The project
Industry: Government and public sector
Location: Colombia
The Ministry of Culture is the governing body of Colombia's cultural sector and aims to formulate, coordinate, implement, and oversee government policy on culture. It is an organization that acts in good faith, with ethical integrity, and complies with current regulations for the benefit of the community and its own employees. The Ministry of Culture will promote a creative Colombia that takes responsibility for its heritage, where all citizens can interact and cooperate with opportunities to create and enjoy cultural expressions under conditions of equity and respect for diversity.
About Mapa Cultural
Mapa Cultural is a cross-platform solution that allows the ministry to present information of cultural interest to the community while recording and controlling activities across its different departments.
“Highly available geographic presentation of information adds value and strengthens interest and a sense of belonging.” John Saavedra, Lead Project Engineer, Mincultura.
Results with Google Maps Platform
- As part of business strategy, Google Maps Platform supports the geolocation of information, and its APIs make success simple and achievable.
- Availability of 99.999 percent achieved.
- Reduced network latency.
- 60 days of development from concept to creation.
Google Maps Platform products used
- Maps JavaScript API: Enables visualization of the map itself. Through this API, users can view any information results about places of cultural interest or activities obtained through the Google Maps APIs we choose to implement.
- Street View API: Embeds real images with 360-degree panoramas to improve the user experience, allowing users to see more detail about what a cultural site offers. It also enables them to segment and define their cultural destination based on the information provided by this service.
- Directions API: calculates the distance and time from point A to point B and shows optimal travel directions. It helps users plan routes to visit the country's cultural sites.
- Autocomplete (Places API): offers predictions based on the search location, anticipating the full address before it is entered. This address and/or point-of-interest validation system reduces typing errors and, as a result, search abandonment.
- Details (Places API): provides details of establishments and/or points of interest, such as opening hours, ratings, and prices, near the information displayed on the cultural map.
- Geocoding API: Converts addresses into geographic coordinates and vice versa. Within the system, the cultural map will show places of cultural interest or activities near an address entered by the user.
The challenge
To present, manage, and standardize information of cultural interest online, Mapa Cultural establishes the criteria and methods for integrating information through the implementation of Google's cutting-edge technology. Mapa Cultural needs to create a social impact by fostering knowledge of and engagement with the sites and activities that make up Colombia's cultural landscape. Following a review, Mapa Cultural decided to move its map development environment to Google Maps Platform (GMP). “We chose GCP for three main reasons: we only had to use what we needed when we needed it; performance met our requirements; and we could scale easily,” said the Project Lead Engineer at Mincultura.
The solution
Colombia's Ministry of Culture was keen to develop a platform to present citizens with information about Colombia's cultural assets, both architectural and related to the activities and social initiatives it undertakes as an institution. The solution was evaluated using GCP components, and Mapa Cultural was created and deployed as cross-platform services that now provide the reach expected by the Ministry. Instances managed from Google's cloud provide the services used to run Mapa Cultural on its different platforms, together with the integration of the Ministry's own information services.
