My firm belief is, that all development processes, including what we like to call ”the creation of the Information Society” is crucially depending on very local initiatives and the extent of involvement of very local people. There are five key words for success: felt need, “hard” and “soft” support, role models, “the envy factor” and critical mass.

I have taken part in the LOCREGIS project as a member of the working group on rural development representing one of the core projects, a women’s information co-operative named AGENDUM situated in a very sparsely populated area in the northern inland of Sweden.

AGENDUM was born out of an informal network of local women formed in 1990, whose aim was to mobilise rural women by arranging social events and informal groups to try to involve women more actively in the development of their local communities. Information was always a problem due to the great distances between us, and in Spring –94 we fought hard to get funding for a computer network project, in which one women ”leading light” in each village was  equipped with a computer and a modem, and we all took part in a short training course to learn basic computing and IT.

Discovering the practical and also empowering effects of our own computer skills, we wanted to include also our neighbours, and a new project was set up half a year later, the ”Mobile Computer Rooms”, where 2 x 10 computers could be borrowed to the different villages for periods of 3 months . The village community had to take the initiative to apply for the computers and to mobilise the people. One of our women had the tasks to transport the computers between the villages, to administrate and provide training. There has been a constant demand ever since and we strongly believe it has something to do with ”the envy factor” as a driving force.

Within this project around 800 people in remote villages, 10% of the total population, have got basic computer training in a very friendly, social and comfortable way together with their neighbours. There have also been computer courses for the labour market available, but only in the central village and mainly directed towards young and unemployed people.

Women’s achievements within IT were also crucial for raising the interest within the Local Authority, which since January –96 has got a server of its own, offering all citizens a very cheap email and Internet access. All leading councillors have got a lap top computer at their disposal and are encouraged – and sometimes forced – to use them for internal and external purposes – forced, because citizens mail questions and critique, and they can’t politically afford to neglect them. Many local organisations also have their own Bulletin Boards on this local server.

In Autumn –94, the European Telematics Programme was launched, and the women’s group tried to set up a new project aiming to expand our own computer network and assist in building similar networks in partner countries. Despite all efforts, we were not able to find partners in time, but later on some of the contacts we finally made, invited us to take part in different transnational projects on women and New Technology.
We realised, that we had to have a legislative body to handle these projects, and the Information Co-operative AGENDUM was born in 1995 – today a recognised development agency, creating jobs for 6-8 people within transnational IS-projects, which give us inputs for further development, and by delivering services in the fields of EU-information, project management and advanced computer training, i.e. Multimedia and Electronic Commerce.

We started locally, but we are now operating regionally and nationally and often even on an international level.

Our own process is an example of a true bottom-up strategy, but up till now it was hardly a conscious strategy. Our aims were to create better and more meaningful lives for ourselves and for women around us, and the process started from a felt need for information in a small group of local people.

This kind of processes can never be implemented or administrated by authorities, no matter how bright and intelligent strategies they may have. Authorities on all levels can only facilitate them and support them - by supplying not only ”hardware” such as infrastructure and funding, but most important also ”software” in the form of trust, confirmation and visibility.

A good ”role model” can be made visible, and with the help of ”the envy factor” in a positive sense, a process or a project can have a multiplying effect. We all want to feel clever and important.

 There are signs, that our rural area is pretty close to have reached a critical mass of inhabitants (ca 30%), who are familiar with the use of IT, a situation where things start to happen more independently from conscious efforts.

To strongly promote the Information Society, my recommendation from grass-roots level should be: