Case M17: Ministry of Culture & Heritage – A Digital Archive Isn’t an Enterprise Architecture 💲

Artifacts Were Preserved. But Cultural Governance Was Never Designed.

Part of the “One Government, One Anatomy” Review

This case is one of 19 ministries analyzed under ICMG’s structural diagnostic of Middle Eastern governments.

From Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture (with its Cultural Heritage Commission), to the UAE’s Ministry of Culture & Youth, Oman’s Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, Bahrain’s Authority for Culture and Antiquities, and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities under the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities — digital tools have transformed preservation, storytelling, and access.

But across all departments, one structural flaw repeated:

Collections were digitized. But cultural governance was never architected.

Claimed EA Success

These ministries and commissions presented their digital transformation milestones as evidence of EA maturity:

• Digital heritage repositories and online archives

• Museum collection management systems (CMS)

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