The country will implement cultural information system

Panama will have an important public policy technological tool under the General Cultural Act (2020), which will integrate information about different cultural terms, goods and services, cultural heritage and folklore, person and activity registers, management systems, cultural and creative industries, statistics and other information about the impact of culture on the Panamanian economy and society, to be referred to as SiCulture.

The National Cultural Information System (Seticulture) is a public access web portal of the Ministry of Culture (MiCultura) that promotes a better knowledge of the cultural reality of the country through a directory and a map of cultural resources and a repository of downloadable statistics and documents and will be available to public with respect to the standards of transparency and access to information currently in place.

On this platform, Minister of Culture Giselle González Villarrué emphasized that for the first time we have "a tool that allows us to quantify the movement we have in our cultural ecosystem" that will make it easier for professionals from different branches to get information about our "monuments, festivals, heritage and traditions."

The Culture incumbent expressed his appreciation for the support of the City of Knowledge Foundation with technical advice and training that will allow the complete transfer of the platform to MiCultura in about a year.

Meanwhile, the president of the Board of Trustees of the City of Knowledge Foundation, Juan David Morgan emphasized the efforts that have been made since 2019 to achieve this tool and added that to aim to be a first world country, first we have to give priority to the development of culture.

The new cultural instrument that began to be designed since May 2021, includes financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) and technical assistance from the City of Knowledge Foundation for its design and development and will be divided into several phases.

SiCultura invites the cultural agents of the country to register with this web portal, creating and sharing an information sheet about their activities, the cultural events that are organized in a stable and regular manner as well as cultural spaces with the aim of promoting and making more accessible to the public the cultural resources of the country.

Similarly, this system, to extend its scope, will cover five categories: cultural events of different provinces and communities, official programs of a permanent character, spaces, agents and cultural events.