of Culture, Devolved departments of the Ministry of Culture, National Archives Open Data Coalition, Initiativa Romania

Start date: September 2016                                                  End date: June 2018

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2016–2018 national action plan.

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed to increase the amount of cultural resources digitized for preservation and use by the public. To this end, the commitment aimed to create the culturalia.ro portal (Milestone 1) to store the catalogue of 750,000 digitized items (Milestone 2) [96] and make it available to the public in Romania (culturalia.ro) and in Europe (europeana.eu). Finally, the commitment also aimed to create an instrument independent of eCultura to digitize video cultural heritage (Milestone 3).

STATUS

Midterm: Limited

The development of an online platform was part of the E-Culture: Digital Library of Romania—an EU cofunded project. [97] As of July 2017, the MCNI bought the culturalia.ro domain.

End-of-term: Limited

This commitment remained limited in completion. According to the government’s self-assessment report, the E-Culture project—which secures the budget for the commitment—now follows a new timeline. The accreditation of the Management Authorities needed to secure the EU cosponsorship suffered big delays, [98] and therefore delayed all EU cofunded projects. In November 2018, the acquisitions of the necessary human capital were underway and the tender specifications for the acquisition of the necessary equipment were being finalized. [99] Moreover, Milestone 3—the design of a collaborative tool for the publication of digitized video cultural heritage—was incorporated in the eCultura project. [100]

Did it Open Government?

Access to information: Did not change

Due to the project delays, citizens will only have access to the digitized items in 2020, at the earliest. The commitment therefore did not facilitate any changes for greater access to information at the end-of-term.

Carried forward?

This commitment is not continued in the2018–2020 national action plan.

[96] According to the MNCI, this commitment had two different targets: (1) within the National Strategy regarding the Digital Agenda for Romania (2014) where the target for digitization was 750.000 items (by 2015), and (2) within the eCultura project, where the target was set to 550.000 items. See: https://www.umpcultura.ro/proiecte-in-implementare_doc_883_e-cultura-biblioteca-digitala-a-romaniei_pg_0.htm

[97] “Government Launches Romania’s Digital Library project”, Romania Insider, 6 September 2018, available at https://goo.gl/B6iFfq.

[98] Iulian Anghel, “Un lucru nespus în polemica premierilor privind absorbţia fondurilor UE. Autorităţile de management nu sunt acreditate, iar România nu poate cere decontări de la Bruxelles”, Ziarul Financiar, 22 February 2017, available [in Romanian] at https://goo.gl/XEmXmy.

[99] Cristina Cotenescu and Mihai Monoranu, Ministry of Culture and National Identity, interview by IRM researcher on 8 November 2018.

[100] Cristina Cotenescu and Mihai Monoranu, Ministry of Culture and National Identity, interview by IRM researcher on 8 November 2018.