Content Creation and Content Delivery

Introduction

Content creation refers to initiatives undertaken by governments to ensure that suitable content is made available to citizens, by implication in electronic format, though in principle the term would apply to any method of creating content for use by citizens.  It can be divided into two broad areas: firstly, there are the efforts by governments to ensure that citizens read government-created documents.  That topic is broad ranging, and is covered in other chapters, such as those on Freedom of Information and on e-government.  The second is that governments, though legislation (say regarding national archives services), or through funding initiatives, ensure a maximum amount of non-government information is made available to citizens, whether on the Web or by other means. 

Content delivery is concerned with government initiatives to ensure that the content that has been created can reach the citizen conveniently.  This, then, includes legislation on the role of public and other libraries, post offices and the like, as well as funding initiatives to ensure that such services are readily available by means of funding kiosks in public places, such as shopping malls, doctors’ waiting rooms, etc., as well as funding for Citizens’ Advice Bureaux (or their equivalent), public libraries, national libraries, etc., so that they can deliver information to people who drop in, and answer queries on searching the databases.  Funding for delivery directly into peoples’ homes, including old peoples’ homes, is also relevant, but we have not considered here initiatives for ensuring that school and university students have access to electronic information.

Until the early 1990’s, content creation and delivery was very much the remit of the private sector, especially the publishing, database and printing industries.  The convergence of publishing, printing, telecommunications and computer technologies means that the new electronic publishing industries remain leading the content creation and delivery business.  The role of government within such a competitive market-place remains a sensitive issue.  There is considerable tension between the private sector and government when government is seen to be developing services that unfairly compete with those of the private sector.  The electronic publishing industry would rather it were given a free licence to exploit government-created information for itself, and would rather government did not get in the business of subsidising content delivery services that would not be economic without the subsidy.  On the other hand, governments can argue that certain sections of the population should be entitled to free or cheap access to information and that if the market were left to rule, these people would never be able to have access to the information they want or need to play their full parts as citizens.

The situation has been complicated by the development of new services, such as government online services, online financial transactions and new advertising opportunities that did not exist a few years ago.

There is, of course, an implication of skills required for information processing and using information technology. Without such skills, further developments in content creation and delivery will be hampered. We consider this issue in the chapter on information literacy.

Another key issue is translating popular content into local languages.  Although some governments are already adopting this approach, on the whole governments have not yet provided any major language translation programme with regards to the dissemination of information originating in a foreign language.  The majority of the material on the Internet is in English, and this is likely to exacerbate the trend towards the dominance of this language over all others world-wide. Another issue, touched on in the previous chapter, is the content of local materials in minority languages, e.g. Basque in France and Spain.  This is particularly important in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies.

Another issue is the platform used for content delivery.  XML offers many benefits as it allows for personalisation, intelligent searches and permits the aggregation of content from multiple sources. The XML standard is fairly new and governments need time to accept it; it is possible that in the future, all government sites will be based on XML.[67]  XML is considered further in the metadata chapter.

We found little literature explicitly describing governments' content creation and delivery initiatives world-wide.  One reason is clearly that such initiatives will come under many names, and the terms “content creation” or “content delivery” are unlikely to appear.  For this reason, this chapter is regrettably rather brief.

Australia

The Australian Government provides a wide range of government services to citizens and businesses on a 24-hour basis 7 days a week. The information is available via an integrated system that can be accessed through personal computers (PC's), public kiosks and telephone. The Australian government has proposed a customer focused portals framework, to simplify the processes of finding government information. This will be an in additional method of content delivery, which will build upon the existing Commonwealth Government Entry Point.[68]

This portal will add a number of related Web sites that are designed around customer groupings and different subject matter applicable to each group of users. A number of other portals have been proposed, to be implemented by the later part of 2001. These portals will be aimed at Agriculture, Employment, Culture & Recreation, Families and the Youthful.  They are also mentioned in the e-government chapter.

The Australian government has an online services content regulation designed for promoting a responsible on-line services environment in Australia. The objectives include developing the Australian content on-line and defining content, also encouraging access to on-line service(s).

There is already a substantial amount of Australian content currently stored  in archives, which is not accessible to the public, either because it has not been made readily available by the authority, or because the public have little or no access to the technologies needed to access the  information.

Canada

The Canadian Government offers a variety of services and information to its citizens.  These services include income tax returns that can be submitted electronically with the use of a touch-tone phone or through more than 12,000 approved tax agents. The Government currently has a pilot project (GST/HST TELEFILE) underway, which will enable 3.8 million Canadians to submit tax returns over the Internet.[69] The Canadian Government’s online objectives are to provide services to the public with the use of the Internet, interactive TV, kiosks, and electronic bulletin boards. The following initiatives have been established to meet the specific objectives of content creation and delivery:

•          A portal for the government of Canada for disseminating information (see chapter on e-government).

•          The National Library of Canada is advising the Canadian Government online project on possible adoption and approaches to metadata standards.[70]

•          All the government departments provide their information in both official languages (French and English).

Access Canada[71] is part of the federal government’s “connecting Canadians” Strategy. This portal is still in the development stages and has not yet gone online live, but it will become Canada’s personal gateway to online Canadian government information and community content.

Digitising of historical Canadian Museums’ collections in currently underway.[72]   This development includes the use of cutting edge graphical special effects. Content creation of Canada’s Cultural treasures, Canada’s Digital Collection (CDC)[73] was established in 1996, and funded by the federal Youth Employment Strategy (YES).[74]

The Canadian Government has established a keyword-searchable online information kiosk called “Intergov”.[75] This initiative provides government information and services at federal, provincial/territorial levels, with the addition of some foreign government sites. It is not the intention of this site to duplicate material produced on other government web sites. Its main aim is to produce a number of extra facilities (e.g., searching for news articles from other site, or joining government discussion fora).

Many government departments produce their own electronic newsletters and journals. The Government issues these journals online.

One stop access points (portals) are planned for senior citizens, consumers and the environment.

Canada has digitised over 1.4 million patent documents and established the Canadian Patent Database[76]. This database contains documents up to 80 years old, of which all can now be accessed online.  This initiative is similar to that adopted by most leading Patent Offices of the world.

In 1996, Canada created a one-stop shop for consumer information over the Internet; this initiative is known as “Consumer Connection”.[77]

European Union

Sweden

One of the Swedish government's content creation and delivery initiatives is the Job Seekers electronic Job Bank available via the Internet. This has been designed to be accessible by any citizen to seek vacancies for jobs.

The government also offers citizens a service where they can register their vehicles using the telephone. Car dealers are able to register new vehicles using the Internet services available using smart cards for authentication.

Hong Kong

The government of Hong Kong launched the Electronic Services Delivery Scheme (ESD) for the delivery of government services on-line, another key initiative under the Digital 21 strategy. The ESD online was launched December 2000.

The objectives are to improve the delivery of Government services by making it possible for members of the public to transact business with Government departments electronically round the clock, using various electronic means, including their PCs at home or in the office, interactive TV, interactive public pay phones, and public information kiosks, of which there are over 70 public kiosks are already in operation since January 2001[78]

The ESD scheme is also designed to drive the development of secure e- commerce.  The ESD Scheme has adopted state-of-the-art technologies in areas like electronic authentication, data encryption and electronic payment gateway, that integrates both public and private sector services in a citizen-centric approach.

Singapore

Content delivery in Singapore is based on ‘Singapore One’[79], a high capacity network platform that also allows delivery of multimedia services to the work place.  Three government agencies, the National Computer Board (NCB), The National Science and Technology Board and the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore lead this initiative.

The Singapore Government is also producing multimedia kiosks for government transactions, and one-stop government centres, providing videoconference facilities[80].

Three government agencies, National Computer Board (NCB), The National Science and Technology Board and the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore lead government One.

E-Citizen centre is a portal that provides access to a structured collection of government information resources.   The Singapore Government offers the new eCitizen portal as a service that integrates many electronic government services and organises them around the need and life events of citizens and businesses. E-Citizen centre is a portal that provides access to a structured collection of government information resources.   This portal is described further in the e-government chapter.

South Africa

Following the International Telecommunications (ITU) Africa Telecom ‘98’ Conference, South Africa set about improving cost effective access for the disadvantaged user, through innovations such as multipurpose community centres or kiosks.  The country has adopted an approach to content creation and delivery that focuses upon the technology and the channels for output, rather than the content and the value of the content.

Experience shows[81] that in Africa, access does not guarantee creation of local or indigenous content. Thus, South Africa’s contribution to content creation is insignificant on a global scale. South Africa’s content creation of Web material accounts for just 0.33% of global content.[82]

South Africa is currently piloting ‘telecentres’[83] to take the primary step for democratising access. This is felt to be the way forward in developing African content on the Web.

The South African government current activities include the announcement for the establishment of a new Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), this follows a recently-released government report indicated that many of the country’s poorest residents have little access to media outlets.[84]  About 20 percent of the population still have no access to standard radio broadcasts, and many of these live in regions where newspaper circulation is also extremely low.

The MDDA initiative would seek to empower these groups through projects that promote gender equality, education, health care and environmental awareness, so that these smaller communities throughout the country are well enough informed to participate in the development process.

While a number of statutory and institutional initiatives in South Africa already aim to ensure free expression and access to information, the MDDA would seek to complement, not duplicate, these other initiatives. It would provide media research, journalistic training, media financing and business and management skills.

The new agency would also support networking initiatives at the local, national and regional levels, as well as literacy projects that would encourage the ability to read media publications.

The government initiative also called for the establishment of an independent regulator for the broadcast industry and multi-purpose community centres throughout the country.

USA

The American Government has supported the distribution of interactive kiosks in Washington DC, to deliver government information by linking the kiosks to local, state and federal Web sites. The kiosks allow users to access information on a number of topics. Increased usage of these systems will, it is argued, lead to increased content, as government agencies enhance their sites. This initiative will promote government information and services to those people who may lack online services, by providing them with accessibility at low cost. The project started in July 2000.  Its purpose is to provide to deliver government information to people who have little or no online access. [85] The General Services Administration (GSA) installed 36 kiosks based in shopping malls, bus stations and supermarkets. All the kiosks link to local, state and federal World Wide Web sites that contain government information on topics such as voter registration, driver’s licenses, small businesses, taxes, events and social services.

The US General Accounting Office (GAO) issued an important report[86] in March 2001 on the fragmentation of the federal government publication system.  Since the rise of digitisation, it notes, there has been a significant loss of control over how US Government publications are disseminated.  Whilst the benefits of online distribution are clear, serious questions are raised about archiving, and about the accessibility of government publications.   The report focuses on bureaucratic reorganisation.  Its most important recommendation is that responsibility for the Depository Library Program be taken from the Government Printing Office to the Library of Congress.  The report summarises the current situation for archiving US Government publications.  A broader overview of the topic, with less focus on bureaucratic solutions, can be found at[87].

Conclusions

The lack of clear evidence of government initiatives in content creations was a surprise.  It is likely that many such initiatives do exist, but have different names, or are being developed by organisations not directly linked to government, such as national libraries.    We would however still draw a few conclusions.

Firstly, due regard must be taken by the British Government of the need to deliver new content in minority languages, such as Gaelic and Welsh, and the languages of the major ethnic minorities.  Secondly, due regard must be taken of the need to deliver information in a manner accessible to those with disabilities (we return to this topic under universal access, below). Thirdly, citizens should be allowed to interact with content creators by means of e-mail, discussion fora and the like to ensure that what is provided meets their needs and wishes.  Finally, we note that XML language in content delivery has many benefits as it can be combined into different documents, it allows for personalisation, intelligent searches and greater automation and permits aggregation of content from multiple sources. XML is a fairly new and needs time to become acceptable; it is possible that in the future, the British Government’s sites will adopt the XML information delivery standard.[88]