Management agreement with Flemish Government approved: our plans for 2024 and 2025
22 Dec 2023On 22 December, our management agreement for 2024-2025 was presented to the Flemish Government. And with our plans now approved, we’re ready to keep forging ahead for the next two years. We briefly highlight the key points for you below.
Our pillars remain steadfast: collaborating with our content partners to digitise, sustainably archive, and make content accessible to various audiences is what drives us as an organisation. We are also continuing to eagerly gather knowledge and apply our expertise to support cultural, media and government organisations.
One new development is the Flemish Government’s decision to incorporate the Flemish Art Collection’s digital operations into meemoo. Following years of intensive collaboration between our organisations, we start 2024 as one team. You can read more about this here.
We’re also setting several new priorities for the next two years:
We’ve redefined the knowledge domains where we aim to further build and share expertise, as we believe these topics are crucial for our field – or will gain importance in the future. Over the coming years, we will focus in particular on:
digital strategy
digital architecture and infrastructure
legal and ethical frameworks
digitisation and preservation
metadata
broadening and deepening cultural participation through digital heritage
With the GIVE project, we embarked on 3D digitisation for the first time. Moving forward, we will continue to focus on the 3D digital reproduction of artworks and heritage objects;
Our archive system sustainably stores millions of items for our content partners and – to keep our storage infrastructure future-proof and reliable – we will be renewing our tape robots in 2024;
In 2023, we launched the revamped hetarchief.be. In 2024-2025, we will be making newspapers searchable and accessible on this platform, granting the general public access to hundreds of thousands of pages of fascinating stories;
Since 2019, together with numerous partners and the sector as a whole, we’ve been exploring how to integrate the Flemish heritage databases, Erfgoedplus and Erfgoedinzicht. In 2024-2025, we will roll out the new heritage database and focus on migrating the data from the old ones to the new one;
Image: Mw. Lee aan dek bij de reling met een verrekijker de zee afspeurend, Photo collection Van de Poll, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
With our CEST knowledge platform, we currently provide guidance to heritage institutions in using standards for creating, managing and making digital collections accessible. To better support them in executing their digital heritage processes, we are launching a new, user-friendly knowledge database in 2024;
We are taking on the role of product owner for the OSLO Cultural Heritage standard. This means leading the OSLO Cultural Heritage Working Group and supporting the sector in adopting and implementing the standard;
We are also explicitly focusing on internationalisation over the coming years. On 16-20 September, we will welcome the international digital preservation community to the 20th edition of iPRES in Ghent. We are organising this hybrid congress along with Het Facilitair Bedrijf (Digital Archive Flanders), Ghent University and VRT, with activities in various locations in Flanders and online;
We are examining our existing collaboration and service model – analysing whether changes are needed to ensure it remains clear, inclusive and affordable for all stakeholders in the future;
The Flemish Government is taking steps to accelerate the digital transformation of the cultural sector. As a key player in the Digital Transformation programme, we are committed to driving this acceleration by participating in structural dialogue and contributing to designing programmes for the next Flemish Government.
We extend our thanks to the Flemish Government, particularly Minister Jan Jambon and the Department of Culture, Youth & Media, for their trust. We are already contemplating plans for our next management agreement, which will be concluded in the course of 2025 for a period of five years.