CIPA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September-04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
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however an eurocentric concept, they cannot be separated as 
they are all part of the bigger picture. 
Intangible heritage will be used here to cover the songs, dance, 
stories and relationships of the Anangu for the sake of 
convenience only, as this is what the information system has 
been developed to incorporate with the more mundane images, 
tables and Park management forms. However a Cultural Site 
Management System at Uluru that did not incorporate this 
additional information would be incomplete. 
4. THE CULTURAL SITE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 
The CSMS has been developed with two aims in mind: to 
provide an operational tool for the management of the rock art 
sites and to provide a secure ‘keeping place’ for cultural 
heritage data deemed to be important by the traditional owners. 
The interface is to be kept simple, the information is to be 
protected from those who would not be authorised to have 
access, the men’s and women’s information to be kept separate, 
and the maintenance of the system including data entry to be 
able to be performed at the Park and community by people with 
a basic level of IT competence. 
4.1 System Design 
The CSMS has been a collaborative project, deriving input 
from Parks staff, an Australian Heritage Commission consultant 
(Nicholas Hall), Anangu Rangers from the Park and senior 
Anangu people from the Mutitjulu community (wadi tjilpi and 
minma pampa - senior men and senior women). Two of the 
most important design parameters were the need to ensure that 
the secret/sacred material was protected from those not 
authorised to view the material, and that the men’s and 
women’s information be kept separate. It was also necessary to 
ensure that the images used as part of the site design were in the 
public domain, and that navigation through the package would 
be simplified so that it would be relatively easy to use. These 
requirements were naturally part of the need (and desire) to 
respect tjukurpa. 
Initial interface designs were presented as large colour prints 
which were refined over time. A prototype system was also 
presented to the ‘stakeholders’ in order to demonstrate the 
mechanisms in place to protect the data. These were presented 
during several meetings at the Park headquarters, and the input 
was taken into consideration in the re-design of components. 
The system uses Microsoft Internet Explorer as the interface, as 
this is familiar to many of the intended users. The software has 
been developed by Glen MacLaren of Environmental System 
Solutions, a consultant who has been involved in the project 
from its inception. The system uses the ASPMap web mapping 
component along with the packages listed below, all other 
software has been written specifically for this project. 
• Internet IIS 4.0+ 
• Intranet IIS 4.0+ or Personal Web Server 
• Microsoft Data Access Component (MDAC 2.5+) 
• Microsoft File System Object Component 
The user interface graphics have been designed by Fiona Ellis. 
In addition, the map GIS data used to render map images is in 
ESRI’s ArcView format so as to be compatible with the GIS 
used by the Park Management, allowing layers of information 
(such as vegetation for example) the be incorporated into the 
CSMS if this is deemed necessary by the users. 
4.2 System Operation 
The system is initialised by clicking on the appropriate icon on 
the desktop. Once loaded the splash screen shown below 
appears. Clicking anywhere on this screen advances to the 
login page. (It may be difficult to see detail in these images). 
At this stage the primary interface is the purely visual, it is 
intended that if the need arises audio prompts in language will 
be added to the corresponding icons. 
Figure 3: Main Splash Screen, CSMS 
There are 3 levels of data access, comprising the men’s sites 
(that is restricted to authorised men), the women’s sites and 
public sites (open to all). In order to protect the access to this 
information a user needs to log into the system, and once 
successful their photograph is displayed on the main navigation 
screen. This is so that users and observers are reassured that the 
person in front of the computer is the same as the person 
authorised to access the information. 
The following options are presented on the main navigation 
screen: home; places; areas; reports; search and help. Places 
relate to specific locations (coordinates from GPS or place 
name), ‘areas’ refer to larger locations than may not or may not 
be within the Park boundary (the boundary has little relationship 
to the extremities of the Auangu lands) 
Figure 4: Places Option Screen, CSMS 
The ‘places’ option is the usual entry point to the system. This 
option loads the map data (in ESRI’s ArcView format) where 
the appropriate site can be selected. The images included in this