Is a Digital Strategy the answer to all your digital problems?

[UPDATED] A list of digital strategies can be found below.

In the first day of our Digital Strategy class, we were asked by the professor, if museums should have a digital strategy. It’s a tricky question that left half the class saying yes and half saying no. And in reality, and like everything in the museum sector, what works for one museum may not be the answer for another.

In the past ten years, museums have undergone a “digital transformation.” Museums began focusing on digital across two areas: physical in-gallery, and the online through social media, web, and mobile. In order to implement and undergo a digital transformation within the organization, museums began creating separate digital strategies, which helped address specific digital needs and concerns.

What is a Digital Strategy?

A digital strategy is a document that lays out an organization’s digital vision, its objective and in some cases include action items. Museums including the Science Museum Group, the Tate, SFMoMA, The STÄDEL Museum have created such Digital Strategies, and when you look at these strategies, you will notice they are not necessarily the same.

Digital museum strategies differ depending on the museum’s culture, its existing digital framework, its vision and its size. For example, a small local museum that has 100 objects and a handful of staff members may not need a digital strategy or need to create a strategy to digitalize objects while a larger museum with hundreds of thousands of objects may need to create a strategy to digitalize their collection and publish it.

It is hard to discern if a museum needs a digital strategy, it is really depended on each museum. In the best world, museums would not need a digital strategy since the institution and its employees are digitally conscious and can engage with visitors and users through digital means. But that’s not always the case and that’s why many institutions seek to create a digital strategy that is utilizing 21st century technology. Older and larger museums tend to be the most in need to create a separate digital strategy to get over the initial hump of transforming to digital.

Digital is not only the flashy technology you see in the gallery or the website, its pervasive and affects all departments, which is why many have argued against creating a separate digital strategy. Since, at the heart of it, it is about transforming the museum culture and thus should be part of the museum overall strategy.

Museum project management has tended to follow a waterfall method in the past: you do one exhibition, you finish it, and then you do another. You build a whole page for that exhibition online and you never really update it once the exhibition is over. But digitally, creating websites, apps and content follows a more agile method of development, you constantly need to update and maintain content and platforms. Digital strategies that have long timelines and follow a waterfall method of A. then B. then C. Publish are most likely going to fail because the old system of doing things no longer works, and by the time content is published it could be outdated. For example, if the digital strategy included creating games that were developed using Adobe Flash in late 2016 by the time the website launched in 2020, Flash will be dead. Thus, the argument is it’s important for museums to undergo a cultural transformation, which includes being more agile, in order to be sustainable, flexible and ahead of the curve. There is a new pace that the museum needs to keep up with -creating audio guides and not updating it for ten years does not work. The rate of new technologies and platforms are not going to slow down, so museums need to keep up and continuously adapt to the landscape.

Strategies should be created and revised every few years. They are meant to outline the museum’s vision of where it sees itself in a few years’ time and if being digitally conscious is part of that then why create a separate strategy? By creating a different strategy, the museum strategy and the digital strategy are more likely to misalign. Moreover, for departments trying to reach the strategic goals, they will prioritize one strategy over the other rather than see it as part of a holistic objective for the museum to be digitally conscious.

Digital strategies are also very digitally focused, it’s in the title, but creating a separation between digital may not achieve the same impact and continue to perpetuate a problematic culture of digital is not the responsibility of everyone but rather that of the Digital Department. Digital includes many things, and at the end of the day, they are tools serving the museum’s overall aims. They sometimes are the solution, and sometimes they are not. Museum employees need to understand these tools and when to implement them. For example, if the museum’s objective is to attract a diverse number of visitors and have a more equitable representation of visitors in the physical museum, digital may or may not be the answer to attract a larger audience. Moreover, by integrating digital within the museum culture, museums will be empowering departments to better serve their goals by utilizing digital rather than have digital as an afterthought. For example, instead of creating new content for kids, educators will be thinking throughout the process on how best to achieve the goals of engaging with kids and it may include using digital technologies within the gallery or virtually.

There is no right or wrong on whether or not a museum should have a digital strategy. It depends on too many variables. But it’s essential to ask would the goals be better served as being part of the museum’s overall strategy or in a separate digital strategy? If it’s about a change of culture and project management style then it will be better suited to part of the museum strategy. Also, it’s important to note that strategies only last for so there’s room to experiment.

Want to learn more about digital strategy? Here’s a reading list of essays and blogs on digital strategy that helped me form my opinion and hopefully yours:

• Cogapp, a digital media agency that has worked with museums, has produced a great reading list on strategy: https://www.cogapp.com/digital-strategy-reading-list
• The American Alliance of Museums has a great post discussing the uses of digital strategy written by people in the field with diverging perspectives http://labs.aam-us.org/blog/museums-and-digital-strategy-today/
• Cogapp also a Digital Strategy Canvas to get you started with your strategy: https://www.cogapp.com/digital-strategy-canvas as well as a full digital strategy guide: https://www.cogapp.com/digital-strategy
• Museums & The Web https://mw17.mwconf.org/proposal/strategy-3-0-what-is-digital-strategy-now-2/
• Paper on London’s Imperial War Museum and their digital strategy:https://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2012/papers/navigating_the_bumpy_road_a_tactical_approach_.html
• The New Horizons Report 2015 has a section on developing digital strategies: http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-museum-EN.pdf
• Jack Ludden published an introduction on digital strategies using The Getty as a key case example http://mwa2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/an-introduction-to-digital-strategies-for-museums/
• Interview with the head of digital communications at Van Gogh Museum on how traditional museums go digital? https://theartsplus.com/2017/06/30/insight-traditional-museums-go-digital-today/
• Digital Is More Than A Department, It Is. A Collective Responsibility by the Met’s Current Cheif Digital Officer https://medium.com/@loictallon/digital-is-more-than-a-department-it-is-a-collective-responsibility-786cdf816d12

Examples of Different Types of Digital Strategies:

• The Städel Museum’s Digital Strategy: http://www.staedelmuseum.de/en/stadel-museums-digital-strategy
• Tate 2013- 2015 Digital Strategy: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/19/tate-digital-strategy-2013-15-digital-as-a-dimension-of-everything
• Science Museum Group Digital Strategy: https://group.sciencemuseum.org.uk/policies-and-reports/digital-strategy/
• Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy https://www.si.edu/content/pdf/about/web-new-media-strategy_v1.0.pdf
• National Portrait Gallery Strategy: https://www.npg.org.uk/assets/files/pdf/strategic-plan/NPG_Digital_Strategy_Digest_v4_0.pdf
• The Andy Warhol Museum Digital Strategy: https://github.com/thewarholmuseum/digital-strategy
• Van Gogh’s Strategic Plan: http://jaarverslag2014.vangoghmuseum.nl/sites/all/files/menu/eng_vgm_strategisch_plan.pdf.pdf
• SFMoMa Content Strategy: https://www.sfmoma.org/read/on-digital-content-strategy/ & Digital Strategy: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sfmomamedia/media/press-releases/downloads/SFMOMA_Digital_Engagement_Press_Release_5_2_2016.pdf
• Smithsonian Digitalization Strategy: https://www.si.edu/content/pdf/about/2010_si_digitization_plan.pdf
• National Archives Social Media Strategy: http://usnationalarchives.github.io/social-media-strategy/