While technology touches all of our personal lives, it is also transforming business models. Museums and other cultural institutions often shoulder a great burden when the technological landscape changes and often with limited resources they struggle to adapt. SJMA recognizes that our organization requires adequate financial and personnel resources to implement new technologies in service of our mission.
SJMA looks forward to continuing to making it easy for individual and corporate donors to financially support the museum. By utilizing modern digital tools, SJMA can boost the power of individual giving and encourage more philanthropic activity toward the museum.
The museum commits to deploying technology to help increase earned income across SJMA. By integrating business verticals such as admissions, café, retail and events, museum leadership can rely on data to make informed, real-time business decisions.
Being that the direct use of digital programs do not pay for their development and operations costs, sponsorship, grant funding, and other support will be necessary to deliver digital content. In concert with the museum’s existing business model, we seek to leverage digital technologies to improve our financial bottom line and to secure funds that ensure the flexibility required to move at the pace of technology.
Technology cycles do not align with funding cycles which means that museums are often without the necessary funds or skill-sets to execute a digital project before technology has moved on. SJMA must work systematically to evolve from a digital project-based funding model to a digital operating-based funding model, allowing staff to fluidly engage with digital initiatives, in addition to making rapid prototyping, iteration, and user testing key elements of the museum’s digital activities.
Providing digital experiences on par with the quality of our current in-gallery programming requires that SJMA invest in foundations that last (e.g infrastructure and capability) while staying agile/flexible in those areas that frequently change (e.g devices & interfaces).This strategy also applies to internal workflow management, collections management, and communications processes within the museum as they relate to digital tools.
Failing to plan ahead for technical needs leads to technical debt which saddles the museum and its staff with a significant burden on their workflows and makes technical updates more expensive in the long-term. Budgeting for technology infrastructure should be considered every fiscal year in relation to any employee workstations, servers in use, machinery, software, databases or any other systems that are mission critical for SJMA.
An IT budget should take into account the following aspects:
The following are projects initiated or deployed between 2015 and 2019 that exemplify the Financial Solvency strategy outlined above:
The following are anticipated projects that are on-going or will be deployed between 2020-2021 that exemplify the Experiences and Engagement strategy outlined above:
The following future projects exemplify the Experiences and Engagement strategy outlined above and will be pursued after 2021:
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