Background
One of the most essential tasks during the second phase of LOCREGIS was to examine local and regional information society projects in four thematic groups. These groups which also supported development of the best practice criteria were dealing with the following themes:
The first three groups were mostly formed from local and regional practitioners as the fourth theme was discussed in the LOCREGIS Steering Committee.
The fourth theme on white areas was actually a task of its own defined at the beginning of LOCREGIS. It included an inventory of the "white" areas with no local or regional information society projects and if possible a start of new projects in those areas.
White areas in the new member states
A definition for white areas depends naturally on the used criteria for such areas. One of the starting points for LOCREGIS was that the new member states have started more this kind of projects than other EU member states, so white areas were not likely to be found at all at national or NUTS II level.
Regions are divided with NUTS III division in the LOCREGIS database. During the inventory it became clear that there are no regions, provinces or states which would fit the description on white areas in the Objective 1 and 6 regions in the new member countries. The LOCREGIS Steering Committee also considers this as a primary result to the task.
If the regions outside of the aforementioned Objective areas are examined, more variations and also passive areas are found. Regions are difficult to compare with each other if the number or the contents of projects are characteristics to be compared. Another variation comes from the size of projects; one region has started with several grass-root level projects, the other has only one development project covering several sectors. That is why investments counted per inhabitant and per region give a better basis for comparison between effectiveness of regions.
The LOCREGIS inventory shows that less than 5 ECU/inhabitant has been used to local and regional information society projects in the following areas:
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Niederösterreich |
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Oberösterreich |
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Tirol |
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Wien |
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Itä-Uusimaa |
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Varsinais-Suomi |
3. Sweden
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No regions |
Especially in the case of Austria, the aforementioned areas are difficult to be considered as white areas as the regions have anyway implemented a significant number of projects.
In general, the implementation of projects is concentrated to the centres in primary target areas. For this reason a plenty of white subregions are found further away from the centres and also in border regions. An example of the kind of area is Upper Lapland in Finland. Some local information society projects had been implemented in the area but they were coordinated by universities and included only little regional resources.
As these experiences were discussed with the municipality of Utsjoki located in the Upper Lapland area, an opportunity arose to continue the work on white areas and to test the best practice criteria. An idea was carried through by organising a working seminar for the whole area of Upper Lapland (Finland) together with the Finnmark region in the Norwegian side.
Working seminar in Upper Lapland
The working seminar on information society in Upper Lapland was organised on 25 May 1998. It was held in the municipality of Utsjoki and participants represented
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Themes of the seminar included
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special features of the region |
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Commission guidelines on regional policy |
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results of the LOCREGIS project |
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the LOCREGIS best practice criteria and their use |
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results of information society projects implemented in the area |
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experience of three projects which had participated in the LOCREGIS |
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various points of view to the subject |
In addition, working groups listed proposed further actions concerning public services and Sami culture as well as for private sector with a special emphasis on tourism.
The most important results of the working seminar were as follows:
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Despite of its remote location Upper Lapland has many strengths; an interest towards the original Sami culture, a reputation as a well-known region in the world and close cross-border cooperation with neighbouring countries (Norway, Sweden, Russia) |
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Weaknesses include a lack of necessary infrastructure (airport, east-west road connection and partly telecommunication), high unemployment rate, ageing of population |
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Building of broadband optical fibre network was considered as the most important task in the near future. It would serve region’s inhabitants, public and private sectors. This point of view was supported by the experiences presented in the working seminar, and also confirmed by the LOCREGIS core projects implemented before. In order to ensure maximum benefits it should be a joint venture of Norway and Finland, which brings new problems; financing and implementation of the project become more difficult. |
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One of the conclusions of the seminar was that more networking between public and private sector is needed before implementation of information society projects, especially in tourism sector in the area. |
Conclusions
The experience on white areas together with the implementation of new projects to new areas is collected from the whole period of LOCREGIS. A summary of the experience as follows:
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The most passive subregions of the three target countries are very passive; for example the organisation of awareness day is really laborious in those areas. |
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As the Upper Lapland seminar indicated, organisation of this kind of actions gives more motivation to the areas which are interested in starting to implement information society projects. |
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The awareness process on information society and commitment of partners would have needed another seminar day in Utsjoki. Another, more effective way could be an organisation of seminar in two separate parts and in addition to include various sessions in between which could serve general purposes. |
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An observation; the more passively information society is considered in the area, the more difficult is also all kind of other cooperation between different partners. For this reason a special attention should be paid to the matters like development of public-private partnership and networking between enterprises in all actions aimed at increasing interest towards information society in the region. |
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Regions are very characteristic, and develop from their own basis. In order to have the best possible impact, planned actions of all new big projects (for example regional information society strategies, wide infrastructure projects) should support overall regional development plans, take into account other information society projects implemented in the area at the same time. |