ASEAN Launches First E-Exhibition on Cultural Heritage Digital Archive Portal

26 November 2021 -

The ASEAN region has a population of more than 650 million, with diverse ethnic groups, religions, races, and cultures. Under its motto of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”, ASEAN pursues cultural projects to foster a sense of integration and promote greater unity. As part of this effort, the ASEAN Secretariat is integrating the cultural communications of the ASEAN region, which had previously been conducted on an individual country basis, and in 2018 began the ASEAN Cultural Heritage Digital Archive (ACHDA) project to promote cultural exchange within the ASEAN region and ensure that cultural assets of high historical value are passed down to future generations, as well as provide an opportunity for people outside the ASEAN region to experience this heritage.

The ACHDA website made publicly available from 27 February 2020, for anyone in the world to view online at the ACHDA website. This system supports the images, audio recordings, and video data that are available on other NTT DATA digital archive systems, as well as an expanded capability to handle three-dimensional models of physical objects. The e-exhibition is a new feature of the ACHDA website, developed during the project’s second phase that commenced in January 2021.

The ACHDA project is supported by the government of Japan through the ASEAN-Japan Integration Fund (JAIF). Ambassador Akira Chiba of the Mission of Japan to ASEAN, stated, “It is my honor and pleasure to see that advanced Japanese digitization technology by NTT DATA came into use, and that JAIF, the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund plays an indispensable role in launching this project.”

The ASEAN Secretariat and NTT DATA plan to further contribute to ASEAN by digitizing cultural heritage assets and building a sustainable digital archive system in all 10 ASEAN countries.

More e-exhibitions will be added as the collection of digital heritage treasures on the ACHDA website expands.