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LOCREGIS I

The local and regional information society project LOCREGIS II was a follow-up project of LOCREGIS (LOCal and REGional Information Society), a project that was initiated by the European Union and supervised by DG XVI during the years 1996-98. The main target areas of LOCREGIS I were the new European Union members states : Austria, Finland and Sweden; and especially their Objective 1 and Objective 6 regions. The LOCREGIS projects are co-ordinated by the Finnish Association of Local and Regional Authorities. (For further information : http://www.locregis.net)

The aim of LOCREGIS was to prepare an inventory and analysis of information society projects that can strengthen the competitiveness of less favoured European regions through innovative use of information technology.

Among its products LOCREGIS set up networking platforms, a database of information society projects in the partner countries, and developed a system of best practice criteria for evaluating information society projects from the point of view of regional development.

LOCREGIS became a tool for:

The gathering of systematic knowledge about the kinds of projects and actions in existence and about which regions and sectors in the participating countries were active during the project period
Encouraging dialogue and networking between actors, as well as between active parties and the bodies responsible for public policy
Conveying a better understanding of the qualities that public financial support given to project promoters should encourage, i.e., defining best practice criteria from the point of view of regional development
Moving towards the deliberate design of bigger and more ambitious actions that could actually accelerate structural change in a way that reconciles local and regional diversity with national ambitions and priorities.

LOCREGIS II

As a follow-up project to LOCREGIS I, LOCREGIS II builds on the results, recommendations, experience and methodology of its predecessor.

The tasks in LOCREGIS II were :

secure the achievements made by LOCREGIS I:
the database,
the network,
the analytical capacity,
the dialogue on ICT policy between practitioners and regional policy makers, between the regional, national and EU levels
building on those achievements in the following ways :
developing the use of the evaluation methodology worked out in the LOCREGIS action
developing networking and co-operation
 
seeking active co-ordination with other co-operation actions including those supported by the EU and especially RISI/RITTS with the aforementioned aims in mind.
bringing LOCREGIS I products to new regions within the partner countries,
bringing improvements to the benchmarking system, and
creating networking platforms in three geographical areas new to LOCREGIS, namely the Baltic region, CEE countries, and the Mediterranean region.

 

LOCREGIS II

Conclusions and recommendations

Conclusions

The project team notes that 

  1. The philosophy and methodology that has been created in LOCREGIS I is now developed to the real life implementation
  2. LOCREGIS tools are used and accepted widely and have filled a missing gap
  3. The project has demonstrated that the framework can be implemented on the different regions of Europe
  4. The philosophy and methodology can be adopted on different topics and not only on the information society
  5. The results has been achieved with a good cost-benefit ratio.

Recommandations

 LOCREGIS Project

 The partners of the project agree that 

  1. The Structural Funds are an important support measure for local/regional authorities and other local/regional actors. The European Commission should try to make use of the information in the LOCREGIS database and the regional profiles especially when handling the Objective 1 programming in the period 2000-2006. It is of great importance to thoroughly monitor and evaluate the impact that the Structural Funds have on local/regional development and the information society.
  1. "LOCREGIS-like" networking and analysing projects - especially with focus on support measures from the Structural Funds (in all areas, not only IS-Regional Development) - are important.
  1. To improve the results of "LOCREGIS-like" activities, the European Commission should issue a recommendation to national and local/regional actors to register (on-going public-financed) projects in a joint database. The role of the European Commission would in this case not be to control what is going on, but to stimulate the exchange of knowledge and experience. For this purpose the LOCREGIS tools could be very useful.
  1. A good database will increase the transparency of the work financed by the European Commission - it could show what kind of projects that are really financed by the taxpayer's money.
  1. Grassroots networking projects are giving direct and fast impact on the development of the EU activities. These projects are often also more effective than more political networking projects.
  1. The partnership in the projects like LOCREGIS should be based on the appropriate mixture of good EU experience and fresh new ideas.
  1. In order to make wide use of the LOCREGIS results and in order to make the LOCREGIS tools and method attractive, a number of factors should be implemented, such as:

Ø      The added value of using the LOCREGIS tools - on European, national, regional and local level - should be highlighted.

Ø      Financial support should be given to local/regional actors.

Ø      Other similar initiatives should be initiated and marketed.

Ø      A (LOCREGIS-like) database must contain lots of important information, but at the same time be easy to use:

                                                              i.      The project information in the database should include all necessary information, such as decision by EC/national/regional/local authorities, full description of the project, information about the partners, project period, contact details etc.

                                                            ii.      There must be understandable forms available for updating the information 

                                                          iii.      There should be a possibility to update forms in your own language (good examples could be presented in different languages in order to facilitate the updating of the database...)

Information Society and Structural Funds

Right information

Regional developers in the target countries have often limited knowledge on the common situation, but also what is really going on and who are the key players. Therefore similar inventory and analyse methodology used in LOCREGIS is advisable on every region and should, above all, be the first step of the regional information society strategy.

Information Society Strategy

Based on the information and experience of the LOCREGIS project, the team also agrees with the Commission that the precise combination of measures which makes up the regional investment plan can only be the result of a broad-based discussion at regional level with user participation. Such a strategic approach is a pre-condition for ensuring that specific measures are appropriate to the regional socio-economic structure.

Well-balanced involvement

To maximise the results of the regional development plans involvement of the all key players is needed. On many regions the nature of the projects was quite biased and the participation of some important actors was weak, e.g. in Austria the local authorities and in the Nordic countries the private and third sectors. On the other hand the examples from Sweden show that also local authorities can have a crucial role in the development of the electronic commerce. But also the involvement of the private sector in traditional public services has produced many good results.

Joint effects of the projects

There are still a lot of small projects in the target countries funded by the Structural Funds. The average size of the Finnish Objective 6 projects was 280 000 € comparing with the corresponding Swedish value, 713 000 €, and with the average of the Austrian Objective 1 projects 2 400 000 €. The average size of the new Finnish Objective 1 projects is slightly higher, 333 000 €, but so far it is difficult to say, if the situation is changing. More alarming than the size, is the fact that most regions are not using the different tools of the European Union to receive joint effects. The separate projects have too different aims and the funding decisions are not based on the clear regional development strategies.

Transregional co-operation

One reason of the small Finnish projects might be the relative small regions where the decisions are made.

Integrated monitoring of the regional development

Information society is not independent part of the whole society. It should be seen as some kind of integrator of different activities. The basic idea and the final goal must be to combine information society development with the monitoring of general regional development. 

LOCREGIS II Dissemination activities