HLF Responsibilities and Their Limits
6.1 Where ICT is concerned, the HLF’s primary responsibility is to support the use of technology as an enabling force for the conservation, preservation, and better public understanding of heritage assets.
6.2 IT is under rapid and continuous development through basic and applied academic and commercial research. It involves the invention and development of the necessary instruments and devices (‘hardware’) as well as the programs both to make the data technically amenable to utilisation and, thereafter, to control and use it (‘software’). Such work, being ‘research’, would be excluded from consideration by HLF under the terms of the three governing Acts.
Recommendation
2. The HLF should not fund ICT research and development.
6.3 The HLF should not become involved in the development of infrastructure necessary for dissemination and public access to digital resources. In the 1970s and 1980s networks were in a ‘proof of concept’ stage, which meant public investment was essential. By the 1990s the opportunities were demonstrated and the commercialisation of networks has begun. Network infrastructure is expanding at a dramatic speed and it is penetrating homes, and a wide range of institutions, at lower per unit costs with each new installation. There is, therefore, a general presumption against support by the HLF of infrastructure development. This would not necessarily preclude support either for particular components within a proposed infrastructure, or for the development of limited, possibly local, infrastructure projects, e.g. county or regional. One important issue is the development of infrastructural arrangements which can act as a channel for many different kinds of information which may have been developed independently. Such developments are likely to be appropriate to a far wider range of subjects and areas than those associated with heritage elements—for instance, general educational channels. Major infrastructural development is more appropriate to county, regional or national requirements and, if only because of the cost and inevitable broad administrative arrangements, it would not seem to be appropriate for HLF to fund them. However, it is important that HLF funding supports projects that take notice of, and comply with, major infrastructural developments, and promotes their use.
Recommendation
3. The HLF should not normally fund distribution and access infrastructure (e.g. networks to interconnect institutions).