An online focus group hosting representatives of ECHOES networks and umbrella organisation was held on the 8th April 11:00-13:00 CET.

Online Focus Group for Network and Umbrella Organisations

It gathered participants from the following networks/umbrella organisations:

  • APEF – Archives Portal Foundation (archiving and digital curation),
  • ARIADNE (archaeology RI),
  • ECCO European C (conservators and restorers)
  • ICOM International -AVICOM, (International Committee for Audiovisual, New Technologies and Social Media)
  • ICOM Portugal (museums),
  • Michael Culture Association (digital cultural heritage),
  • NEMO (Working Group on Digital Transformation (museums)).

All participants had been invited due to their involvement in the digital transformation actions and strategies within their organisation. They were informed in advance of the questions to be discussed during the session.

After a short presentation on the Cultural Heritage Cloud and the Consultation survey by Rémi Petitcol and Charlotte Gallini, and an introduction to the Cloud’s architecture by Joanna Kowalska, the floor was opened to discussions and exchanges and a structured dialogue was conducted around three main questions:

  1. The Cloud intends to be a pan-European collaborative digital platform integrating existing efforts and resources. What would lead you to work in the Cloud besides/instead of working in the established digital platforms you already use?
  2. Considering the Cloud allows you to access the work of many colleagues across different fields, do you think this would be of interest to you and benefit your work? What would be the minimum necessary conditions for this to happen?
  3. Considering the current institutional and professional context within which you operate, do you envisage barriers and constraints in the use of the Cloud?

These lead the way for the group to address their concerns about the Cloud and its functioning, what features should it have to be used by cultural heritage professionals and researchers and suggest some recommendations to the Cloud developers which are summarised as follows.

Concerns

  • Interoperability and data standardisation challenge. There are already multiple national systems and aggregators (e.g., Europeana) and large volumes of non-interoperable metadata. The risk is that the Cloud becomes another layer of complexity instead of a solution.
  • Data overload vs. actual usefulness and usability. Concern that the Cloud may add more data, where there are already huge amounts of data, without improving usability and require significant resources to analyse data. To whom is this data useful, and who can afford to analyse such huge amounts of data?
  • Trust, quality, and validation of data. Open questions: Who validates data? Who controls quality? How to ensure trust?
  • Long-term storage and permanence. Institutions need guarantees on data longevity, no loss of data, nor obsolescence of systems and data. This is a critical requirement for adoption.
  • Financial sustainability. Major concerns are the cost of storage, the cost of maintaining/updating tools and how this would impact small institutions. Need for sustainable funding to guarantee adoption.
  • Technical barriers and digital capacity. Issues include: low digital literacy, lack of technical support, and resistance from leadership. Adoption depends heavily on organisational readiness.
  • Risks of inequality and inclusiveness. Risk of reinforcing existing inequalities. Concern about: imbalances between countries (North/South, East/West), larger vs. smaller institutions, digitally advanced vs. less advanced actors.
  • Governance and community bias. Collaborative models may favour already active/visible actors and exclude less represented groups. Active mediation and inclusive governance are required.
  • Performance and efficiency concerns: speed of access to data, efficiency compared to existing platforms. If slower or more complex, users won’t switch.
  • Economic and environmental sustainability. Concerns about: energy consumption, environmental impact, and long-term economic viability, which are increasingly relevant for large-scale infrastructures.
  • Misalignment with real research practices. Research often happens within project-based, pre-defined partnerships, ad-hoc, single-professional-driven scenarios may not reflect actual workflows.  This engenders the risk of limited real-world adoption.

Envisaged benefits if….

  • The Cloud is not just a database, but a collaborative working environment where professionals can meet, interact, and co-produce knowledge. This is a major added value compared to existing fragmented platforms.
  • The Cloud is an aggregator of data from multiple sources and systems using ontologies and shared standards. This is particularly valuable in a context where data is currently fragmented.
  • The Cloud offers access to interdisciplinary knowledge and resources, which can significantly enhance research quality and innovation, with no inequalities across territories, professional groups or institutional dimensions.
  • The Cloud offers tools for data quality, analysis, efficient and user-friendly visualisation, which responds to a key need: not more data, but better use of existing data in a long-term perspective.
  • The Cloud offers a trustworthy, secure system which also complies with principles of environmental sustainability and economic viability, even to smaller institutions.

In short, the Cloud is perceived as:

  • Highly promising as a collaborative, integrative, and enabling infrastructure
  • But highly demanding in terms of trust, standards, environmental and economic sustainability, constant funds and human capacity, and equalitarian governance.
  • It shouldn’t be like a new platform to adopt, but more like an invisible layer that makes existing work easier, safer, and more powerful.

Recommendations for the Cloud developers

  1. Make the Cloud clearly better than existing platforms

Recommendation: Deliver immediate, visible added value, Focus on “use of data” rather than “more data”.

  1. Solve interoperability by design, not as an afterthought

Recommendation: Invest heavily in standards alignment and translation layers. Provide automated metadata mapping tools. Ensure compatibility with existing national systems and aggregators (e.g. Europeana-like structures).

  1. Build trust through robust data governance and quality assurance

Recommendation: Combine user control with transparent validation mechanisms. Clarify who is responsible for data quality and what “trusted data” means in the Cloud. Trust is a precondition for use, especially for institutional stakeholders.

  1. Guarantee long-term reliability and persistence

Recommendation: Provide strong assurances on data storage and continuity. Define minimum guaranteed storage periods and backup strategies. Communicate clearly what happens to data if funding or governance changes: even a single data loss incident could undermine adoption.

  1. Ensure financial sustainability and fairness

Recommendation: Develop an inclusive and transparent economic model, guaranteeing affordability and public funding, especially for core services.

  1. Invest in usability, not just functionality

Recommendation: Adopt a user-centred design approach, Co-design with researchers and heritage professionals: Prioritise: simple interfaces, fast performance, low entry barriers,

  1. Provide strong technical support and capacity building

Recommendation: Make technical support a core service, offering hands-on onboarding support, training tailored to different digital literacy levels, and continuous helpdesk services. Provide practical guides, tutorials, and real use cases.

  1. Foster an inclusive and balanced community

Recommendation: Design governance and participation to counter inequalities, since the Cloud may reproduce existing structural inequalities. Implement mechanisms to include underrepresented regions and institutions. Monitor participation, biases and gaps.

  1. Align with real research and institutional workflows

Recommendation: Integrate the Cloud into existing practices. The Cloud should fit into how people already work, not require radical behavioural change. Support project-based research workflows. Enable private workspaces alongside shared environments.

  1. Address sustainability holistically (technical, economic, environmental)

Recommendation: Plan for long-term viability from the start, considering energy-efficient infrastructures and avoiding rapid obsolescence.

  1. Demonstrate value through concrete use cases

Recommendation: Showcase real-world impact early, providing detailed success stories and sector-specific use cases.

The key takeaway for developers is that the Cloud will succeed not because it exists, but because it integrates seamlessly into existing ecosystems, reduces complexity instead of adding to it, and builds trust, usability, and sustainability from day one.