European Centre for

Digital Content (EC/DC)

B y K ier a n O ’ He a © Octo b er 2 00 2

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

While there is much analysis and focus on e-business and e-commerce, there has been relatively little
focus on ‘e-content.’ Commercial organisations and those in the public sector have robust and long-
established policies and processes by which they measure the value of their physical assets. However, the
discipline of managing and measuring intellectual or content assets is still at a rudimentary stage of
development.

Content has become increasingly important to all organisations, not just those in the media sector. Banks,
retailers, manufacturers and governments are now dedicating significant resources to establishing their
presence on the Internet. However many organisations are focusing too much on large, time-consuming
and expensive e-commerce initiatives, while forgetting about the basics: that is, to get the right content to
the right person at the right time.

Help is therefore needed to find ways of valuing content within organisations, of measuring its impact on
productivity and of increasing the commitment to quality. This proposal is about helping public and private
sector organisations to achieve this and to get the most value from their content. It will require the
creation of a European Research Centre, which will establish quality standards and publicise best practice
in digital content.

2. R A T I O N A L E

We live in a digital world, powered by content. Digital is shorthand for a new approach to business, one
that is fast-paced, connected, non-linear, virtual and technology enabled. These are characteristics not
just of digital devices but of the business environment itself. Underlying the digital revolution are the
transactions, exchanges, products and services – all of them content based – that characterise the
knowledge economy.
Managing knowledge capital is critical if organizations are to create a sustainable, competitive advantage.
Databases and information systems are playing an increasingly important role in this function. Internet
content, or e-content, is largely how such information systems end up publishing their end results. In
2000, the University of California estimated that there were 550 billion documents on the Web. A 2001
A.T. Kearney report predicted that by 2004 the content management industry would be worth $250
billion globally.

A.T. Kearney has also stated that, “Lack of efficient publishing capabilities for digital content costs
organizations $750 billion annually due to wasted time spent by knowledge workers seeking and
capturing information necessary for them to do their jobs.”

These figures suggest that research in the areas of knowledge and content deserve as much recognition as
ICT and Biotechnology. Yet despite the growing importance of e-content to the economy, there is still no
such thing as a European Research Centre for Digital Content. The European Commission has recently
1
launched an e-Content programme but its action lines relate to financial, multilingual and public sector
aspects of digital content. The funding of research and best practice is not within its remit.

3. T H E E U R O P E A N C E N T R E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T

There is therefore an opportunity to anticipate the growing importance of e-content by establishing a

Content Research Centre in a European city, ideally one with a track record in Information Society
research. Such a centre would serve three purposes: it would support local industry and community
initiatives; it would attract new knowledge-based businesses to the region; and it would be an attractive
partner for European projects.

Called the European Centre for Digital Content (EC/DC), the services provided locally, nationally and
internationally by the centre would include:

 Providing best practice advice to organisations and content creators to help them become
competitive in the emerging e-content sector.

1
The e-Content programme is a €100m four-year initiative to encourage the development
and distribution of European digital content over global networks. www.cordis.lu/econtent

EC/DC Outline Proposal 2

 Helping organisations to implement standards and practices for the effective management and use of
digital content in e-business and e-government activities.

 Providing briefings to industry leaders, policy makers and the media to raise understanding of the
terminology, techniques and culture of digital content.

EC/DC would respond to the growing awareness that managing and exploiting knowledge in digital form is
a key driver not only for business but also for the entire knowledge economy.

The centre would help companies place the same emphasis on quality in their Internet and Intranet
publishing processes as they do on their other business processes. It would also help to establish
consistency in how e-content is defined and would encourage organisations, particularly those concerned
with e-government and e-business, to put more emphasis on content strategies.

4. O B J E C T I V E S O F T H E C O N T E N T R E S E A R C H C E N T R E

EC/DC would carry out research into how today’s organisations create, edit, publish, measure and manage
Internet content. Specific objectives would include the following:

 To establish EC/DC as one of the leading sources globally for research and thinking on e-content.

 To establish best practice in the processes by which content is created, edited and published
digitally.

 To develop a set of case studies reflecting best practice in e-content management.

 To create tools and models by which content can be better measured.

EC/DC Outline Proposal 3

5. A R E A S O F R E S E A R C H

The following are broad areas that EC/DC would focus on:

 Models and techniques for the measurement of the value of content within a commercial
organization.

 Studies on the impact of information.

 Public and organizational attitudes towards content.

 Publishing policies and processes within organizations.

 Publishing skills within organizations.

 Readability of digital content.

 Best practice guidelines for digital publishing.

 The impact of the Internet on collaboratively created content.

 Policies and attitudes towards content from a legal perspective (plagiarism, fair use, copyright,
libel, etc.).

 User-generated content (online communities, chat, discussion boards, mailing lists, etc.).

 Information architecture design (metadata and classification; navigation; search; layout and
graphic design).

EC/DC Outline Proposal 4

6. O P E R A T I O N A L F A C T O R S

EC/DC should be established in a European city that is well disposed towards the Information Society and
has a strong track record in research. The centre can be stand alone or part of an established research
centre or University. The choice of location might depend on the availability of funding, the availability of
experienced staff or the research track record of a particular institute.

The objective of the centre is to make organisations more proficient in their use of content. The ways in
which this will be achieved are:

 Research and experimentation to establish quality standards for online publishing and to
benchmark these standards via industry best practice and pilot projects.

 In house seminars at EC/DC to impart top-level awareness to Chief Information Officers (CIO’s), IT
managers and e-business managers about the need for quality standards in digital content.

 Client placement of EC/DC consultants to help personnel achieve certain publishing standards,
leading to industry accreditation for digital content practices.

 Awareness days for policy makers, educators and the media to keep these parties informed
about the centre’s activities and to help EC/DC to contribute to policy formulation.

A team of experts in digital content will be assembled on a contract basis, to work on specific types of
research, on programme development or on seminars. Client consultancy will take place on and off site.
The centre will achieve accreditation allowing it to award certification to international standards on
certain procedures relating to digital content. It will not make any academic awards but depending on
local academic regulations, it might at some point collaborate with a university to develop a course in
content practices.

7. C O N C L U S I O N

Clearly there is a certain disconnect between what people want from the Internet – quality content—and
the ability of modern organisations to deliver that content. The Internet is here to stay and organizations
need to develop much more efficient processes and strategies with regard to content. Much more
research is needed into how organisations, who before the Internet did not have to publish much content,
now find that content management and publishing is a core requirement.

EC/DC Outline Proposal 5

EC/DC will combine achievement in creative thinking with Information Society accomplishment to
highlight the strategic role of digital content in business, government and in society. Allied to the growing
recognition that future economic growth depends to an increasing extent on knowledge and how we use
it, the European Centre for Digital Content stands to be a significant catalyst for growth in these sectors.

European centres pioneering electronic publishing and usability research have been quick to establish
themselves at the heart of EU developments in these areas. A European centre for digital content can
follow suit by being the first of its kind on the continent and by becoming a benchmark for all e-content
research. It has the potential not only to serve the needs of the local community but also to bring
international stature to the city it is located in.

EC/DC Outline Proposal 6