Argentine Cultural Information System (SINCA)
The objective of this system is to generate information and provide access to learn the territory's current situation and identify the needs for the development of efficient cultural policies. The data allows us to learn, among other things, the diversity of cultural expressions across the country, and further provides socioeconomic data for each region/province, and the potential and centrality of culture and industries for economic growth and job creation.
The Argentine Cultural Information System is the largest collection of electronic cultural information in the country, and contains objective data from all provinces, which have been verified and are permanently updated. It comprises four areas: the country's cultural map (information broken down by town and socioeconomic data), cultural statistics, culture public management area (budgets and ongoing programmes) and newspaper library on cultural economy. After the implementation of the SINCA, Argentina became the third country in the Latin America to have its own federal cultural information collection system.
Challenges identified in the implementation of this measure: The largest challenge identified is associated to the difficulties some provincial culture agencies have to generate information, define conceptual frameworks and/or methodologies, and use the information to design and implement cultural policies in the province. In the light of this reality, a decision was made to put all our efforts to train provincial agents, which so far has proven to be very successful.
US $150,000.00
The impact has been assessed from different standpoints. From the user's standpoint, on the basis of the quantity and quality of information available and on the basis of comparison with similar programmes in other countries. The impact assessment was positive from all these standpoints.