Promotive programmes and tools for the information society in Europe

Heikki Lunnas, Senior adviser, Association of the Finnish Local and Regional Authorities

The programmes and tools supporting the development of the European information society are not lead by one single policy. Trying to structure it in the aforementioned way would be misrepresentation of the European Union information society policy. The fact is that many of these programmes have started on their own and developed towards the information society more or less independently. And many of the programmes and projects have started to support information society development on their own, often quite limited, perspective.

However, a comprehensive presentation of the programmes would include hundreds of abbreviations and dozens of different programme groups.

In this presentation I concentrate on some examples of the important pan-European activities at the moment. These are programmes which are targeted also to other countries than the EU member states.

Recently, many changes have taken place around in the field of information society in the political climate. Considering also the background of this conference one change is over the others; today almost all decision-makers of the information society programmes agree that the role of local and regional actors is crucial. This is not only clear for the Structural Funds but the same emphasis can also be found in the Fifth Framework programme and in numerous new initiatives.

The European Union understood also a global character of the information society already in the very early stages of the development. The EU-CEEC IS Forum's first meeting was held in Brussels 1995, only a little more than one year later as the Union actually started its own information society policy.

The third EU-CEEC IS Forum held in 1997 recognised the need to integrate closer the CEE countries into efforts at both European and global level towards the global Information Society. In this meeting the European Commission and the CEECs decided to establish a joint high level committee in order to regularly review the implementation of the conclusions.

From the universe of the information society programmes and projects I have selected tree quite different examples of the pan-European information society activities of the European Union. The first one is very actual V Framework programme/thematic programme Information Society Technologies, and the second one the expanded European Survey of Information Society. Finally I will present more detailed and as a more concrete example the project Local and regional information society LOCREGIS, funded by European Regional Development Fund.

V Framework Programme; Information Society Technologies

http://www.cordis.lu/ist/

The Fifth Framework Programme consists of seven specific programmes, of which four are thematic programmes and three horizontal. The second thematic programme is called Information Society Technologies IST.

Four thematic programmes in IST are

• Systems and services for the citizen
• New methods of work and electronic commerce
• Multimedia content and tools
• Essential technologies and infrastructures

After the draft work programme of the Information Society Technologies the strategic objective will be to encourage the widest possible international co-operation. Participation in the IST Programme is open to entities from associated states, and countries with S & T agreements with the EU in the area of information society technologies, and on a project-by-project basis to international organisations, as well as entities from other European, developing countries and Mediterranean countries

The Programme is managed by DG XIII of the European Commission and holds its first call for proposals on 16 March 1999.

The Fifth Framework Programme provides tools to develop services of the local authorities and to create new networks of the European local authorities.

European Survey of Information Society ESIS

http://www.ispo.cec.be/esis

The priorities of ISPO include the establishment of a survey of Information Society projects that are planned or under way in the Member States. The primary objective of the survey is to provide an overview on the current projects and developments in Information Society in the Union.

After the call of proposals ISPO is just making the final decisions to expand the inventory to all European countries.

ESIS database provides good information about the activities of the local authorities in different countries and a lot of useful contact information and analyses.

Local and Regional Information Society LOCREGIS

http://www.kuntaliitto.fi/locregis/

LOCREGIS started in 1996 and the first part of the project finished in the summer of 1998. It was co-ordinated by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (ALFRA) and its primary target areas were the sparsely populated areas in Finland and Sweden and the Austrian Objective 1 area of Burgenland.

The main aims of the LOCREGIS included:

• The preparation of an inventory of regional and local information society projects co-financed by the EU in the target countries
• The identification of the main success factors for regional development that emerge from the local and regional information society projects
• The development of methods for project evaluation and best practice criteria
• The creation of networks of experts, practitioners and projects

The goals of LOCREGIS can be said to have been successfully met. In the course of the project, LOCREGIS became to be seen also as a tool permitting, among other things:

• The gathering of systematic knowledge about the kinds of projects and actions there were in existence and about which regions and sectors in the participating countries were active during the project period.
• Encouragement of dialogue and networking between practitioners, and between practitioners and those responsible for public policy.
• A better understanding of the qualities that public financial support to project promoters should try to encourage, that is, defining of best practice criteria from the point of view of regional economic development.
• Moving towards the deliberate design of bigger and more ambitious actions that could really accelerate structural change, in a manner which reconciles local and regional diversities with national ambitions and priorities.

The idea of deepening the work, results, experience and proposals of LOCREGIS provide a general starting point for LOCREGIS II.

The target areas of LOCREGIS II are the Objective 1 and 6 regions in Austria, Finland and Sweden, in the enlargement also Objective 1 regions in other EU countries and regions in similar situations in the candidate member states.

The project started in January 1999. The implementation consists of the following tree main lines:

1. Maintain the acquis of Locregis – the database, the network, the analytical capacity, and the dialogue between practitioners and regional policy makers, between the regional, national and EU level on ICT policy.
2. Build on that acquis in the following directions:

2.1 developing the use of the evaluation methodology developed in the LOCREGIS action (briefly summarised in annex 1) in the following directions:

• in support of the design of larger and more ambitious ICT actions at the regional level which can really accelerate structural change
• in support of the definition of priorities in the planning process and subsequently monitoring and evaluation during implementation for the next programming
• as a tool for the project developers to improve the design or develop the monitoring and benchmarking of the projects.

2.2 developing networking and co-operation by

• encouraging the creation of similar co-operation and networking platforms according to the LOCREGIS approach, but reflecting also the specificities of other countries and regions. The project will help to build up networks on tree different geographical areas:

1. Nordic platform; Finnish and Swedish regions together with some Baltic regions
2. Central European platform; Austrian regions with their Eastern neighbours
3. Mediterranean platform

One of the tasks is also the co-operation between the platforms.

• deepening the content of co-operation and networking amongst the original partners by improving further the capacity for statistical analysis and benchmarking comparisons, and continuing the organisation of working groups to explore issues of common interest
• within Austria, Finland and Sweden, and eventually including some other EU assisted regions, targeting relatively inactive regions, or imbalances in the project portfolio of certain regions ( for example few private sector projects), to offer support for the strengthening or reorientation of ICT action;
• improving the quality of the dialogue between those responsible at national and EU level for ICT policy and those involved in the reality of grassroots action.

1. LOCREGIS II will seek active co-ordination with other co-operation actions

Besides networking and analyses LOCREGIS develops benchmarking and tools to increase the regional development effects of information society projects.