It recognizes the role of information and communication technologies in the economic and social development of the country. It declares e-commerce as one of the fundamental elements of this policy, which not only contributes to improving the quality of life of the population, but also to the creation of information systems that provide a significant reduction in costs due to the optimization of supply chains, less use of paper, transparency in operations, reduction in citizen mobility, and lower volume of monetary circulation.
The Decree concentrates in the same direction of development the processes that, in an isolated way, were part of the development of several socio-economic sectors in Cuba. In the case of the arts and culture, work had been done to increase the availability and access to Internet of creators and professionals within the sector, through the Cubarte Culture Network, as well as the development of websites and platforms for the socialization of the main cultural goods and services associated with this network.
The system of companies marketing cultural goods in the country has made progress in implementing the operations of the national payment gateway (PASARED), with the development of virtual stores and point-of-sale units, in a first stage dedicated to the international public, which has been extended to the Cuban population living on the island. There is an increase in the use of these e-commerce systems.
Work is being done on the interaction between the institutions of the culture system to achieve the hegemony of their goods and services and of the programming in the main spaces of the Cuban digital environment.
Streaming services and the promotion of cultural goods and services on online platforms and social media, such as YouTube, have increased.
In the field of literature, there is a national policy of producing books in digital format to encourage reading and a commercial gateway has been created for their sale and distribution. The national commercial platform, through the Advanced Telematic Services Technology Company -CITMATEL-, works through an international diffusion agreement with Ediciones Cubanas. The ICL's Cuba Literaria portal is also taking on the production of a large number of national publishers to incorporate literary works in different formats into CITMATEL's platform. (Annex 3).
The largest production of digital books in the country is concentrated in the publishing houses that support the bibliography for the education system: The Editorial Pueblo y Educacion and the Editorial Felix Varela.
The company Caricatos, which belongs to the National Council for the Performing Arts (CNAE), produces audiovisuals every year and has already accumulated around 250 materials, including documentaries and the documentary series, "Mas alla de la escena", "Telon abierto" and "Escena abierta", with the aim of preserving and promoting stage activity from the digitalization of the creation processes, based on the appropriation of new spaces for dissemination and research.
Likewise, the CNAE has worked on the implementation of an electronic system for theatrical ticket sales through an interactive website that can be accessed from abroad and within the country. At present, it is available for the shows that take place in the Cuban National Theater and work is underway to extend this service to the national theater network.
The Cuban Fund for Cultural Assets (FCBC), one of the main trading companies of the works of artistic creation, has proposed to increase by 10% the levels of computerization of the points of sale (Payment Gateway), through which its marketing is promoted. For this purpose, equipment was acquired that has allowed us to support this measurement criterion. The levels of increase were evidenced mainly in those areas where there is an important tourism index, in which the payment gateway charges represent an effective modality to enter international currencies, mainly in the northern keys, in some fundamental airports and those commercial spaces with great influx of foreigners.
In the music manifestation, progress has been made in the development of the streaming modality, through the D'Ritmo app, agreed by the Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales (EGREM) with the Cuban Telecommunications Company ETECSA, which allows listening and downloading the Cuban music catalogs of the record companies Bis Music, Abdala, Colibri and EGREM itself. An all-round digital platform for the promotion and marketing of music is being developed, which will allow diversifying the services, such as the marketing of scores and the sales of tickets to the Casas de la Musica and Cultural Centers.
Information and Communication Technologies have been incorporated into the artistic training programs, in particular at the University of the Arts and its Media Arts Faculty, the Visual Arts Faculty, and in the scenographic design profile of the Theater Arts Faculty.
The development and creation of video games has been strengthened, based on an alliance between ICAIC's Animation Studies and the University of Computer Science (UCI), as a new range of production that covers everything from educational video games to those exclusively dedicated to leisure and entertainment.
A follow-up line was incorporated to the production of digital works known as transmedia, within the industry section in the last two editions of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, including spaces for the exchange of knowledge about these productions.
The registration of audiovisual projects in the Cuban Film Promotion Fund for independent production was done entirely through digital media.
The Ministry of Culture has generated statistics on access to the La Papeleta, an online digital app whose objective is the dissemination and promotion of cultural programming and the Todo de Arte multimedia repository, an online digital concentrator of national artistic content divided into sectors and manifestations, which are provided on a nationwide scale for the process of implementing Decree-Law No. 370.
| Name of partner | Type of entity |
|---|---|
The Computer Center for Culture
| Public Sector
|
The Ministry of Communications
| Public Sector
|
The economic, commercial and financial blockade greatly limits the acquisition of updated and recently produced technological means. It also makes difficult to access specialized world-leading software and the most widely used communication platforms. It penalizes bank transfers using US dollars and its extraterritorial nature restricts the management of companies from third countries and Cuban entities by means of excessive fines.
Under these conditions, the process of computerization of Cuban society, specifically in the cultural field, has developed at a slow pace giving priority to the strategic planning of resources and little margin of error. The results achieved still do not satisfy the needs of the sector, however, significant progress has been made towards the achievement of the proposed objectives.