SITAR Project for a “Territorial information web platform for Public Archaeology of Rome” (SITAR)
Ministry for Cultural Heritage - Special Superintendence for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
Before 2008, the starting year of the SITAR Project implementation, some fundamental issues characterized the scenario of the various relationships between MiBACT-SSBAR, in charge of study, safeguard and exploitation of archaeological heritage of Rome, and many institutions and users involved in crucial activities for both research and knowledge progress, and urban planning and developments, such as: geo-archaeological researches, both preventive and academic ones; archaeological heritage safeguard actions; shared urban and landscape planning; cultural heritage promotion; educational programs, edutainment production, etc. These issues were primarily due to some critical lacks as: - a missing thorough and detailed map of Rome ground and underground archaeological components and features; - a gap between the rapid increase of MiBACT-SSBAR material archives, particularly due to the late 1980s’ and 1990s’ great public works, and the effective ubiquitous availability of field data, reports, scientific and administrative documents, cartographic and iconographic items, still to be translated into the form of easily and really accessible records, metadata, digital objects and web maps, on behalf of all interested and involved users; - a slow integration of ICT, new technologies and updated methodologies in daily workflows and procedures, affecting MiBACT-SSBAR time-response in terms of archiving, preparing, analysing, sharing and disseminating its own data and archive documents, with respect to all institutional activities mentioned above; - a weak interaction between the Institute and its publics, meaning a lack of unambiguos informational channels and media supporting the dialogue with the users interested and involved in the mentioned activities and particularly in: preventive archaeology, shared territorial and landscape planning, exploitation of monuments, sites and museums, publics involvement and engagement, knowledge participatory processes, etc. Therefore, those issues affected heavily opportunities of cooperation between MiBACT-SSBAR and other public administrations, local government bodies, professionals, researchers and academics, technicians, cultural creatives and up to the citizens, both native and immigrant ones, educational sector stakeholders, students and, not least, tourists. Furthermore, the rapidly evolving scenario of exponential increase of public infrastructural and private insediative transformations has claimed, on one hand, the preventive and digital archaeology as a necessary daily practice, involving quite two o three generations of archaeologists and cultural heritage specialists, above all women and young researchers, in crucial activities of registering, collecting, processing and archiving lots of field heterogeneous data. On the other hand, this urban evolution process has stimulated a stronger interest among citizens, educators, students, tourists, etc., for a wider knowledge and ‘awareness’ of Rome subsoil, not only for the well known monumental evidences, and it has indirectly fostered new users’ needs in terms of data and information availability, accessibility, understanding, sharing and personalized recombination. For all these reasons and in light of four decades of institutional activities and action plans, the MiBACT-SSBAR has started an innovation program, both organizational and technological, in order to correctly address the mentioned lacks and issues by means of the SITAR Project, and to meet its publics needs and requirements across the whole cultural sector, with a particular attention also for socio-economic and territorial development items.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
At the end of 2007, MiBACT-SSBAR designed the first action plan of SITAR Project in order to primarily design, implement and maintain the first digital archaeological cadastre of Rome, and integrate other experiences promoted by the same Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and archeological one. Therefore, the primary focus of implementation strategy was set on more pressing needs as: - archives rationalising and digitalization; - data and applications via-web accessibility; - new forms of collaborative and multi-domain knowledge creation, sharing and recombination; - publics engagement and active participation. In these activity areas, MiBACT-SSBAR has carried out some specific initiatives achieving the following objectives, among the others: - a digital lab for acquiring, processing, archiving scientific and administrative data/documents; - analysis of current daily workflows and definition and codification of operational procedures; - description of conceptual, data and cultural business models; - central spatialized database for metadata archiviation of both geographical and descriptive items; - dedicated infrastructure for files, geo-database and apps codes back-up and long term preservation, with servers, workstations, acquiring and output devices; - a network for internal/external users and machines connections, based on public optical fibre circuits supplied by Consortium GARR, the Italian managing body of National Education and Research Network “GARR-X”, and supported by its wide community; - identification and qualification of necessary human resources and professional profiles for the core workgroup; specifically, this inter-disciplinary workgroup is a compound of senior archaeologists, analysts, professionals and technicians, in charge of the design, implementation and development of SITAR conceptual, data and cultural business models, and web platform, through a continuous fine tuning of new competences, procedures and tools; moreover, a dedicated data-entry équipe has been structured through a specific selection of young archaeologists (in mean, at least ten professional along 2008/2014 period) with early experiences in ancient topography, classical archaeology, census activities, GIS skills, etc.; with its 80% of female mean percentage, this workgroup represents a clear expression of the Italian archaeological sector actual trend, highly populated of women and young researchers requesting for new qualification and job opportunities within fascinating Cultural Heritage field; - new web applications both for back-end activities and publication/dissemination of structured data/metadata, digital objects and interactive territorial and archaeological web maps, with regard to the open science paradigm and open source solutions; - continuous comparison with others workgroups operating within both the same Ministry and academic and research sectors, through participation to inter-ministry committees, European networking projects (as ARIADNE, http://www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/; DCH-RP, http://www.dch-rp.eu/), conferences, workshops, publications, etc.; - a continuous informational flow between internal and external personnel, professionals and other users, about theoretical and practical items, tools and application functionalities, availability of new dataset and metadata, etc., also with the aim to foster and aggregate an alive SITAR users community; - a more and more efficient delivering of SITAR public information services, through more solid and easy-to-use web applications, web services, project portal, etc.; - a necessary guarantee of allocation of MiBACT-SSBAR own annual financial funds to the SITAR Project, in order to implement a unique and not fragmented project framework for a progressive release of functional components and rationalising of collaborative activity areas; - finally, the activation and ongoing enrichment of the new SITAR web platform dedicated to the Public Archaeology of Rome. The latter achievement represents the real access door to both informational and cultural heritage that MiBACT-SSBAR preserves and exploits for the benefit of many different user groups and various uses, from scientific, professional and planning instances for affordable open data banks, up to citizens’ needs of cultural information and more awareness about their native or immigration territories and daily “personalized landscapes”.

 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
The SITAR Project is an innovative program and an original initiative characterized by some relevant topics, such as: - MiBACT-SSBAR, as a territorial institution typically in charge of the safeguard and exploitation of archaeological heritage, has expanded its cultural mission dealing with the great organizational and social challenge of engaging its publics in new participatory processes of creation and sharing of archaeological data, information and knowledge; - the focus has been put on potentialities of web, collaborative environments and different approaches to creation of specialistic and educational packages of knowledge, in search of better solutions to involve users and overcome digital divide in terms of their skill, competences, access to and availability of data, also thanks to the Italian National Research and Educational Network and with the support of its federated and user-oriented services; - the growing multiple connections between SITAR users guarantee for a more permeating web platform, thanks to: - orientation toward web 2.0/3.0, - ongoing integration between SITAR web platform, social media and e-infrastructures for Research and Cultural Heritage, - access and responsible uses of knowledge especially in form of open data and open access resources, - continuous updating and sharing of methodological, technological and applicative approaches.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
At the end of 2007, MiBACT-SSBAR developed the first SITAR Project action plan oriented to both implementation aspects and permanent funding schema, as following: - end of 2007: - designation of the scientific committee and scientific-technical workgroup; - availability check of the funding schema; - 2008: - first allocation of MiBACT-SSBAR internal annual funds; - survey on public projects, systems and web-platforms to analyse the scenario of good practices; - analysis and description of users’ needs and current work-flows; - description of SITAR ontological model underlaying the system logic architecture; - design and implementation of the core geo-database SITAR, with the all related users requirements and technical specifications; - implementation and testing of new acquiring, treatment, digitization and archiving of material and digital documents, heterogeneous raw data, public mapbases, etc.; - prototypes of webGIS and webDatabase developed around geo-database, archiving procedures and necessary functionalities; - establishment of the SITAR Service at MiBACT-SSBAR; - aggregation of the data-entry équipe; - SITAR Data Lab establishment and hardware/software early equipments; - 2009: - confirmation of annual funds allocation; - testing phase of data bank and web applications; - improvement of SITAR digital repository; - installation of back-up and data recovery systems; - technological improvement of webGIS; - 2010: - allocation of internal annual funds, with an integration una-tantum with other funds supplied by MiBACT; - improvement of dedicated digital infrastructure; - enhancement of SITAR Data Lab; - advanced testing phase of web platform, digitizing procedures and user interfaces; - first web publication of the “Archaeological Safeguard Map of Rome”; - cooperation with University of Siena, Italy, for design and implementation of a specific conceptual/data model dedicated to the archaeological architectures seismic risk assessment; - First Conference on SITAR at Rome, to disseminate the early outcomes and share them with the institutional, research and academic communities; - 2011: - allocation of annual internal funds; - last phase of cooperation with University of Siena, Italy; - fine-tuning of SITAR conceptual and data model in order to receive the “seismic risk of archaeological architectures” model requirements and optimize the functionalities of SITAR data bank; - integration of the archaeological sites and monuments logic class, for their unambiguous identification, mapping and description; - mapping activities to official MiBACT description paradigma issued by ICCD, the Italian Central Insititute for Catalogue and Documentation; - improvement of digital object management, archiving and metadata description, and bibliographic references; - early reflections on data accessibility and publication modes with respect to intellectual rights, open data, personal data vs. public domain information, knowledge sharing, etc.; - integration in web applications of a group/users policy and a specific single-record-level access policy to better manage roles and permissions, data availability and use/re-use; - new cooperation with MiBACT central administration and committees; local government bodies; Consortium GARR and National Research and Education Network; CNR, the Italian National Research Council; ENEA, the Italian government Agency for Development and Renewable Energies; Italian Universities; University of Groeningen, the Netherlands; Istituto de Arqueologia de Merida, Spain; Municipality of Wien, Austria; Indianapolis Museum of Arts, USA; Autodesk Italia; ESRI Italia; - Second Conference on SITAR; - 2012: - annual allocation of internal funds; - more advanced testing phase of the platform; - organization/participation in national/international conferences to disseminate SITAR Project outcomes; - 2013/ongoing: - 2013, 2014, 2015 annual allocations of internal funds; - improvement of all SITAR web applications, especially web data editing, mapping, pubblication functionalities; - 2013 setup of new network connections based on the mentioned NREN “GARR-X”; - 2013 Third Conference on SITAR; - 2013/2014 participations in national/international meetings; - 2015 organization of the Fourth Conference on SITAR.

 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
In SITAR development process there are four primary activity areas, with relative stakeholders and execution implications: - design/implementation of web platform: the theoretical and practical design/implementation phases have requested some different expertises to scientific committee members (senior archaeologists managers, officers and researchers affiliated to MiBACT, research and academic institutions) which have worked jointly with the technical workgroup of analysts, informatics engineers and programmers, to translate the theoretical and methodological framework elaborated into SITAR conceptual and data model, core geo-database and web applications; moreover, in terms of public datasets and mapbases collection, the MiBACT-SSBAR cooperation agreements with local government bodies have been fundamental; - design, coding and testing of data processing procedures: under the coordination of steering commitee, these activities have been carried out by the technical workgroup and the data-entry équipe, especially within the SITAR Data Lab; moreover, during the experimentation long period internal and external users were requested to contribute in highlighting the necessary improvements, to speed up feed-backs collection and system optimization, tracing an approach that in next times will be extended to all other users; - identification and implementation of data access, publication and sharing policies: for these crucial purposes, it has been necessary to involve members of MiBACT central administration and institutes, scientific and juridical professionals, committees of dedicated conferences, etc., to activate a new reasoning process about themes of data publication, sharing and use/re-use licenses, intellectual rights, open and linked data, open science, etc.; despite a debate still very alive, the need of clearer policies is strongly highlighted by recent amendments also in the Italian juridical and cultural framework, and it requests for the engagement of the all the stakeholders; - continuous enhancement of the SITAR web platform modules: all the SITAR users have been and will be actively involved in this everlasting development process.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
In economic terms, the first seven-years development period of the SITAR Project may be recapped as following: - total percentage for internal personnel costs 20% - total percentage for all other human resources (design and implementation, data-entry): 62% - total percentage for technical resources (web platform, applications, network connections): 34% - total percentage for dissemination activities (annual Conferences on SITAR): 3% - Total amount of project deployed funds: €1.600.000 As featured in the previous paragraphs, the SITAR Project has been self-funded for the most part by MiBACT-SSBAR with its own ordinary annual financial resources, and for the remain with other funds supplied by MiBACT within the 2010 financial annual exercise; the respective funding percentages are the following: - MiBACT-SSBAR annual internal funds: 82% - other MiBACT funds: 18%

 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
The SITAR Project has allowed to perform the following primary outputs: - SITAR web platform: as a collaborative environment for sharing between many users data, informations, digital objects and knowledge about archaeological heritage of Rome, like a typical public cadastre, the web platform represents a fundamental milestone with regard to purposes of data systematization, availability and mapping; through the SITAR web platform users can now access, find, responsibly use and contribute to edit thousands of field reports, documents, cartographic and iconographic items, etc., to be continuously optimized as easily available metadata, digital objects and web maps; - SITAR procedures and standards: overcoming the initial slow and weak integration of ICT, technologies and updated methodologies in office workflows, new SITAR standardized and constantly updated procedures are strongly improving productivity of MiBACT-SSBAR users in data/documents archiving, preparing, analysing, sharing and dissemination; this procedural approach also allows to progressively reduce the gap between the rapid increase of material archives and the formation of new digital archives and libraries, just now started at MiBACT-SSBAR, for an effective ubiquitous availability of data and information; - MiBACT-SSBAR network connections pool: thanks to the cooperation with the Consortium GARR, it has been possible to link each other different offices and services of MiBACT-SSBAR, and connect them with other many users of GARR-X NREN; indeed, the release in 2013 of the early network connections based on high velocity and capacity optical fibres circuits, has finally allowed MiBACT-SSBAR to overcome the initial issues of available band-width and resulting capacity to deliver really affordable and resilient informational services; furthermore, the integration with GARR-X NREN communities also allows to reduce the digital divide between SITAR community users in terms of their skill, competences, real access to and availability of data, also thanks to some specific federated and user-oriented services supplied by GARR; - the SITAR annual Conference: some issues related to the interaction forms between the MiBACT-SSBAR and its publics, have been addressed also by means of organization of the annual Conference on SITAR, since 2010 held at the National Archaeological Museum of Rome; this annual cultural event has rapidly become an important meeting for the archaeological sector, particularly with regard to some specific topics and themes, such as GIS applications for Cultural Heritage, preventive archaeology, territorial and landscape planning, data standardization, open source solutions, open data, open science, exploitation of cultural sites, publics involvement and engagement, etc.

 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
In order to continuously assess the evolution degree of the entire SITAR Project, MiBACT-SSBAR has carried out the following activities: - steering committee periodic evaluations of the correct translation of elaborated theoretical and methodological framework into SITAR conceptual and data model, applications, procedures and more generally into the public web platform; - periodic reports of design and implementation technical workgroup on enhancements and SITAR web modules improvements; - monthly and weekly internal briefings for work-in-progress checks of implementation and definition of gradual releases of web tools and functionalities, and their degree of real integration; - work meetings with researchers, academics and technical experts on SITAR development issues and items; - continuous testing activities on different functional elements of the SITAR web platform; - engagement and participation of a first internal/external test-users group in order to optimize the feed-back collection time; - periodic newsletters sent to all internal scientific and technical personnel, and test-users to disseminate new achievements, reflections, ideas to be developed, etc., and collect feed-backs and important suggestions; - annual Conferences on SITAR, as fundamental opportunities to meet other MiBACT institutes, public administrations, cultural heritage managers, researchers, academics, professionals, citizens and other stakeholders, and to share and evaluate in a wider and more effective way the SITAR projectual path, its early results and gradually the primary outcomes; - participation to national and international conferences and meetings, as well as to the above mentioned european projects workgroups, in order to disseminate and compare theoretics, methodologies, technological approaches and practices; - publication of SITAR Conferences Proceedings, papers, reports, etc., especially in on-line journals and social research platforms, such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, and others; - setup of an early version of SITAR Knowledge Base to store and disseminate contents, conceptual, theoretical and procedural documents and on line resources, distributed and shared also through Google Documents both in collaborative editing and web published versions; - upkeeping of social web pages dedicated to SITAR Project on FaceBook; - technical workshops and focus meetings dedicated especially to external professionals such as archaeologists, engineers, architects, other technicians and expert, and other stakeholders, to explain, share, disseminate and collect feed-backs on specific web applications, functions, procedures, etc.

 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
Because of the lack of official policies and practices for webGIS platforms design and implementation, and of practical references for the creation and development of SITAR system, some critical problems had to be addressed with respect to effective availability of: - dedicated funding schemas, both internal and external to MiBACT-SSBAR; - institutional agreements oriented to share efforts and costs of implementation between more primary actors; - dialogue skills between different domains and expertises involved, also with respect to internal/external scientific, technical and administrative personnel, their organizational routines and personal competences; - technical and scientific expertises for specialistic software programming and data-entry activities; - public territorial digital datasets and mapbases necessary to implement the SITAR cartographic repository; - resilient and high velocity network connections for users and system servers. With regard to all of these questions, the joint work of steering committee, technical workgroup, data-entry équipe and many volunteers users has allowed to achieve some fundamental results, such as: - annual allocations of funds that have sustained this first seven-years period of development; - signature of general agreements with public actors and other stakeholders that have fostered new shared feasibility analysis and project proposals for national and European funding opportunities; - improvement of cross-domain competences of SITAR workgroup that have allowed a more fluid dialogue between its members, as well as between them and other internal/external MiBACT-SSBAR personnels and users; - dynamic aggregation of technical and data-entry équipes that has guaranteed continuous updating of employed technologies, development and data production quality standards, and, moreover, equity in participation processes and job opportunities; - signature of specific institutional agreements that have reduced economic impacts for public dataset and mapbases collection; - setup of a pool of resilient and high capacity network connections that have improved interactions between MiBACT-SSBAR offices, services and internal/external users.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
The following key benefits, strictly interrelated each other, derived from SITAR Project implementation: - ongoing digitalization process of MiBACT-SSBAR archives, towards digital libraries: this laborious, but necessary internal process has taken advantage of workflows rationalising and integration of digitalization technologies and ICT; furthermore, newly activated socializing processes are strongly improving SITAR web platform efficiency on behalf of a wider users participation in data systematization and knowledge creation; the impact of these actions may be evaluated through the increasing of the SITAR digital repository, with an estimated progression, for each new added 100 users pool, of about 2 TeraBytes/year, meaning that a daily increasing amount of data and archaeological knowledge is available for SITAR users and their personalized purposes; - centralized/distributed policy for MiBACT-SSBAR data bank ubiquitous access and long term preservation: specific needs related to SITAR core geo-database and web applications structured around it, along with a distributed approach for repository access and preservation, have oriented technical developments to centralise information entry and archiving and deploy different SITAR repository clone-nodes to better manage its long term preservation; beside technical and juridical advantages, this approach has also permitted to activate new modes to deliver data and knowledge packages on behalf of users, overcoming hard copies of single records and files or entire datasets, also by means of newly started SITAR web mapping services compliant with the international Open Geospatial Consortium; - design and development of an early Public Archaeology Knowledge System paradigma: implementation of SITAR Project and its framework may now concretely contribute to definition of new national cultural strategies, regulatory updating and institutional policies and programs development, and expertises on public archaeology knowledge systems; moreover, SITAR implementation schema may foster new institutional interactions and cross-domain integration efforts between public administration and different stakeholders, also by encouraging stronger and more responsible uses of open standards, open data and ICT also in the archaeological sector; in this sense, another important achievement is also represented by SITAR Project participation to shared reasoning processes about privacy, data security, dissemination, sharing and use/re-use, as well as about technical and semantic interoperability between public systems and services; moreover, some important results are particularly expected for territorial planning shared policies and actions, as well as for cultural tourism sector that may take advantage of new open datasets improved availability; - improvement of MiBACT-SSBAR organizational framework as a transferable paradigma for other public administrations: the re-organization of workflows and procedural routines is progressively transforming institutional activities and time response to the public for different instances; particularly, this approach tends to promote an organizational culture oriented to fluid collaboration between internal and external personnel on the professional and human levels, and between MiBACT-SSBAR and other public bodies on the institutional level; continuous search for new policies, implementation methodologies and approaches to promote innovation and more efficient performance of public sector, may stimulate new institutional evolution at the national level, not only for single institutions; also the participatory processes newly activated with SITAR Project implementation, may improve the organizational framework in the perspective of a more efficient and resilient paradigma easily transferable in other similar institutional and territorial contexts; the impact of these actions may be evaluated already now, observing the early results of cooperation between MiBACT-SSBAR and other institutes of same Italian Ministry, and will be better measured in next times on the base of real outcomes of these interactions; - virtuous consequences on users competences, professional profiles qualification and job opportunities: another important benefit of the SITAR Project development is represented by the improvement of skills, competences and consequent users professional profiles re-qualification, implied in new workflows, routines, procedures and in the use of the web platform; this enhancement of human resources capacities appears probably as the most important consequence of the entire process of implementation, with regard to the added values also in terms of professional and job opportunities, as well as of a deeper personal awareness of the knowledge, in a wider sense; the impact of this consequences may and will be evaluated by observing and analysing the evolution paths of new necessary competences and job opportunities concretely created during SITAR implementation process, furtermore being the latter aspect a key feature of current national economic trends.

 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
The ongoing SITAR implementation proves to be well sustainable as following: - financially: next annual allocations of MiBACT-SSBAR funds will guarantee a basic resources availability in order to enhance the SITAR web platform potential, operational web modules, data access and use policies on behalf of users; beside these resources, continuous developments of SITAR Project and ongoing cooperations with other public administrations, allow to define and submit new project proposals within national and European funding schemas, especially for Horizon 2020 framework; - economically: the expected rapid growth of SITAR users’ community and the elements above highlighted in terms of virtuous consequences on users competences and professional profiles qualification, will guarantee an increasing interest in use and exploitation of the SITAR data bank, applications and web services also for economic activities in the sector of professional archaeology, urban planning and development, and, not least, rapidly evolving cultural and creative industries; - institutionally: MiBACT-SSBAR progressive re-organization of institutional mission and policies will foster and support new institutional interactions in terms of new agreements for sharing and sustain development efforts/costs, public dataset, new expertises consolidation, cross-domain dialogue and professional re-qualification, etc.; - culturally: the SITAR Project implementation appears sustainable in cultural terms for two primary reasons: the first one is strictly related to the fundamental initiative of MiBACT-SSBAR to connect itself to wide research and academic communities, both national and international, in order to be better integrated within actual scientific, technological and societal challenges; the second reason is represented by fostering and enhancement of participatory processes for knowledge creation, sharing and dissemination; both these primary items will guarantee a wide interest of users and stakeholders for next SITAR evolution in terms of cultural permeation and self-population of the web platform; - socially: besides the reduction of users digital competences gaps for more balanced professional and human interactions, the initiative will also consider and integrate new development lines oriented to a greater engagement of heterogeneous publics, such as young researchers, students, citizens, tourists, volunteers, young people as well as elders, etc., in order to activate new modes of crowdsourced data and knowledge creation; this aspect will be fundamental for updating both SITAR Project theoretical/methodological vision and advanced technological integration with social and collaborative platforms; - at regulatory level, the efforts made along with SITAR development to contribute to definition of an updated juridical framework, will allow MiBACT-SSBAR to join workgroups dedicated to privacy, data safeguard, sharing, use/re-use, openness themes; Furthermore, SITAR Project implementation schema is easily transferable in other Italian/European institutional contexts, as already demonstrated by the “Archaeological Territorial Information System of Verona - SITAVR” (Italy), a new project for an archaeological web platform directly based on the SITAR schema and carried out since 2012 by Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of the Veneto and University of Verona, also thanks to a cooperation agreement with MiBACT-SSBAR. Moreover, the affiliation of MiBACT-SSBAR to some European workgroups, such as the mentioned ones of ARIADNE and DCH-RP projects, represents other good opportunities of dissemination, sharing and potential transferability.

 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
The observation of the first seven-years period of SITAR Project implementation offers the image a complex experience frame, that may be sintetically summed up as following: - the comparison between outcomes and still open issues suggests a very positive appraisal of efforts and resources deployed by MiBACT-SSBAR for the initiative; the clear evolution of the Institute in terms of organizational improvement and innovation in daily workflows and procedures, as well as of human resources cooperation and professional profiles qualification, accounts for a realistic prevision of an esponential growth of the SITAR web platform and its users community; - moreover, it can be pointed out the importance for MiBACT-SSBAR and similar cultural institutions to innovate their visions and internal orders, and to deal with new cultural and societal challenges, first of all the public engagment and participation also in digitalizing, creating and recombining data and knowledge, both scientific and educational; as well as the constant and fluid dialogue between public institutions on behalf of virtuous forms of cooperation in the Cultural Heritage field; with regard to this evaluation, it can be recommended to properly improve processes, collaborative approaches and applicative tools in order to foster a deeper awareness in users of their crucial roles for evolution of this kind of knowledge multi-representation and exploitation socializing platforms; at the same time, it may be stressed the necessity of develop new feasibility analysis and project proposals for national and European funding opportunities, in strict cooperation with all the other public actors and stakeholders already or potentially interested; - the balance between human and technological resources deployed for the material implementation of the applicative system, highlights that the importance of the first ones can’t be neither denied or underestimated, on behalf of entire project success; due to this even general consideration, the human workgroup (managers, designers, professionals, users both advanced and neophytes) is the real core of a cultural initiative such as SITAR Project; particularly, it can be recommended to support dynamism and constant cross-domain orientation of workgroups involved in the initiative, as well as of the users community; - the analysis of technical orientations and their progressive change or mainly updating, through different initial references up to the actual SITAR paradigm, can offer another fundamental lesson about the need of mental agility in managing technological options, dealing with temporary ambiguity and identifying better requested competences for implementation processes, above all in order to avoid useless technology-driven approaches and instead to activate new virtuous knowledge-driven paths; in other words, the more useful suggestion in this case is that personal and collective “curiosity” for knowledge should be never limited by current technological limits, anyways it will be just a question of time-waiting for next better solutions and temporary issues solution.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry for Cultural Heritage - Special Superintendence for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome
Institution Type:   Government Department  
Contact Person:   Mirella Serlorenzi
Title:   Dottoressa  
Telephone/ Fax:   +390648020230; +390648020231 / fax +39064880445
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   mirella.serlorenzi@beniculturali.it  
Address:   Piazza dei Cinquecento, 67
Postal Code:   00185
City:   Rome
State/Province:   Lazio
Country:  

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