Just wanted to post my submission to the Dept of Broadband, Communication and Digital Economy
My two cents worth for what it's worth...
1. The Role of National Broadcasting
• The ABC has an important role in promoting digital media literacy across the community; particularly to groups that might not have access to technology and training. The ABC could set up mobile media centres that can travel to different places and communities to teach people digital storytelling techniques, teach people how to use their digital media to create stories that can then be shared across ABC platforms. This would also assist in being able to produce and promote good quality User Generated Content (UGC)
• As a national broadcaster the ABC is in a good position to create a large repository of digital media assets with a strong Australian focus for people to use in their own media productions. The ABC a wealth of media archiving Australian history that could be made available to the public to view and download. It is also well placed to become a platform for collecting media about important events in Australia to create a living social history of these events.
• The ABC can become a digital ‘town square’ where people can communicate with other people in their region or with similar interests in a safe and collaborative environment. This might involve online services such as noticeboards, events guides, media exchanges and forums for discussion of news and public affairs.
• The ABC could host online portals that curate the best of digital media content on any particular subject and/or content from any particular region in Australia. It could provide a one stop shop for education and research purposes on any given subject with a specialist focus on Australian content. In order to do this the ABC would aggregate and curate content from its own sources as well as a range of other selected sources. It would add value by providing the editorial oversight to give the audience the ‘best of’ information on any given subject.
2. Harnessing New Technologies to Deliver Services
• ABC should be at the forefront of innovation and R&D in digital radio, TV and other platforms.
• The ABC provides a crucial role in promoting the uptake of new digital technologies and well as educating audiences about what these technologies offer and how to use them. The ABC plays an important role in providing quality content on new platforms in order to promote the uptake of these platforms Eg. digital TV, digital radio and multichannel broadband
• The ABC needs to be at the forefront of innovation in broadband content development and delivery. They can also work collaboratively with the independent sector to promote and support development in this new platform. By considering models such as the BBC Innovation Labs (http://open.bbc.co.uk/labs/) the ABC can support and collaborate with the independent production sector to foster talent and promote creative industries.
• National broadcasters should be active in adopting new technologies and program formats in a research and development capacity. Limited investment in a range of technologies and program formats can provide very real gains and position national broadcasters as industry leaders. A good example is the podcast trial by Radio National which quickly became a very popular and successful new method of delivering ABC content.
• The ABC has a rich archive of media documenting Australia’s history in audio, video, photos and text. There should be an archive project which digitises this media and makes it available to the Australian public. The BBC has invested heavily in making their archives available in the Creative Archives project http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/collections.shtml The ABC can also create a living archive of content by collecting and collating User Generated Content around large national events as well as the everyday lives of Australians over time. This project could be a collaboration with holders of state and national archives. The ABC is also well placed to contribute media to Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) initiatives and providing public media in the public arena for non commercial use. One good example of this is the collaborative relationship between cultural institutions such as the Powerhouse and the Australian War Memorial with the Flickr Commons project (http://www.flickr.com/commons?PHPSESSID=ea7b4da468f5935f24b65f41dbfc356f). This collaboration has meant these photo collections have been much more widely viewed and have created a lively dialogue around Australian historical archives.
• The open source software development movement has created a large volume of software and resources that are freely available and developed collaboratively by groups of developers. Increasingly companies and organisations make their data available through feeds and open API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) to this global community of developers to build tools and applications using their platforms and data. The BBC has been innovative as a public broadcaster by engaging with their developer community and creating an online portal BBC Backstage (http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/) to facilitate this engagement. Through doing this they are able to foster talent within the local developer community as well as gain useful prototypes and models that can go into development within the BBC. They are also actively involved in supporting and promoting developer and digital production innovation within the UK through initiatives such as Hacked Day and Innovation Labs (http://open.bbc.co.uk/labs/). The ABC could play a similar role for the industry in Australia. The BBC Future Media and Technology group are researching the future role of the BBC as a Common Platform (http://commonplatform.co.uk/) of tools, content and resources for public use – a public sector equivalent to Google.
3. Information and Entertaining Australians
• The ABC needs to move to providing content to people on the platforms they are using rather than just focusing on ABC delivery platforms such as radio, TV and ABC online. Increasingly young Australians are moving away from consuming media on these traditional mediums and instead and consuming media via social networking sites, games portals and mobile. In order to stay relevant to these younger audience the ABC needs to be providing and tracking it’s content across a range of platforms in the form of widgets and producing content specifically for and in these platforms, for example games and drama on social networking sites and multi-player games for children and young people.
• The charter for public broadcasters should contain broad principles that are not related to specific platforms of delivery. The media landscape and platforms are changing to rapidly and the charter needs to apply to all new and emerging platforms.
4. Education Skills and Productivity
• The ABC could provide a more comprehensive online education portal which reflects and feeds into the national curriculum. This could consist of a multi-channel broadband delivery platform and interactive educational resources. It would work with national educational partners such as education.au to develop such a service. This site could become a clearinghouse for quality education resources and media for teachers and students.
• In terms of lifelong learning ABC online could provide training and tutorial portal on a range of subjects including digital media production. This could include ‘professional’ content and well as user generated content on a wide range of subjects from gardening to DIY.
• The ABC could provide training for communities in digital media production skills and at the same time act as a curator to collect and publish stories form these communities to a broader audience. This would be particularly effective in rural and regional communities where there is not access to other training providers. Well documented formats such as digital storytelling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling) provide people with the skills and experience to create high quality digital narratives from their own media archives
• A partnership between the ABC and universities to promote research initiatives related to media and communications could foster industry and research development in these fields such as the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Knowledge Exchange Program (http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundedResearch/CaseStudies/Pages/onlineworlds.aspx)
5. Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity
• Organisations such as the ABC should become more transparent and open to input from the audience in terms of defining services and priorities. In the new media environment audiences expect a degree of responsiveness from media providers that is not currently reflected in the ABC. This dialogue could be initiated by setting up blogs in a similar way to the BBC Editors blog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/) and Internet blog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/) where editors and producers document decisions and new initiatives and the audience can respond and have direct input into this process.
7. Efficient Delivery of Services
• In order to transition from existing delivery platforms to digital delivery platforms a substantial capital investment is required for public broadcasters. There are significant costs associated with creating systems for digital assets management and distribution. If these assets management systems are set up properly with appropriate metadata and taxonomy management systems it will greatly increase the value of digital content in its ability to be used across a range of productions and output platforms.
• There are significant ongoing costs associated with the delivery of content in a broadband environment which were not there in the case of traditional mediums such as TV and radio.
• Production should be a combination of in-house and outsourced production with a focus on the ABC acting as an incubator and promoter of small independent production houses.
• In the longer term content production might be more efficiently organised around genres (Eg. science, art, education) rather than output platforms and networks (TV, radio) as is currently the case at the ABC. This would consolidate content expertise in one part of the organisation and ensure this content was efficiently delivered across a range of platforms.
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