E government services by Interreg Europe

INTERREG IVC analysis report

E-government services

October 2014

Credits Experts for thematic capitalisation on E-government services: Gil Gonçalves Gil Gonçalves is Chief Scientific Officer at INOVAMAIS – a leading company in innovation studies, research management and technology transfer. He is also a lecturer and researcher at the Engineering School of the University of Porto. His main fields of expertise are in ICTs for sustainable and smart cities and regions, command-and-control ICT frameworks, simulation of complex systems, and system engineering. He is founder of several technology-based start-ups that develop ICT-based solutions for efficient and effective administration and work, health care and environmental monitoring.

Christophe Pannetier Christophe Pannetier is president of i-solutio Ltd, an engineering company specialized in digital innovation and E-Government and a subsidiary of the European consulting group CM international. He assists many local, regional, national and European public bodies to transform their policies thanks to the introduction of IT. He holds a Doctorate in Political Science.

“The contents of this work reflect the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the position of the INTERREG IVC programme. The authors are entirely responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented.”

Foreword: Capitalising on achievements Over the last seven years, with the goal of improving regional policies, more than 2 000 public institutions across Europe have been learning from each other through cooperative policy learning in 204 interregional projects supported by the INTERREG IVC territorial cooperation programme. The programme can now point to hundreds of examples of how a region or city has built on the experiences of their counterparts elsewhere to enhance their own policy and delivery strategies. A few examples: o

inspired by the approaches taken by the Welsh ECO Centre and an Educational Centre in the Dutch city of Sittard-Geleen, the Hungarian city of Vecsés developed educational activities on renewable energy and sustainability for its school children; after consulting the Spanish city of Paterna, the Latvian Daugavpils City Council was able to successfully modernise its soviet-era industrial parks, giving a major boost to business development; after consulting the Cypriot authorities, the Greek Region of Crete invested in water recycling and re-use schemes, applying the Cypriot models.

The policy learning enabled by the INTERREG IVC Programme is not just a paper exercise: it has helped, through 204 projects, almost 6 000 staff involved in regional policy to acquire new skills and capabilities, and it has led directly to the improvement of more than 400 policies. The programme was therefore determined to go a step further and share its tremendous wealth of policy experience and know-how even more widely. The programme therefore asked 12 teams of experts covering 12 different fields of policy to analyse the achievements of its projects and to report back on ‘what works’. This report, which focuses on EGovernment, is the fruit of their work. It showcases a selection of tried-and-tested policies and practices in E-Government that have been shared through the INTERREG IVC programme, and which will be of interest to all EU regions. Policymakers and practitioners interested in this topic – whether working on regional, national or European scales – will also find policy recommendations tailored to them. Cooperative policy learning makes sense. It makes sense because, in an era of tight budgetary constraints, local and regional authorities are seeking best value for money, and robust evidence can enhance the chances of policy success by eliminating the risks and costs of trial and error. To take forward the programme’s key strategic task of sharing policy know-how, the new programme for 2014-2020, INTERREG EUROPE, is developing ‘Policy Learning Platforms’ which will stimulate a process of continuous policy learning among all interested regional policy stakeholders around Europe.

Michel Lamblin

Erwin Siweris

Programme Director

Deputy Programme Director

Table of Contents Executive summary .................................................................................................. 5 1.

Introduction and methodology ....................................................................... 8

1.1 Approach, methods, and tools ...................................................................................... 8 1.2 Definitions and acronyms ........................................................................................... 12 1.2.1 Acronyms .............................................................................................................................. 14

Policy context – the European E-government landscape .......................... 15

2. 2.1

E-government barriers and drivers .......................................................................... 15

2.2

Digital Agenda for Europe ....................................................................................... 17

2.3

The European E-government Action Plan ............................................................... 17

2.4

Other EU initiatives.................................................................................................. 20

2.4.1

E-government research projects...................................................................................... 20

2.4.2

European Large Scale Pilot Projects ............................................................................... 21

2.4.3

Other European Programmes.......................................................................................... 21

2.5

Added value of the interregional cooperation on E-government............................... 23

Analysis .......................................................................................................... 24

3.1

INTERREG IVC’s contribution to E-government ...................................................... 24

3.1.1

DLA – Digital Local Agenda ............................................................................................. 26

3.1.2

eCitizen II ......................................................................................................................... 29

3.1.3

IMMODI (IMplementing DIgital MOuntain) ...................................................................... 30

3.1.4 I-SPEED – Information Society Policies for sustainable European Economic Development .................................................................................................................................. 35 3.1.5

OSEPA – Open Source Software Usage by European Public Administration ................ 39

3.1.6

PIKE – Promoting Innovation and the Knowledge Economy .......................................... 42

3.1.7

Other INTERREG IVC relevant projects .......................................................................... 45

3.2

Thematic analysis from INTERREG IVC projects .................................................... 47

3.3

Other relevant activities in the European landscape ................................................ 52

3.4

Emerging issues ...................................................................................................... 54

3.4.1

Three key issues for the future…..................................................................................... 54

3.4.2

Ideas discussed by project leaders.................................................................................. 55

3.4.3

Information gathered through questionnaires and interviews .......................................... 57

3.5

Trends in E-government .......................................................................................... 62

Policy recommendations and conclusions ................................................. 66

4.1

Towards more integrated policies ............................................................................ 67

4.2

TOWARDS an open government ............................................................................... 70

4.3

TOWARDS A NEW ALLIANCE BETWEEN PEOPLE, GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS ............... 72

4.4

TOWARDS MORE FLEXIBLE ORGANISATIONS ................................................................ 73

4.5

CONCLUDING REMARKS ............................................................................................. 75 2

Annexes.......................................................................................................... 77

Annexe 1: E-government services projects pverview........................................................ 77 Annexe 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; E-government services project partners Map ................................................ 79 Annexe 3: E-government services projects factsheets ..................................................... 80 Annexe 4: E-government services satellite projects factsheets ........................................ 86 Annexe 5: European Large Scale Projects ....................................................................... 93 Annexe 6: Project testimonies .......................................................................................... 95 Annexe 7: Questions on key-issues for 2nd year............................................................ 101 Annexe 8: Initiatives outside INTERREG IVC ................................................................. 103 8.1 Examples of European projects ............................................................................................. 103 8.2 Examples of national and local projects ................................................................................. 107 8.3 Public-private partnership ...................................................................................................... 129

Annexe 9: Further reading .............................................................................................. 131

List of Figures Figure 1: Approach used in the Capitalisation exercise .......................................................................... 9 Figure 2: Four stages of service development (paradigm vs. target) .................................................... 13 Figure 3: Average E-government development (United Nations E-government Survey 2012) ............ 15 Figure 4: E-government Services core projects .................................................................................... 24 Figure 5: Clustering of the Good Practices (number of good practices) ............................................... 48 Figure 6: Clustering of the Good Practices (number of regions involved) ............................................ 48 Figure 7: E-government Services CORE projects by paradigm ............................................................ 49 Figure 8: E-government Services CORE projects by target.................................................................. 49 Figure 9: E-government Services CORE projects by priority ................................................................ 50 Figure 10: eGovernment mind map ....................................................................................................... 55 Figure 11: Abstract from Mr Bart Rosseau's presentation, representative of the City of Ghent in his presentation during a conference in Namur on Smart Cities ......................................................... 64 Figure 12: Principles, challenges, and policy recommendations .......................................................... 66 Figure 13: The E-government policy ecosystem ................................................................................... 67

List of Tables Table 1: E-government Taxonomy used in the exercise ....................................................................... 10 Table 2: Classification of the responses to the online survey (paradigm) ............................................. 11 Table 3: Classification of the responses to the online survey (target) .................................................. 11 Table 4: E-government Services adoption scenarios (different stages of development) ...................... 14 Table 5: Barriers to successful E-government implementation ............................................................. 16 Table 6: Political priorities for European public administrations (Malmรถ Declaration) .......................... 19 Table 7: E-government action plan priorities and actions ..................................................................... 19 Table 8: E-government Services core and satellite projects ................................................................. 25 Table 9: Other relevant projects from INTERREG IVC ......................................................................... 45

Executive summary Background The Digital Agenda for Europe, one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, defines the key-enabling role that Information and Communication Technologies will have to play if Europe is to succeed in its ambitions for 2020. This agenda sets out a target for the adoption of E-government by Member States that reflects its importance and transformative role: “50 % of citizens [are] to use E-government by 2015, with more than half [of them] returning completed forms”. E-government improves both the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery, promotes regional development, and helps authorities to use available resources to their best advantage, thus contributing to the economic sustainability of regions. Initial efforts from policymakers, at all levels across Europe to promote E-government, focused mostly on the short term, on putting isolated services online and publishing information without providing regular updates or user-centred services. Today, they are seeking to develop integrated solutions, helping to improve public sector service delivery both in terms of its efficiency and effectiveness and, at the same time, providing support to ‘open-data initiatives’ and ‘web 2.0 channels’ as a means for engaging citizens. Europe is in the vanguard of information technology. Building on existing strengths, high levels of human capital and infrastructure, Europe has recognised and exploited the transformative role of ICT to streamline E-government services. The average E-government Development Index in Europe is almost 50% above the world average, demonstrating Europe’s clear leadership in this field. Although public administrations in Europe are committed to making effective E-government services a widespread reality by 2015, thus fulfilling the Digital Agenda for Europe target in this area, the level of deployment is still clearly below expected goals, and there is strong evidence that lack of awareness is one of the main barriers to a wider take-up. The INTERREG contribution INTERREG IVC plays a fundamental role in addressing challenges and overcoming barriers to the successful implementation of E-government, thereby making the objectives of the European Egovernment Action Plan achievable, and contributing decisively to the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. The aim of the present capitalisation report on E-government services is to undertake a programmelevel analysis of the lessons and insights that can be drawn from INTERREG IVC projects focusing on E-government Services. Projects Projects such as DLA, eCitizen II, OSEPA, I-SPEED, PIKE, IMMODI, RTF, CASA, DC, e-Create, EuroPROC, DAA, and DANTE are just a few examples of the projects co-financed by INTERREG IVC that are supporting the transition from current E-government to a new generation of open, flexible, and easy to use E-government services at local, regional, national, and European levels. These and other INTERREG IVC projects focusing on E-government Services include successful innovative practices, mostly for implementing isolated E-government services but also including practices targeted at integrated solutions. The projects also identified pre-requisites for the successful implementation of E-government services. In line with a number of studies, these include: the legal and regulatory context, budgetary, infrastructure, different ‘digital’ realities (digital divide), and competencies and skills. Moreover, in several practices, cultural and historical barriers have also been identified, such as lack of trust in new communication tools and channels. Although these projects have different objectives and focuses, they all share common features and identify similar challenges that need to be addressed to successfully deliver E-government services. Good Practices Close to 100 regions were involved in these projects, each recognising the high potential of Egovernment. During the period of analysis, these projects reported a total of 78 Good Practices, 41 of which are related to E-government services. We classify and analyse these innovative practices according to ‘E-government priority’ (i.e. services to business or to people for example) and in relation to a specific set of questions: Why should it be considered as a Good Practice? What particular features 5

make it unique? How has the project contributed to the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? The report analyses innovative practices across a range of policy areas such as:    

‘Cybercantal telecentre’, which demonstrates how the local economy can be boosted through a telecentre; ‘venice> connected’, which focuses on combining sustainability in tourism with quality of life for citizens; ‘Leaping Stiles’, which seeks to increase competitiveness in the region by improving and enhancing the quality of tourism products on offer; ‘eLocal’, which demonstrates that E-government services can be important tools for boosting growth in rural areas.

Towards Recommendations Generally speaking, this capitalisation report underscores the need to conduct awareness raising campaigns to explain the benefits of and provide information about what is involved technically in EGovernment practices, and where to find & how to use the different Government services. Initiatives from ‘pioneering’ regions merit being disseminated more widely to regions starting out or that are in the early stages of introducing E-government. From the analysis conducted over the last two years we have drawn up 15 policy recommendations for the benefit of policymakers. These recommendations are organised in four groups, as follows: 1. Towards more integrated policies: Public authorities have invested significantly not only in ICT projects but also in the development and delivery of digital policies. But often these digital policies are isolated and unconnected to ‘mainstream’ policies such as tourism, education, economic development, transportation, and healthcare, to name a few. 2. Towards an open government: Citizens increasingly want to be involved in the definition of public policies and in the development of new services. This is a key trend that will probably be amplified in the coming years. It will transform the relationship between citizens and policymakers. 3. Towards a new public-private-population partnership (4P): The effective delivery of Egovernment policies and solutions has to be based on a strong alliance between policymakers, public administration, citizens, researchers, and businesses. This is what we call the “4Ps” – public-private-population partnership – also known as the ‘Quadruple Helix’. 4. Towards flexible organisations: E-government cannot be delivered as it was in the past, without changing the organisational rules of public administration. New policies and services cannot be delivered without redesigning public organisation and its processes. We also propose a set of recommendations, both for the projects and for the INTERREG IVC programme, the aim of which is to increase and accelerate their impact. Promote success stories: the current level of deployment of E-government services is below expectations, and there is strong evidence that the lack of awareness of E-government services is the main barrier to a wider take-up. Promotion and awareness campaigns, including the wider dissemination of successful Good Practices and the sharing of experience between ‘frontrunners’ and regions planning or in the early stages of their E-government adoption process, would help to overcome this barrier. Build on present success: continue to build on the successful practices that have already proved their value; learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the current process and help new adopters to define roadmaps to deliver tried & tested policies, thus bridging the policy-practice gap where necessary; to better support cooperation and information sharing between regions. We recommended that, in future, tailored instruments for disseminating Good Practices as well as other important knowledge be used. Re-shift focus and accelerate policy action: practices and policies are widely identified as being ‘for the Government’ (i.e. policy makers are the target) and ‘citizen-centric’, we recommended that new projects shift focus and be stepped up a gear, by concentrating much more on user empowerment and on the transition towards more user-centric E-government solutions, especially through open innovation methods. 6

Change the policy focus for the future: the trend of providing E-government (also called M-government) services directed at mobile devices needs to be addressed, and might be especially relevant in regions where traditional fixed infrastructures are less effective owing to low penetration. Moreover, we strongly recommend to focus on the convergence of ICTs and other innovative and emerging technologies in biotechs, energy, robotics, and nanotechnologies. There is a major opportunity for European territories to grasp the opportunities afforded by this convergence both to enrich E-government service delivery and to contribute to Smart Specialization Strategies. Current plans from the European Commission are creating great opportunities for regions interested in implementing an E-government services strategic plan. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) includes over â&#x201A;Ź9 billion to support investment in high-speed broadband networks and pan-European digital services.

1. Introduction and methodology “To date, E-government, which should be part of the solution, has been part of the problem. National E-government systems have been developed in isolation, creating new digital borders where physical ones have long since disappeared, fragmenting the EU rather than unifying it.” Neelie Kroes, EC Vice-President responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe

As governments across the world provide more and more support for ‘open data initiatives’ and ‘web 2.0 channels’ as a means for engaging citizens, researchers are turning their attention to the future internet, ‘wisdom of crowds’ and ‘virtual-world experiments’. In contrast to the past focus of ‘making services available online’, the current strategic direction in E-government services is one of transparency and ‘making public data available for reuse’. After an early stage focusing on placing government information online, followed by providing services for citizens (‘government-centric’ and ‘citizen-centric’ paradigms), we are currently moving towards a ‘society-centric’ paradigm where open data and citizen to citizen relationships play a major role in adding value to E-government services. How are European authorities – at local, national, and European level – dealing with the challenges created by this paradigm shift? What practices and policies have been experimented by different regions in Europe to address these challenges, and how can all regions in Europe benefit from these experiences and knowledge? As ICT is an increasingly pervasive phenomenon, how are regions dealing with the growing impact of ‘digitisation’ on their organisations, services and policies? How can ICT projects and policies contribute to a Smart Specialization Strategy within regions? These and other questions will be addressed and discussed throughout this report, which is organised as follows: this chapter presents the purpose of, and methodology used in, the Capitalisation study; chapter 2 presents the European policy context, including the main challenges, barriers and drivers for development; the third chapter constitutes the main body of this report, presenting an in-depth analysis of the thematic projects and an analysis at the programme level; the fourth and last chapter of the report includes the most relevant messages for EU regions and a set of targeted policy recommendations for policymakers and practitioners at all levels. The present report is a consolidated report covering the results of the full two years of the Capitalisation exercise.

1.1 Approach, methods, and tools The main goal of the INTERREG IVC Thematic Capitalisation exercise is to exploit the knowledge gained from projects working on similar topics for the benefit of all regions in Europe. Due to its local, regional, and European relevance as well as for its representativeness across INTERREG IVC projects, ‘E-government services’ was selected as one of the themes to be included in the exercise. After a first year that focused on ‘E-government services’ in general, a second year of the exercise was tasked with analysing key issues for the theme, identified from the first year results, and providing targeted recommendations. An expert team was selected to conduct this exercise with the support of the Programme’s Joint Technical Secretariat. The approach used for this assignment was organised into two phases with three activities each: 1. First year a. Data collection and definition: Collecting of project data available online (INTERREG IVC Database and project websites); defining of a taxonomy to classify the knowledge generated by the projects. b. Individual project analysis: Contacting individual projects to understand their specific nature (site visits or interviews); using online tools to collect further information and inputs from the individual project participants (online surveys). c. Programme level analysis and conclusions: Thematic analysis, to benchmark knowledge and answer programme level questions; organising of a thematic workshop to present results, promote discussion and foster exchange; Synthesis/consolidation of conclusions and relevant findings from the exercise.

2. Second year a. Analysis of latest available project results and data collection: Analysis of the results from the first year and frame the key issues for the second; collecting additional project data available online (INTERREG IVC Database and project websites). b. Individual project analysis: Contacting of individual projects to understand their specific perspective on the key issues; Using online tools and telephone interviews to collect further information and inputs from the individual project participants. c. Programme level analysis and conclusions: Thematic analysis, to benchmark knowledge and answer programme level questions; organising of workshops to present results, promote discussion; Synthesis/consolidation of conclusions and relevant findings from the exercise.

Figure 1: Approach used in the Capitalisation exercise

1. Data collection and definition: Of the 111 projects, INTERREG IVC identified six (classified as core projects) that address â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Egovernment servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. These six projects involve 75 partners from 21 EU Member States plus Norway (AT, LU, LT, MT, SI, SK, CH are not represented in these six projects). This selection provided by the Programme was validated in terms of adequacy and completeness by collecting and exploring the available online project information and selecting potential core and satellite projects. A description of the groups of projects included in the study is presented in Annexe 1. For the second year, only four out of the six projects were retained in the exercise due to the fact that the other two were already completed before the beginning of the exercise and no new developments were expected during the second year. Other projects (classified as satellite projects) were also identified as having relevance for the study but are not in the main focus of the analysis.

Based on the information collected from online sources, a taxonomy was defined to classify the knowledge generated by the projects: Good Practices identified and transferred; policies addressed and improved; and common features / challenges. This taxonomy includes categories that help to classify activities/initiatives into clusters and to better understand how efforts undertaken at different levels are related: for example:   

‘Efficiency & Effectiveness’ classifies activities that contribute to improving the efficiency of services and efficient management (e.g. telematics support to procedures carried out between town councils and the government); ‘Infrastructure’ classifies activities that contribute to infrastructure development (hardware, software, communications, etc.) for E-government; ‘Legal Aspects’ classifies activities related to studying and defining regulatory issues that enable E-government services (e.g. related with data privacy and security); and the service’s target (who is the final user?) or scope (local, regional or national).

The proposed taxonomy, presented in Table 1, gives a standardised description of the services listed for benchmarking by the EC DG INFSO1, OECD2, UN3 studies and epractice.eu4 initiative findings. Table 1: E-government Taxonomy used in the exercise

E-government Taxonomy classifiers Efficiency & Effectiveness

Infrastructure

Benchmarking of services

Interoperability

Inclusive E-government

Legal Aspects

E-identity and E-security

Multi-channel Delivery

E-participation, E-democracy and E-voting

Open Source

E-procurement

Policy

Services for Business

Regional and Local Services

Services for Citizens

User-centric Services

These classifiers were then grouped according to the E-government paradigm or development phase5 to which they are related, according to the following aggregation categories:  Infrastructure (including the ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Interoperability’, ‘Legal Aspects’, ‘Multi-channel Delivery’, and ‘Open Source’ classifiers which relate to initiatives that create the conditions for the development of E-government).  Government-centric (including the ‘Efficiency & Effectiveness’, ‘Benchmarking of services’, ‘Inclusive E-government’, ‘E-identity’ and ‘E-security’, ‘E-procurement’ classifiers that relate to initiatives that promote E-government for the benefit of the administration).  Citizen-centric (including the ‘E-participation’, ‘E-democracy’ and ‘E-voting’, ‘services for business’, and ‘services for citizens’ classifiers that relate to initiatives that promote Egovernment for the benefit of citizens).  Society-centric (including the ‘Policy’, ‘local and regional services’, and ‘user-centric services’ classifiers which relate to initiatives that promote E-government for the benefit of society).

Digitizing Public Services in Europe: ‘Putting ambition into action’, 9th Benchmark Measurement, December 2010 1

OECD, Rethinking E-government Services: User-centred approaches, 2009

United Nations E-government Survey 2012: E-government for the People, 2012

epractice.eu offers the professional community of E-government, E-inclusion and E-health an interactive environment that empowers its users to discuss and influence open government, policymaking and the way in which public administrations operate and deliver services. 5

K. Andersen, H. Henriksen, E-government maturity models: Extension of the Layne and Lee model, Government Information Quarterly 23 (2006) 236–248 10

At the same time, this information can be classified according to the service’s target group, i.e. for whom the service is being provided. The following targets were defined:  Government to Employee (G2E) (focus on administrative issues, and targeting government employees).  Government to Business (G2B) (focus on business issues, and targeting companies).  Government to Citizen (G2C) (focus on citizenship and tourism, and targeting citizens).  Citizen to Citizen (C2C) (focus on the civil society, and targeting citizen to citizen communication). 2. Individual project analysis Based on the preliminary analysis of available online information and its classification according to the defined taxonomy, an online questionnaire in the format of a ‘Good Practice Survey’ was sent during the 1st year to each of the projects involved. The goal was to gather further information on the practices, lessons learnt and policy recommendations as well as to establish a classification of the practices from a project perspective (taxonomy) so as to be able to carry out a more in-depth assessment. The online survey also included a set of questions to gain further insight – respondents were also asked to discuss: ‘Why should this be considered as a Good Practice?’ (Perceived value); ‘What particular features make it unique?’ (Innovative approach); ‘To what extent is the Good Practice replicable?’ (Transfer potential). Responses to the survey included 22 responses (13 related to E-government Services), and a classification of these responses is presented according to paradigm and to target (respectively) in Table 2 and Table 3. A more detailed analysis of the results is presented in chapter 3 of this report. Table 2: Classification of the responses to the online survey (paradigm)

Table 3: Classification of the responses to the online survey (target)

3. Programme Level analysis and conclusions An aggregated analysis of the data collected was carried out in relation to two dimensions: paradigm and target. The paradigm is related to the adoption model (stages) while the target is related to the final beneficiary of the service. Grouping this information together in terms of E-government paradigm and target was the first step for the analysis, as presented in chapter 3. The thematic workshop held in Brussels in October 2012 included two interactive exercises. The objectives of these exercises were to discuss and disseminate interesting practices and policies available within the partner regions of the six core projects present for the workshop. Details on the thematic workshop and on the interactive exercises are available on the report from the 1st year. The objective of the interactive exercise was to discuss ‘best’ Good Practices and pre-requisites for the implementation’ and ‘transfer potential of Good Practices and policies’. For the 2nd year, a draft paper (see section 3.4 of the report) was written in October 2013, highlighting three major increasing trends based on observations of what is going on in the regions:

 



The first one is related to the empowerment and participation of citizens in the policy-making process. The second one is on open innovation and new methods (design thinking, co-creation, codesign, etc.) which are already applied in universities, research centres and industry, and are increasingly used in the public sphere on the basis of collective contributions to design projects, initiatives and policies. The third one is on policy development and regeneration. The ICT dissemination has shown that public policies and E-government solutions cannot be designed as they were in the past and that a new era is now emerging, based on breaking rules and approaches and drastically changing behaviours.

This draft paper was a way to structure the discussion for the second E-government thematic workshop, which was held in Brussels on the 19th November 2013. To complete the feedback information from the workshop, a questionnaire was sent to the core and satellite project partners (see Annexe 7). These leaders provided interesting and useful information on this questionnaire. The final activity in the assignment phase aimed at consolidating the conclusions and relevant recommendations from the exercise, which are presented in chapter 4.

1.2 Definitions and acronyms “E-government is defined as the employment of the Internet and the world-wide-web for delivering government information and services to the citizens.” United Nations, 2006; AOEMA, 2005 “The purpose of public services should be self-explanatory. They are there to serve the public, whether that is citizen or business.” Brendan Howlin TD, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (Ireland)

E-government is not easy to define, since many different definitions are used in the public domain; defining it too narrowly as electronic service delivery would only result in an exercise that is overly complex and costly, and such a definition will also miss the transformative potential of E-government to speed-up decision-making, streamline or reduce processes, or reduce costs of engagement. As such, for the purpose of this report, the definition from the ‘Digital Agenda for Europe’ will be used:

“E-government is about using tools and systems made possible by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to provide better services to employees, businesses and citizens.”

ICT is already widely adopted by government bodies at different levels, just as it is by businesses but the provision of E-government services involves much more than just the use of the tools made available by ICT. Effective E-government involves rethinking the organisation and processes, interaction models, changing mind-sets and behaviours so that services can be delivered more effectively and efficiently to the people who need to use them. Implemented well, E-government enables not only the government to be more efficient, but also enables all citizens, enterprises and organisations to carry out their business with government more easily, more quickly, at a lower cost and with an increase in the perceived quality of service. The availability of online public services (‘supply-side’) has been, until recently, the primary focus of Egovernment, but over the last years, citizen usage of E-government services (‘demand-side’) has become a priority issue.

Trends in E-government: Towards a more society-centric approach In line with the global trend towards a more citizen-centric approach as driven by the demand for a more efficient and cost-effective public sector, this new E-government paradigm encourages governments to take account not only of the supply side but also the demand side of E-services. Both the United Nations6 and the World Bank7 present an incremental development model for Egovernment services. This four-stage model (Figure 2) encompasses the following phases: 1. Emerging information services/pushing information over the Internet: Government websites provide information on public policy, governance, laws, regulations, relevant documentation, and types of government services provided. They have links to ministries, departments and other branches of government. Citizens can easily obtain information on what is new in the national government and ministries and can follow links to archived information. 2. Enhanced information services/ two-way communications: Government websites deliver enhanced one-way or simple two-way E-communication between government and citizens, such as downloadable forms for government services and applications. The sites have audio and video capabilities and are multi-lingual, among other features. 3. Transactional services/conducting transactions: Government websites engage in two-way communication with their citizens, including requesting and receiving inputs on government policies, programmes, regulations, etc. Some form of electronic authentication of the citizenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity is required to successfully complete the exchange. Government websites process nonfinancial transactions, e.g. E-voting, downloading and uploading forms, filing taxes online or applying for certificates, licences, and permits. They also handle financial transactions, i.e. where money is transferred on a secure network to government. 4. Connected services/Governance: Government websites have changed the way governments communicate with their citizens. They are proactive in requesting information and opinions from the citizens using Web 2.0 and other interactive tools. E-services and e-solutions cut across the departments and ministries in a seamless manner. Information, data, and knowledge are transferred from government agencies through integrated applications. Governments have moved from a government-centric to a citizen-centric approach, where E-services are targeted to citizens through life cycle events and segmented groups to provide tailor-made services. Governments create an environment that empowers citizens to be more involved with government activities so as to have a voice in decision-making.

Figure 2: Four stages of service development (paradigm vs. target)

To better illustrate the concepts and ideas behind the different stages of development of E-government

United Nations E-government Survey 2012: E-government for the People, 2012

The World Bank, A definition of E-government, 2003 13

Services, Table 4 presents examples of services in each of these development phases. Table 4: E-government Services adoption scenarios (different stages of development)

Sample E-government Services scenarios Stage 1: The agency has a website that publishes information about itself and its services. Users have read-only access and can download documents. Stage 2: Quite close to 1, an agency allows Internet users to access the agency database(s) and to browse, explore, and interact with data. Users can access a database anonymously; for example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics provides census data online. Stage 3: A big jump from 2, where an agency allows users access as in stages 1 and 2 and also permits them to input secure information and engage in transactions with the agency. The agency has resolved the authentication issue, knows who the user is, and can provide user-targeted information. Stage 4: Close to 3, where, in addition to the level of access permitted in stage 3, the agency, with the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prior approval, shares information provided by the user with other government agencies. Authentication has been resolved and the agency is sharing user information with other agencies, for example, information related to a change of address, etc.

1.2.1 Acronyms This section lists and defines a set of acronyms that are used in this report.

Population-Public-Private Partnerships

C2G

Citizen-to-government

DAE

Digital Agenda for Europe

EGDI

E-government Development Index

ERDF European Regional Development Fund EU

European Union

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

FOSS Free and Open Source Software G2C

Government-to-citizen

G2G

Government-to-government

GPL

General Public License

ICT

Information and communication technology

OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development PPP

Public-private partnership

Public Administration

RFEC Regions for Economic Change

2. Policy context – the European E-government landscape According to the United Nations E-government Survey 20128, “Europe as a region has been in the vanguard of information technology and setting the pace for others to follow. Building on the existing strength of high levels of human capital and infrastructure, the transformative role of ICT has been recognized and adopted to further streamline E-government services.” The average E-government Development Index (EGDI) in Europe is almost 0.25 pp above the world average (Figure 3) demonstrating Europe’s clear leadership in this domain.

Figure 3: Average E-government development (United Nations E-government Survey 2012)

E-government services are seen as a cost-effective route to better service for every citizen and business, and to a participatory, open and transparent government. E-government services can reduce costs and save time for public administrations, citizens and businesses. They can also help to mitigate risks due to climate change, natural and manmade hazards by promoting the opening and sharing of environmental data and environment-related information.

2.1 E-government barriers and drivers Today, despite a high level of availability of E-government services in Europe, differences still exist amongst Member States, and the take-up of E-government services by citizens is low. In 2009, only 38% of EU citizens had ever used the Internet for accessing E-government services, compared to 72% of businesses. General Internet take-up will be raised if the usage, quality, and accessibility of public online services is improved. Public administrations in Europe must be committed to making user-centric, personalised, multi-platform E-government services a widespread reality by 2015. “To that end, governments should take steps to avoid any unnecessary technical requirements, for example applications that only work in specific technical environments or with specific devices. […] These services will support streamlined administrative processes, facilitate information sharing and simplify interaction […], thereby empowering users and improving the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency […].” 9 To the detriment of the mobility of businesses and citizens, most public online services do not work across borders. Public authorities have so far focused on national needs and have not sufficiently taken into account the single market dimension of E-government. Yet, several single market initiatives and legal instruments (such as the Services Directive 10 or the E-procurement Action Plan11) rely on the possibility for businesses to interact and do business with public administrations by electronic means and across borders.

United Nations E-government Survey 2012: E-government for the People, 2012

A Digital Agenda for Europe, COM(2010) 245 final

Service Directive, 2006/123/EC.

Action Plan for the implementation of the legal framework for electronic public procurement, 2004. 15

Europe therefore needs better administrative cooperation to develop and deploy cross-border public online services. This includes the implementation of seamless E-procurement as well as practical Eidentification and E-authentication cross-border services. In line with these needs, the European Council and Parliament Decision proposed, in 2012, an action to ensure mutual recognition of E-identification and E-authentication across EU-based online 'authentication services' to be offered in all Member States. At the same time, actions were deployed to support seamless cross-border E-government services in the single market through the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) and Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme. With a common E-government framework and regulatory landscape being specified and set up, EU countries are encouraged to deploy advanced technologies and provide expanded services in the pursuit of greater transparency, efficiency, and inclusion. The key principles of E-government defined in this framework are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The needs of citizens and businesses are at the centre of E-government. Public services should be delivered through the most appropriate channels. E-government should reduce the administrative burden for citizens and businesses. E-government projects should reflect Business Process Improvements, delivering demonstrable efficiency, effectiveness and Value for Money gains. 5. Public Bodies should work to ensure that the online channel is the most attractive option for customers. To comply with these principles, in their efforts to increase E-government usage and citizen satisfaction, policymakers are faced with multi-faceted policy challenges, issues, and opportunities. Notwithstanding the many efforts made at all levels in Europe, there is still a generalised lack of clear strategies to facilitate E-government service usage as well as evaluation methodologies to assess citizens’ needs and expectations. In spite of all these efforts and developments, several barriers still need to be overcome (see Table 5) in order to successfully implement advanced E-government services in Europe. These barriers are related to:   

a lack of harmonised legislation across Europe in spite of European directives (e.g. E-invoicing is still not accepted in all member states, and national requirements differ between countries), a lack of resources for the implementation of the E-government projects by local or national authorities, a lack of the needed infrastructure, competencies and skills (either for service provision or for service use, e.g. basic IT skills needed by the citizens to use the services), and barriers associated with the digital divide. Table 5: Barriers to successful E-government implementation

Barrier

Description

Legislative and regulatory

EU directives, national implementation of EU directives, privacy and protection

Budgetary

Lack of own resources, lack of long-term budgeting horizons, lack of special funds for E-government initiatives

Infrastructure

Broadband infrastructure and broadband access for the public sector, price of Internet access, electronic infrastructure for the public sector and E-government backbone

Digital Divide

Access and use of ICT, public Internet access points, lack of interest in online opportunities

Competencies and skills

Basic skills, advanced IT skills

For example, the legal and regulatory barriers create several difficulties for European businesses when offering their services in other European countries. The existing ‘digital markets’ at the national level, tailored by commercial and cultural content and services need to flow across borders; this can only be achieved by eliminating legal and regulatory barriers, and hence by facilitating electronic payments and invoicing, dispute resolution and customer trust, etc. Citizen participation and engagement is also undermined by the digital divide, not only in terms of access and use of ICT, but there is also a high degree of dispersion and fragmentation at the European level because definitions, systems and tools differ widely between Member States and institutions. The coordination of policies and approaches across institutions at EU level, as well as directly exchanging experiences and Good Practices between them is highly recommended. The following sections present the most relevant European initiatives that address these barriers.

2.2 Digital Agenda for Europe Launched in March 2010 by the European Commission, the Europe 2020 Strategy 12 is seen as the instrument to exit the crisis and to prepare the EU economy for the challenges of the next decade. Europe 2020 sets out a vision to achieve high levels of employment, a low-carbon economy, productivity, and social cohesion, to be delivered through concrete actions at EU and national levels. The Digital Agenda for Europe13 (DAE) is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, and defines the key-enabling role that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) will have to play if Europe wants to succeed in its ambitions for 2020. The overarching aim of the DAE is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra-fast Internet and interoperable applications. Faced with demographic ageing and global competition, Europe will have to work harder, work longer and work smarter. DAE makes proposals for actions to get Europe on track for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth; it is not just about ticking-off items from a long list, it is about using technologies to make a real difference. One of the 13 specific goals contained in the DAE is directly related to the adoption of E-government: it states that “50 % of citizens [are] to use E-government by 2015, with more than half [of them] returning completed forms”. This means that 50% of citizens will use E-government Services, and half of these users will not only have accessed information, but will also have submitted information to these services (through electronic forms). In December 2012, following a DAE regular assessment, the European Commission adopted seven new priorities for the digital economy and society, enumerated in a Digital ‘to-do’ list14, which follow a comprehensive policy review and place new emphasis on the most transformative elements of the original 2010 Digital Agenda for Europe. One of these new priorities is, once again, centred on Egovernment – New public digital service infrastructures through Connecting Europe Facility – and will be implemented by the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’, one of the instruments currently included in the EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MMF) for 2014-2020. To support this priority, the Commission will fast track the rollout of digital services (especially their cross-border interoperability) in E-IDs and Esignatures, business mobility, E-justice, electronic health records and cultural platforms such as Europeana.

2.3 The European E-government Action Plan The “DAE sets E-government within a comprehensive set of measures aimed at exploiting the benefits of ICT across Europe. At a time of highly constrained public resources, ICT can help the public sector develop innovative ways of delivering its services to citizens while unleashing efficiencies and driving down costs.”15

EUROPE 2020 - A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - COM(2010) 2020

A Digital Agenda for Europe, COM(2010) 245 final

Digital to-do list: new digital priorities for 2013-2014, IP/12/1389, EUROPA Press Release 18 Dec. 2012 15

E-government Action Plan 2011-2015, COM (2010) 743 17

As part of the European-wide effort to promote a smart, sustainable, and inclusive economy for the European Union, the European E-government Action Plan contributes towards fulfilling two key objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe, in particular:  

By 2015, a number of key cross-border services will be available online – enabling entrepreneurs to set up and run a business anywhere in Europe independently of their original location, and allowing citizens to study, work, reside and retire anywhere in the European Union. By 2015, 50% of EU citizens will have used E-government services.

Since E-government services are also of great importance for businesses, the European E-government Action Plan also has the goal that, by 2015, 80% of enterprises will have used E-government. During the implementation of the first European E-government Action Plan16, governments across Europe exchanged Good Practices and implemented a number of large-scale pilot projects with a view to rolling out cross-border E-government services (see Annexe 5 of the report for further details on these projects). At the same time, an online community of practitioners17, established in 2002, has provided a focus for debate among 80 000 participants on the potential of providing innovative solutions in areas such as E-government, (E-) health services, and inclusion. Progress has also been made in the re-use of public sector information18, and an electronic public procurement platform has been developed to allow companies from across Europe to offer their services to governments outside their home country (PEPPOL Large Scale Pilot, cf. Annexe 5). EU-wide electronic identity systems are coming into existence, which will enable people to access public services electronically across the EU (STORK Large Scale Pilot, cf. Annexe 5). Based on these promising results, the European Commission proposed a second European Egovernment Action Plan19 aimed at realising the ambitious vision contained in the declaration made at the 5th Ministerial E-government Conference (the ‘Malmö Declaration’20), also supported by industry and by a citizens’ panel. According to this ambitious vision, by 2015 European public administrations will be: "Recognised for being open, flexible and collaborative in their relations with citizens and businesses. They use E-government to increase their efficiency and effectiveness and to constantly improve public services in a way that caters for users’ different needs and maximises public value, thus supporting the transition of Europe to a leading knowledge based economy."

To achieve this vision, the Malmö Declaration sets out four political priorities for all European public administrations over the next five years. The main challenges faced by all European public administrations are the need to provide better public services with fewer resources, as well as to provide new and better ways to engage with citizens. Each of the political priorities listed in Table 6 works towards meeting these challenges.

E-government Action Plan 2006, COM (2006) 173.

http://www.epractice.eu

Directive 2003/98/EC on re-use of public sector information, 17.11.2003, OJ L345, 31.12.2003, 9096 19

The European E-government Action Plan 2011-2015 Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government, COM(2010) 743. 20

Ministerial Declaration on E-government, 5th Ministerial E-government Conference, Malmö, Sweden, November 2009, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/ministerial-declarationon-E-government-malmo.pdf 18

Table 6: Political priorities for European public administrations (Malmö Declaration)

Political priorities Citizens and businesses are empowered by E-government services that have been designed around users’ needs and developed in collaboration with third parties, as well as by an increased access to public information, strengthened transparency and effective means for the involvement of stakeholders in the policy process, Mobility in the Single Market is reinforced by seamless E-government services for the setting up and running of a business and for studying, working, residing and retiring anywhere in the European Union, Efficiency and effectiveness is enabled by a constant effort to use E-government to reduce the administrative burden, improve organisational processes and promote a sustainable low-carbon economy, The implementation of the policy priorities is made possible by creating the appropriate key enablers and by establishing the necessary legal and technical preconditions. The current European E-government Action Plan aims at maximising the complementary nature of national and European policy instruments by supporting the transition from current E-government to a new generation of open, flexible, collaborative and seamless E-government services at local, regional, national and European levels that will empower citizens and businesses. The main priorities and actions set out in this action plan are presented in Table 7. Table 7: E-government action plan priorities and actions

Priority User Empowerment

Actions Services designed around user needs and Inclusive Services Collaborative Production of Services Re-use of Public Sector Information Improvement of Transparency Involvement of citizens and businesses in policy-making processes

Internal Market

Seamless Services for Businesses Personal Mobility EU-wide implementation of cross-border services

Efficiency and Effectiveness of Governments and Administrations

Improving Organisational Processes Reduction of Administrative Burdens Green Government

Pre-conditions for developing E-government

Open Specifications and Interoperability Key Enablers Innovative E-government

The emergence of innovative technologies such as ‘service-oriented architectures’ (SOA), or ‘clouds’ of services, together with more open specifications which allow for greater sharing, re-use and interoperability reinforce the ability of ICT to play a key role in this quest for efficiency in the public sector.

2.4 Other EU initiatives Member States across Europe are modernising their public services through ICT. We run the risk, however, of having online national public services that are incompatible with one another. The online delivery of basic services, like company registration and tax filing, has seen successful growth in availability between 2000 and 2009 (from 21% to 71%), but the take-up of the services by the public does not follow the same trend21: only 42% of the EU population used online public services in 201122. 2.4.1

E-government research projects

To achieve the E-government goals agreed by the EU, research in the field must be carried out. The EU Framework Programmes (FP’s) are the main research programmes to provide answers and workable solutions. Several European research projects, funded by the 7th Framework Programme (and also by previous programmes) have addressed the issue of E-government and E-government Services. Since 1998, the EU has funded more than 80 E-government-related research projects under several Research Framework Programmes: 



FP5 (1998-2002): research in the E-government field was designed to support research in new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) which could make government services more user-friendly for citizens and easier to access, especially for marginalized groups in society. FP6 (2002-2006): the E-government research strategy focused on the core challenges to modernising public agencies by creating new and improved E-government services (services could be used by business and citizens, to save time and money in dealings with government).The second was to facilitate organisational transformation in the public sector. FP7 (2007-2013): research activities are designed to strengthen Europe’s scientific and technology base, help drive and stimulate innovation and creativity through ICT use and ensure that ICT progress is rapidly transformed into benefits for Europe’s citizens, businesses, industry and governments.

An analysis of projects funded by EU research programmes provides an overview of the state of the art of ICT use for Governance and Policy Modelling in terms of research, practice / application, market and policy. Future directions for research include a large number of themes that can be organised into five main research clusters23: 



Research cluster RC.1: Open Government Information & Intelligence for Transparency: Integrate the next generation of light-weight semantic technologies into the Governance and Policy Modelling context; Promote principles of open data and PSI reuse, as well as linked data and visual analytics. Research cluster RC.2: Social Networks, Citizen Engagement and Inclusion: Infuse a social dimension of the web into Governance and Policy Modelling; Exploit engagement and Eparticipation tools and techniques; Explore collective wisdom to facilitate decision-making in the public sector. Research cluster RC.3: Policy Making: This initially analyses the economic, social and environmental context as a preparatory stage for policy; Policy Simulation involves testing out the various models in an effort to pre-evaluate the application of a specific policy; Policy Evaluation provides the necessary qualitative and quantitative assessment mechanisms for monitoring the actual policy application. Research cluster RC.4: Identity Management and Trust in Governance; Need to safeguard citizens’ and public authorities’ digital presence; Identity management with federated identities, access control and authentication mechanisms in ubiquitous environments; Privacy and data protection.

The absence of the needed infrastructure, the digital divide and the lack of competencies and skills needed (see Table 5) help to explain this slow uptake 22

Research EU, FOKUS Magazine, nº 12, February 2012

Paving the Way for Future Research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling, (ed.) Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathali & Dimitris Askounis, 2012 20



Research cluster RC.5: Future Internet for Collaborative Governance; Transparent and multichannel service provision via the Internet of Services; Low cost cloud infrastructures emerging from Cloud Computing advancements; Better human-computer interfaces and seamless interaction with non-conventional web devices that communicate in the ‘Internet of Things’.

2.4.2

European Large Scale Pilot Projects

Member States across the EU looking to modernise their public services through the use of ICT should avoid establishing online national public services that are incompatible with one another. Failing to ensure compatibility would create additional electronic barriers at a time when the cross-border delivery of E-government services, one of the main policy recommendations from the 2009 E-government conference in Malmö, is already lagging behind. EU-funded projects already have a successful track record in terms of generating impact, visibility and achieving sustainable solutions that work beyond national borders. Under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme24, a series of initiatives, including Large Scale Pilot Projects (LSPs), were launched to engage stakeholders (public authorities, industry and business representative centres across the EU) in the implementation of common solutions aimed at delivering online public services and making them cross-border. In order to support interoperability of services and the mobility of citizens and businesses, five such LSPs were promoted: e-CODEX, epSOS, SPOCS, STORK, and PEPPOL. Further information on these pilot projects can be found in annexe 5 (European Large Scale Pilots). 2.4.3

Other European Programmes

The EU's cohesion policy, under the European Territorial Cooperation’s (ETC) objective, supports cooperation within the EU. With a Community contribution of almost €8.7 billion, the European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) policy has reached a new scale and now comprises 53 cross-border programmes, 13 transnational programmes, one interregional programme and three networking programmes. The three strands of the ETC Objective The cross-border strand aims to transform regions located on either side of internal or external borders of the European Union into strong economic and social hubs. In particular cross-border actions are encouraged in the fields of entrepreneurship, improving joint management of natural resources, supporting links between urban and rural areas, improving access to transport and communication networks, developing joint use of infrastructure, administrative cooperation and capacity building, employment, community interaction, culture and social affairs. The transnational strand promotes cooperation between greater European regions, including regions centred around sea basins (e.g. Baltic Sea Region, North Sea, Mediterranean and Atlantic Area) or mountain ranges (e.g. Alpine Space) and facilitates coordinated strategic responses to joint challenges such as flood management, transport and communication corridors, international business and research linkages, urban development and others. Special attention is given to outermost and island regions (e.g. Indian Ocean, Caribbean Area or Northern Periphery). The interregional strand provides a framework for the exchange of experiences between local and regional actors from across Europe in order to contribute to the EU’s strategies on growth, jobs and sustainable development. In addition, it aims at reducing disparities by matching less experienced regions with more advanced regions in the various policy fields such as innovation, demographic change, energy supply and climate change. The interregional co-operation programme (INTERREG IVC) and three networking programmes (Urbact II, Interact II and ESPON) cover all Member States of the EU. They provide a framework for exchanging experience between regional and local bodies in different countries. ERDF contribution: €445 million. The following 3 Networking Programmes complete the ETC Objective. -

ESPON is the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion. It studies and makes forecasts on European territorial development. URBACT facilitates exchange between Europe's cities on integrated urban development. INTERACT is the cooperation and exchange network for territorial cooperation programmes.

Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (http://ec.europa.eu/cip/) 21

The mission of the ESPON 2013 Programme is to: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Support policy development in relation to the aim of territorial cohesion and a harmonious development of the European territory by (1) providing comparable information, evidence, analyses and scenarios on territorial dynamics and (2) revealing territorial capital and potentials for development of regions and larger territories contributing to European competitiveness, territorial cooperation and a sustainable and balanced developmentâ&#x20AC;?. With the creation of the URBACT Programme in 2002, the European Union made a commitment to promote balanced, dynamic urban development. It created URBACT, a programme focusing on cities and designed to promote the exchange of good practices. URBACT enables cities to work together to find and share innovative, sustainable and integrated solutions to major urban challenges. URBACT follows in the footsteps of the European URBAN programme, which focused on an integrated and participative approach to urban renewal in deprived neighbourhoods. From 2003 to 2006, 28 URBACT I projects worked together, focusing on six key topics: Citizen participation, Economic development and employment, Immigrant populations, Integrated urban renewal, Urban security, Young people. URBACT I involved the participation of 274 partners (cities, states, regional authorities, universities, private organisations, charities) from 29 countries. URBACT I outputs, including case studies, recommendations, tool boxes, and more, were made available to everyone who is involved in city policy throughout Europe. On 2007 October 2nd, the European Commission adopted URBACT II, which ended in 2013. URBACT II projects each had 6 to 12 partners who worked together for 2 to 3 years to develop effective and sustainable responses to major urban challenges. INTERACT supports territorial cooperation between Regions of the EU. It promotes cooperation as a tool for growth and change through cooperation on strategy and joint policy development. INTERACT I focused on the immediate needs of the three INTERREG community initiatives providing them with support aimed to increase their efficiency as well as contribute to their quality. The main target groups were the management bodies and key stakeholders of the 62 cross-border, 13 transnational and four interregional programmes involved. The core target group at management level included Managing and Paying Authorities, Joint Technical Secretariats, public administrations and programme committees involved in the steering, management and control of INTERREG III programmes at national, regional and local levels. 25 Member States, two candidate countries (Bulgaria and Romania) and two Associated Countries (Norway and Switzerland) also participated in INTERACT I. INTERACT I services were delivered by five INTERACT points spread across Europe, and the INTERACT Programme Secretariat. Unlike the current programme, INTERACT I had projects, which were funded out of Priority 2 and Priority 3 Measure 2. Priority 2 of the Programme aimed at the development of local and regional initiatives that contribute to the development of the institutions involved in the INTERREG programme. Priority 3 Measure 2 of the Programme aimed at developing projects that contribute to the development of joint cooperation tools and mechanisms at the external border. INTERACT has carried out several thematic analyses (on Energy, Culture & Creative Industries or through the Mediterranean Lab Group) and established cooperation with different ETC programmes and other funding instruments, such as Intelligent Energy Europe or the Seventh Framework Programme. The Interregional Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVC enables cooperation between regional and local authorities from different countries in the EU28, Norway, and Switzerland. This takes the form of projects in which authorities exchange and transfer their experiences and jointly develop approaches and instruments aimed at improving the effectiveness of regional development policies and contributing to economic modernisation. In line with the Community Strategic Guidelines for Cohesion Policy 20072013, the programme aims to contribute to the Union's strategy for growth and jobs. The INTERREG IVC Programme, part of the European Territorial Cooperation Objective of the Structural Fund policies for the period 2007-2013, is the only truly interregional programme that covers the whole territory of the European Union, plus Norway and Switzerland, and that co-finances the participation of public authorities and bodies governed by public law from these countries. As such, INTERREG IVC is an important instrument for the implementation of the EU initiative Regions for Economic Change25 (RFEC). RFEC is designed to highlight good practice in urban and regional development, with a particular focus on innovation, and to speed up the transfer of Good Practices

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/cooperate/regions_for_economic_change/index_en.cfm 22

designed to enhance the quality and impact of the EU’s regional development programmes and their implementation by the EU’s Member States and regions, with a view to supporting the EU policy objectives of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, as outlined in the EU’s 2020 strategy. Interregional cooperation aims to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies and contribute to economic modernisation and the increased competitiveness of Europe by enabling local and regional players across the EU to exchange their experiences and knowledge and by matching regions less experienced in a certain policy field with more advanced regions. Examples of projects from these programmes will be presented in section 3.3.

2.5 Added value of the interregional cooperation on E-government INTERREG IVC in its first priority ‘Innovation and the Knowledge Economy’, addresses several subthemes such as innovation, research and technology development; entrepreneurship and SMEs; the information society; employment, human capital and education. The Information Society sub-theme focuses on the exchange of experiences and knowledge, the transfer and further development of policies dedicated to:  Developing ICT-based public services so as to increase the effectiveness and competitiveness of businesses and entrepreneurs.  Promoting the development and use of ICT-based services and products (for example in public services for E-government and E-health, bringing E-government to regions and businesses).  Enhancing public participation in the information society, e.g. programmes for improving computer skills.  Establishing better ICT connections between regions. It is clear from these objectives that the INTERREG IVC Programme can play a fundamental role in addressing challenges and overcoming barriers, thus helping to make the objectives of the European E-government Action Plan achievable, and contribute decisively to the objectives of the EU 2020 strategy. The inter-regional approach of the INTERREG IVC Programme is obviously an added value when compared with other European and National programmes: by promoting connections and experience sharing between different European regions, a positive feedback mechanism can be created in these initiatives. Moreover, looking at the information society sub-theme, it is clear that this programme addresses the main barriers to the successful implementation of E-government Services (Table 5). The ‘Free Italia Wi-Fi’ good practice (from project I-SPEED) is a very good example of the added value of the INTERREG IVC Programme. Through this good practice, which was a spin-off from the I-SPEED project, it was possible to overcome geographical restrictions to the offering of free public Wi-Fi by local administrations by developing an approach to provide free wireless access within areas covered by individual partner administrations. This good practice will be analysed in detail in chapter 3. Projects like DLA, eCitizen II, OSEPA, I-SPEED, PIKE, IMMODI, RTF, CASA, DC, e-Create, EuroPROC, DAA, DANTE are just a few examples of the projects co-financed by INTERREG IVC that have supported or are supporting the transition from current E-government to a new generation of open, flexible, collaborative and seamless E-government services at local, regional, national and European levels. Further information on these projects can be found in Annexes 3 and 4.

3. Analysis This chapter, which constitutes the main body of the report, will now focus on the analysis of individual projects, describing some of the Good Practices with innovative or transferable aspects. It includes the aggregated analysis at the INTERREG IVC programme level aimed at benchmarking the knowledge produced by E-government focused projects and their content, demonstrating the added value of interregional cooperation. Besides the INTERREG IVC universe, other relevant projects from ETC and FP programmes will also be addressed in this section. This section will conclude with an acknowledgement of the emerging issues and also of the current trends in this theme.

3.1 INTERREG IVC’s contribution to E-government INTERREG IVC includes a significant number of projects and participants – 204 projects involving 2274 partners – and the knowledge generated in the most projects relates mainly to capacity building, leading to the transfer of practices and policy improvements. In the projects, participating regions learn from each other and exploit the knowledge created by individual participants for the benefit of all the participants in the project. Of the 111 projects, the INTERREG IVC JTS identified six that address E-government services, which constitute the ‘core’ of this analysis. Further details on these core projects, including facts & figures, can be found in Annexe 1 to this report.

Figure 4: E-government Services core projects

An initial assessment of the core projects was performed solely on the basis of the information listed in the INTERREG IVC database, the aim being to confirm that they belong to the E-government Services theme. The analysis of the INTERREG IVC Good Practices database was conducted in order to verify the thematic relevance of the selected projects. A total of 102 Good Practices were assessed (4 for PIKE, 7 for DLA, 7 for IMMODI, 18 for eCitizen II, 32 for I-SPEED, and 34 for OSEPA) – resulting in a list of questions / topics for further discussion for each Good Practice. These Good Practices are accessible in the INTERREG IVC database26. A final selection of the Core Projects and Satellite Projects for ‘E-government services’ was then performed. The Core Projects addressed were those suggested by the Secretariat, and following a more in-depth analysis, other projects were included as Satellite projects on the list of projects addressed by the exercise. The selection of core and satellite projects was based on an analysis of Good Practices and policies. The projects DLA, eCitizen II, OSEPA, I-SPEED, PIKE and IMMODI were selected as core projects, as all included Good Practices related to three or more of the following topics: Efficiency & Effectiveness, Benchmarking of services; Inclusive E-government; E-identity and E-security; Eparticipation, E-democracy and E-voting; E-procurement; Services for Business; Services for Citizens; Infrastructure; Interoperability; Legal Aspects; Multi-channel Delivery; Open Source; Policy; Regional and Local Services; User-centric Services.

http://db.interreg4c.eu 24

Upon analysis of the project database, other projects where identified as potential, core, or satellite: RTF, CASA, DC, DAA, e-Create, EuroPROC, and DANTE. Table 8: E-government Services core and satellite projects Project

Comment

DLA

Common methodology for the implementation of Digital Local Agenda and its impact on regional digital policies

CORE project

eCitizen II

Towards citizen-centred E-government in European cities and regions

CORE project

OSEPA

Open Source software usage by European Public Administrations

CORE project

I-SPEED

Information Society Policies for Sustainable European Economic Development

CORE project

PIKE*

Promotion Innovation and the Knowledge Economy

CORE project

IMMODI*

Implementing Modi

CORE project

RTF

Regional Telemedicine Forum

Satellite project

CASA

Consortium for Assistive Solutions Adoption

Satellite project

Digital Cities

Satellite project

e-Create

Cultural Routes Enhancement

EuroPROC

EU Regional Cooperation for SMEs access to Public Procurement

Satellite project

DAA

Design led Innovations for Active Ageing

Satellite project

DANTE

Digital Agenda for New Tourism Approach in European Rural and Mountain Areas

Satellite project

Entrepreneurship

and

Technologies

Satellite project

* only during the first year of the exercise

The six individual core projects are presented in the next sections. This presentation is structured to include the main objective, general information (partners included in the consortium), focus of the project, innovative practices, lessons learnt and policy recommendations. Tailored recommendations to the projects are also included. The innovative practices identified in each project are described in detail, including its objectives, context, main results, and lessons learnt. These practices are also classified according to the E-government paradigm, target (according to the definitions in Table 1) and priority (according to the priorities in Table 7). For the innovative practices deemed relevant to the E-government Services theme, an additional analysis is included in the form of ‘Project Testimonials’, related to the following questions:  Why should this be considered as a Good Practice?  What particular features make it unique?  How has the project contributed towards the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice?  To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? This analysis of the individual projects will be the basis for the aggregated analysis, developed in the next section. These six CORE projects account for 78 Good Practices, 19 of which are directly related to E-government services (25%). The most relevant of these Good Practices are described in the next sections. Data (facts and figures) about each of these projects are presented in Annexe 3. Annexe 4 presents the same information but for the satellite projects.

3.1.1

DLA – Digital Local Agenda

The project Digital Local Agenda defines itself as a common strategy shared with citizens for the development of the Information Society, which takes into account socio-economic, cultural, and institutional factors. The digital divide in Europe is a reality, and the economic and social development of European regions is largely conditioned by the degree of implementation of the Information Society. The main objective is to improve regional policies and to promote new activities related to the application of ICT in the provision of public services.

http://www.projectdla.eu

This project identified five good practices, and one was transferred. It also contributed to the improvement of one local/regional policy.

DLA is implemented by 11 partners from 11 different regions, and its main objective is to “improve regional policies in the field of information Society through the introduction of the Digital Local Agenda.” 3.1.1.1 Some Good Practices from DLA From the pool of Good Practices and other initiatives explored, four stand out as innovative. These are described immediately below, while the remaining good practices are available in the good practice database. Innovative GPs:    

CityWiki Karlsruhe (online regional information portal for the citizens, tourists and businesses; makes it easier for new citizens to get to know the region and the city, provides historic information for citizens), Gesundheitsnetz Ostalbkreis (health web - online portal providing information on various health issues offering citizens an overview of health services in a remote area), Online Municipal Services (an innovative Internet portal concept for citizens), Web Portal for the Municipality of Patras (advanced electronic government system, to serve citizens and businesses, offering sections tailored to the type of visitor).

CityWiki Karlsruhe - Germany (online regional information portal for by the citizens for tourists) Classification: Society-centric (paradigm); C2C (target) and User Empowerment (priority) The StadtWiki Karlsruhe (CitiWiki Karlsruhe) is an online information portal for the people of the region. It was initiated in 2004 by a citizen of Karlsruhe. Inspired by the ‘wisdom of crowds’ logic, the wiki is not administered by a single person or authority; rather, it allows citizens to write posts and articles and share their knowledge. Creating E-government services inspired by the ‘wisdom of crowds’. The wiki also offers citizens an overview of important events and dates in the region in several languages. It is designed to be an information portal for tourists and business people, and its main objectives are to make it easier for new citizens to get to know the region and the city, and to be a maintainer/provider of historic information for citizens. This initiative is applicable to other European cities/ regions as it is relatively easy to introduce and does not require permanent administrative manpower since it is administered and updated by citizens and other interested users. Success relies on creating an active and interested community of users.

Gesundheitsnetz Ostalbkreis – Germany (health web - online portal providing information on various health issues offering citizens an overview of health services in the province of Ostwürttemberg) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and User Empowerment (priority) Since September 2007, the internet portal www.gesundheitsnetz-ostalbkreis.de has offered healthrelated information for citizens in the province of Ostwürttemberg (Germany). The portal was initiated by ‘Media@Komm-Transfer’, a nationwide E-government contest, in which the Ostalbkreis county administration participated. Offering E-government services aimed at providing citizens with information on public health.

As a result of this initiative, several lessons and recommendations can be highlighted:  It is difficult to find members (paying health providers), which requires intense communication efforts through various channels (email, direct mailing, etc.);  it is difficult to compete with Google because establishing a known regional information platform requires a considerable effort (4-year-plus timeframe);  the challenge is not technology but the continued promotion and dynamics of the platform. Online Municipal Services / Balcão de Atendimento Virtual – Portugal (Services for citizens in the city of Porto) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2B/G2C (target) and the Efficiency and effectiveness of Government and administration (priority) The Balcão de Atendimento Virtual (BAV) portal is an innovative concept for an internet portal. This portal offers all the information and tools needed for a citizen to interact with city hall. BAV’s portal information is provided in a citizen-centric view according to the needs of the users, and not in a services view as used by traditional portals. In other words, the information is filtered, organised, and presented in different ways depending on the user profile, or the user needs. A portal with a Citizen-centric view and not a government-centric view. BAV’s portal also provides full online services, from the submission of forms to online payment or process tracking, providing convenience and saving time for citizens and businesses by avoiding travel and waiting times. As an innovation, the BAV portal also has an advanced search engine and a back office, which will become the content manager for all sites from the municipality of Porto. Web Portal for the Municipality of Patras – Greece (Services for the citizens and business in the city of Patras) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2B/G2C (target) and effectiveness of Government and administration (priority) In response to the challenges of improving public administration and citizen service, the Municipality of Patras created an advanced electronic government system designed to serve citizens and businesses, offering thematic sections according to the type of visitor, whether citizen or visitor, or company operating within the limits of the municipality. Creating an advanced electronic government system designed to serve citizens and businesses, offering tailored thematic sections.

The portal's Guide for Citizens is a typical citizen-centric approach. It is an attempt to categorize all the services provided by the Municipality of Patras and all the useful information that can make everyday life a little easier. This initiative highlighted a number of important aspects related to the implementation of advanced E-government services:  They enhance the quality of services offered to citizens at local, regional and national level.  They encourage citizens to participate in public local decision-making.  Interoperability between local and national information systems makes public services more efficient and faster. PROJECT TESTIMONIALS Why should this be considered as a Good Practice? The Web Portal for the Municipality of Patras can be considered as a Good Practice because it is a typical example of a modern Electronic government system aimed at serving citizens and business on a local level. It is implemented following the specifications of the Greek E-government Interoperability Framework (Greek E-GIF: http://www.E-gif.gov.gr), which is the cornerstone of the Digital Strategy 2006-2013 for the transition and adjustment of the requirements of modern times and is directly related to the objectives and direction of European policy 2010. What particular features make it unique? The way it provides citizen-oriented services that help citizens to better understand the structure of the municipality and enables them to navigate around the ‘organisational map’ and to communicate directly with the appropriate department or contact person. This practice enhances the quality of services offered to citizens in the Municipality of Patras, creating willingness to participate in public local decision-making. Furthermore, it guarantees interoperability between local and national information systems, which makes public services more efficient and faster. How has the project contributed towards the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? A study on the benefits and results of this practice, both for citizens and for stakeholders, was conducted during the project. This study demonstrates that this good practice contributes positively to achieving the following Digital Local Agenda Action Goals (see DLA manifesto):  E-participation (improving the quality of information; integration and interoperability; linking existing legacy systems),  E-inclusion (enabling local civil society groups to participate actively in decision processes), and  Advanced municipal and local services (ensuring that all citizens can interact with public authorities through a single access point; using models of seamless services delivery that are citizen-centred). To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? This practice is replicable to other regions. Each region can use this practice as a model and develop their own system adapted to their requirements using new technologies and with a view to providing better services to citizens and businesses. The practice and results of the study were disseminated to DLA partners for the purpose of providing this knowledge to other regions.

3.1.1.2 Lessons learnt and recommendations These initiatives show that citizen involvement can bootstrap and create sustainable services. Opening up data from the regions (e.g. historical data) to these initiatives is one way to create user involvement, but feedback and recognition on the citizen participation is key to long-term sustainability. Moreover, establishing regional information platforms that score highly in terms of public recognition requires intense communication efforts through various channels and time (4-year-plus timeframe); technology is not the challenge, but the continued promotion and continuous evolution of the platform is. 28

The findings and lessons from this project show that, in the case of public administrations, the adoption of ICT tools in day-to-day practices brings immediate improvements: more efficiency, more productivity, and better services for citizens and businesses. However, the extent to which E-government services are developed in public authorities across Europe varies somewhat across regions. The DLA project should further explore the tool used for defining the Digital Local Agenda and apply this tool in the definition of robust action plans for the regions involved; based on these action plans, each region should explore the opportunities in the next Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020. As stated before, this tool is relevant for other regions in Europe and should be further disseminated along with the practices ‘Online Municipal Services’ and ‘Web Portal for the Municipality of Patras’. Moreover, the regions involved in the DLA project could usefully look at the practice ‘eLocal’ from the project PIKE and several practices from the project OSEPA. 3.1.2

eCitizen II

The aim of the eCitizen II project is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and good practices regarding E-Participation between the cities and regions of Europe. The main methods for knowledge transfer are international joint seminars and study tours. This project identified eighteen good practices in total and one was transferred. It also contributed to the improvement of one local/regional policy.

http://www.baltic.org/projects/ecitizen_ii/

eCitizen II is implemented by 13 partners from 12 different regions and the main overarching objective of eCitizen II is “how to utilize better the developed eParticipation policies, strategies and services in accelerating the eGovernment development and improve involvement of citizens in local decision-making process to provide high-quality public services”.

3.1.2.1 Some Good Practices from eCitizen II From the pool of Good Practices explored, the project selected one best practice that was subject to transfer between regions according to the action plans: Vas Nazor. Vas Nazor – Czech Republic (Online participation tool for Czech municipalities in Vysocina region) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority) The online participation tool Vas Nazor (Your Opinion) is a tool for online democracy development allowing citizens to participate online in the decision preparation process. This online solution provides tools for the municipality to present background and recent information about the topic, allowing citizens to register as users and give their opinion about the topic under public discussion. Developing online participation tools designed to involve citizens in the decision preparation process.

The online participation tool Vas Nazor has already been introduced into seven municipalities of the Vysocina region (Czech Republic), and its introduction into several additional municipalities is being considered. Vas Nazor is based on the experience of the Valma online participation tool from Tampere, Finland - www.tampere.fi/valma -and is the direct result of knowledge and experience transfer between those two partners.

3.1.2.2 Lessons learnt and recommendations The main output of the project – the ‘Pan-European Online Manual of E-Participation Best Practices’ (www.eparticipation.eu) – and some of the best practices in the manual were the basis for the lessons learnt and policy recommendations (see below) resulting from the project: for example Budjetti Kone27 and MyMoney28 show how to improve communication with citizens by using visual information. More than 80 cases are currently described in the online manual, as well as examples for different Good Practices and recommendations. This initiative, which aims to improve E-participation by providing best practices and experiences from different contexts and regions, can be classified as Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority). From the available practices, a set of lessons were drawn:  Participation first, then ‘e’-participation, (participation needs to be first accepted by the community).  Design process rules with regard to the newest communication technologies (E-participation is not only about e-mails, Facebook or tweets; E-participation needs to be a clear and defined process for municipal organisations and for all the stakeholders).  Not everybody is an E-citizen yet (we need to consider all acceptable channels and ways to bring citizens into one common discussion space). Policy recommendations: address several issues that were found during the project:  Historical, cultural, legal backgrounds are very different (not possible to transfer E-participation practices directly, they need to be localised and adapted to local culture and needs).  Some national legislation demands participation, some leave it optional.  Some countries provide trusted online identity, a lot of countries still do not (for example, electronic identification based on the national ID card).  A lot of municipalities are taking up the E-participation challenge, but others are ignoring it until it is made compulsory. Several barriers need to be overcome (related to language, culture, gender roles, social competences, traditions, fears and ignorance, mistrust or lack of trust of new tools and channels). One example that is illustrative of some of these findings is the transfer of a Good Practice from Valma to Vaz Nazor involving the adoption of the Valma online E-participation forum in the region of Vysocina. (This was created by the city of Tampere under the eCitizen project to enable citizens to participate in the city council decision-making process.) The transfer clearly showed what barriers exist and how they can be addressed. For example, one of the main lessons learnt is that not everyone is an ‘E-citizen’ yet, so it is important to strike the right balance between new media (internet and social media, e-mail, etc.) and traditional media (with printed materials, information centres, etc.). These experiences show that Egovernment services can create a significant potential for increased citizen activity and participation in governmental processes, but also emphasise the need to make public resources accessible, thereby enabling their reuse to create real measurable benefits for the citizens. The eCitizen II project should explore further the online E-participation portal and disseminate this tool to other regions in Europe.

3.1.3

IMMODI (IMplementing DIgital MOuntain)

The main objective of IMMODI29, implementing digital development in mountain areas, is to address a shared regional policy issue: the access to and development of E-government and E-health services in mountainous and rural regions and territories of the EU. This objective contributes to overcoming the phenomenon of isolation and to improving the living standards of citizens in mountain and rural areas.

http://www.budjettikone.fi

http://minuraha.ee/minu-raha/

http://www.interreg-immodi.net

Reaching the Heights with ICT: Best practices guide for mountain and rural areas, http://www.interregimmodi.net 30

The main project objective will be to reduce the cultural and skills divide that is a feature of less accessible and mountain areas, helping to reduce this isolation phenomenon by the dissemination and implementation of proven Good Practices for new public services and opportunities. IMMODI is an INTERREG IVC Capitalisation project30, which brings together 10 partners from European Regions (NUTS II), representing seven European countries (Italy, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland and Sweden). This project identified seven good practices in total, and seven actions plans were developed. It also contributed to improving five local/regional policies, and the total of mainstream funds (Cohesion / ERDF / ESF) dedicated to the implementation of the good practices amounted to €15 520100.

IMMODI is implemented by 10 partners from seven different regions and the main objective is the “transfer of experience, knowledge and Good Practices on E-government and E-health among different European Regions with the aim of overcoming the isolation phenomenon and improving the living standards of citizens of mountain and rural areas”. IMMODI is focused on the transfer of E-government and E-health Good Practices into the mainstream Operational Programmes of partner regions. Seven Action Plans were developed by the participating Regions, defining the methodological, technical, and financial guidelines for the implementation of imported Good Practices. In the initial stages of these action plans, there was a close dialogue between project partners and the representatives of their managing authorities: relevant stakeholders responsible for regional programmes were strongly involved in the project through participation in technical and policy workshops and other specific meetings. 3.1.3.1 Some Good Practices from IMMODI From the pool of Good Practices explored (14 Good Practices in total), the project selected seven good practices that were subject to transfer between regions according to the action plans. These will be described next, while the remaining good practices are available in the good practice database. These good practices (5 in E-government Services and 2 in E-health) can be presented as examples of innovative approaches: 

Augment (enables disabled people to get involved and participate in municipality topics; fosters E-inclusion and E-participation),



Valma (is an E-participation system enabling citizens to be involved in political decisionmaking),



Telecentres (Cybercantal telecentre and Point Visio Public) (pool services and the complementary expertise of teleworkers), public video conference spots (public service and access to public authorities to citizens in rural areas),



Check-up care (is home health care that provides capabilities for self-management and improving regional health service systems),



Nurse Gudrun (increases accessibility to care services and provides effective community services), and



Rayuela platform (designed to implement public strategy in education and improve educational resources.).

Augment – Sweden (Services for the public in the region of Bleking) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority) Mobile technologies have not been widely used to improve accessibility in mountain regions. The objective of Augment is to provide location-based mobile services that create the new possibilities for the disabled. These services allow the disabled to interactively share and co-create information and knowledge about accessibility resources and barriers.

These are interregional cooperation projects focusing specifically on the transfer of regional development good practices into Structural Funds mainstream programmes. 31

Making it possible for people with disabilities to participate in society and making the region more accessible.

Augment started out as a research and development project between the regional university and a municipality, and, in 2010, a proof-of-concept project was initiated. Currently, it is being tested on local, regional, and national levels by a number of user-groups. The accessibility of content is user-driven and relies on the active participation and interest of the users of the services. Citizens, using a mobile application for Android, can easily get timely and accurate information about the status of accessibility in a specific location and can also contribute by updating the information. Augment was developed through collaboration between academia, civil society, and public administrations. It is an example of how success can be achieved through a combination of competences, partnerships, and the importance of co-design at the local and regional levels. Sustainability in these services has to be based on user-generated content and on the active participation of citizens. Valma – Finland (E-participation in the region of Kainuu) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority) Valma functions as a digital forum enabling citizens to participate in the city council decision-making process, allowing them to express their opinion on current issues under discussion. A Local Democracy Unit was established in 2004 in Tampere and, since then, has coordinated all the city E-participation tools and initiatives including Valma. Its main objectives are to involve members of the public in the city’s decision-making processes and to improve public services. Approaches to involve members of the public in the city’s decision-making process. To make such approaches work, it is important to involve decision-makers in the forum. The electronic management of documents and their workflow is also an important aspect to take into consideration to speed up the progress of decision-making. However, active citizens who like to give opinions and who are seeking to improve their daily life are needed to make the forum a useful tool. Internet coverage is also one of the main requirements for the successful implementation of this practice. More than technologically sound solutions, changes in mentality are instrumental in making this practice a success, and such changes require more time: encouraging citizens to use this kind of forum can be challenging. The ‘network effect’ applies to this type of approach: the more participants in the forum, the more relevant and significant the feedback becomes. Cybercantal telecentre – France (Services for the citizens in the region of Auvergne) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) The telecentre (Maison de Services) is a tailor-made area designed to boost the dynamism of the region by providing new job opportunities for citizens, thereby resulting in the creation of micro-enterprises, the revitalisation of the local economy, and the attraction of new workers. The telecentre targets teleworkers who are employees or self-employed, offering office space and equipment, a pooled secretarial facility, and access to meeting rooms, video-conferencing, and free training to project leaders who want to set themselves up for teleworking. Using telecentres to boost the local economy. Success in this type of initiative is linked to three main factors: the choice of a work site that offers a range of pooled services, coupling training with support as well as the availability of premises, and the setting up of an annual teleworking forum. Providing a satisfactory internet connection to the various services is mandatory but not the only requirement. Clearly stated political will and technical support are also instrumental for the success of telecentres. The main strengths of this initiative lie in the pooling of 32

various services (teleworking, multimedia area, access to public services, etc.), its use as a training centre, a forum to raise awareness of the services available through teleworking, and the complementary expertise among teleworkers. PROJECT TESTIMONIES Why should this be considered as a Good Practice? The Cybercantal telecentre can be considered a good practice due to its original and innovative character, which can be seen in the telecentre created by the Murat Community Council. It not only provides traditional services (renting of offices, shared services for secretarial support, meeting rooms, etc.), but also offers training sessions to help people, particularly jobseekers, to create their own businesses in this field. What particular features make it unique? The real added value of this project is the provision of training in teleworking for people who want to create their own businesses. Training allows the optimal use of resources during the training period and thereafter, since most trainees set up their businesses and are either native to Cantal or choose to stay in Cantal after their training. Thus, they become tenants of an office several days a week. Professionals based at the telecentre can also exchange skills and services. How has the project contributed to the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? The good practice has been shared with all the IMMODI partners, and two have decided to adopt it. The good practice has been adopted by the Provincial Council of Badajoz, in Spain’s Extremadura region and by the Blekinge region in Sweden. The region of Badajoz decided to import this practice for the purpose of implementing the ‘Autonomous Organisation for Equality and Local Development’ of Badajoz, given its high impact on social services and policies in mountainous and sparsely populated rural areas. To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? Transferring this experience to another region or country is easy, but care has to be taken to ensure the inclusion of training activities in the specialisation chosen, since one of the key success factors identified was the need to couple training and support with the provision of premises.

Point Visio Public – France (Services for the citizens in the region of Auvergne) Classification: Citizen-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and the Efficiency and effectiveness of Governments and administration (priority) The PVP is a virtual public-services reception counter31 set up in a public area with high-speed Internet access. Thanks to the video-conferencing terminal, users can communicate with public-service officials, and exchange documents by means of a printer and a scanner. Its main goal is to bring public services closer to the public; not to replace existing public services but to offer services where there are none or where there is poor provision. Bringing public services be closer to the public.

The main objectives of this initiative are therefore to offer equal access to public services by providing easier access to services without increasing needed resources and making it easier for people to get in touch with public services by encouraging a close geographical relationship.

Virtual replica of the reception desks found in public administration offices. 33

The success of such an initiative rests on political backing, awareness, the right fit between service supply and demand, partnerships set up by the regional public authorities, and its integration into a national strategy for the development of digital use. Requirements for successful implementation include a satisfactory Internet connection (minimum ADSL connection rated at 1024 / 256 kbps), a help desk for daily support of the whole PVP community, and the constant development of the service. Check-up care â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sweden (home health care providing capabilities for self-management and improving regional health service systems in the region of Blekinge) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority) When it comes to routine checks, there is a more effective solution than the traditional one, i.e. where the patient has to go to the care institution and spend time in the waiting room. This new solution is to make it possible for the patients themselves to perform certain medical tests in their own home or at the care centre. The main goal of this initiative is to provide a solution for easy-access, adaptable, and independent nursing/medical service at a distance. Initiative designed to save time for nurses and patients. One solution found which makes frequent check-ups possible and follow-ups easier is called Check-Up Care. The system includes a bag containing measuring devices to check blood pressure, ECG, pulse, weight, blood sugar, heart rate, oxygen saturation, PEF, FEV1, Warfarin, etc. The patients self-check their values at home, and the information is sent wirelessly from the measuring device to an access point on the network, and then via internet to the central hospital. The information is then available for health care professionals for evaluation and analysis. When necessary, the patient is contacted and called for a check-up at the hospital. Requirements for the successful implementation of the practice include gaining support from the local health administration and selecting measuring instruments that best match the needs of the region. Nurse Gudrun â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sweden (increases accessibility to care services and provides effective community services in the region of Blekinge) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2E/G2C (target) and user empowerment (priority) Blekinge County Council is setting up a lab for the testing of IT solutions in real-life nursing and care environments. The tools and technology are developed here prior to being made available for use, and research related to nursing and care is conducted. The aim of the project is to identify and influence the factors and circumstances that contribute to positive health development. Boosting communication through IT and TV support. The Virtual Health Plaza is a supportive environment where people can find information on health issues and inspiration to improve their health. A Virtual Health Plaza improves dialogue on health between the user and the medical services and provides a place where people can discuss issues and factors that affect their health. Local anchorage is important, as it also offers the possibility to book medical appointments and other activities. Co-ordinated patient-care planning through video conferences is used to create a new meeting place, and a new tool for increased accessibility and thus of a higher quality through Video Talks. With the Care Channel, the care recipient can, via the TV or the computer at home, contact the health and medical services and other care services. Net-Based Learning demonstrates how digital technology can develop the skills of personnel and residents by supplementing net-based consultation, education, and supervision. Nurse GudrunÂ´s Full-Scale Lab is being developed through the joint cooperation of academia, public administration, and civil society. This is an example of a successful combination of competences and partnerships with the aim of reducing obstacles in communication between patients and care-giving organisations. The sustainability of such initiatives such as Nurse Gudrun is based on user-generated content and is designed for continuous development. 34

Rayuela Platform – Spain (Services for the public in the region of Estremadura) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2E/G2C (target) and the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Governments and administration (priority) Under the IMMODI project, the ‘Rayuela Platform’ has been identified as an innovative approach. The ‘Rayuela Platform’ is an educational platform that brings together all the services related to education in the Estremadura region (Spain): academic and administrative; organisational; technical; and education and social services. Currently, this platform has more than 4 000 registered users. Improving and developing public services in the education system through the use of new technologies? This platform is part of a regional strategy to address the continuous decrease in population, with an investment in educational ICT. The pre-requisites for its implementation are mostly technical (ICTenabled classrooms, broadband connections, etc.) and skills-related (support team, training of the teachers, etc.). 3.1.3.2 Lessons and recommendations Based on these experiences, the difficulties in the transfer and adoption of best practices were identified and became the focus for policy recommendations. These were different legislative systems and territorial contexts; different public service provision systems; and difficulty in creating the necessary involvement and political commitment from decision-makers. Moreover, these experiences were also very helpful in understanding how to overcome the market failure scenario typical of mountainous, low-density populated areas, and how to provide essential and innovative services to areas and communities that would otherwise never have been attractive for commercial ICT companies. This can only be achieved through the active participation of all local and regional stakeholders. The IMMODI project should further explore their practices with regard to the provision of administrative and health services in remote locations and seek to promote and integrate their practices in other relevant initiatives. One interesting initiative that would be relevant to explore is the ‘Future Internet PPP32’, which offers several opportunities for future development.

3.1.4

I-SPEED – Information Society Policies sustainable European Economic Development

for

The project ISPEED has collected Good Practices from the ISPEED partnership and from other regions and cities in Europe, which, in different ways, demonstrate how ICT can be used to foster competitiveness and sustainability in the tourism sector in a way that ensures the quality of life and makes regions and cities more attractive for both visitors and inhabitants.

http://www.ispeed.eu

This project identified 32 good practices in total, and three of those were transferred. It also contributed to the improvement of eleven local/regional policies. I-SPEED is implemented by ten partners from ten different regions, and the main objective is to “rais[e] awareness among policymakers about the Information Society potential to improve public services and foster the growth and competitiveness of the European Tourism Economy.”

http://www.fi-ppp.eu 35

3.1.4.1 Some Good Practices from I-SPEED From the pool of Good Practices and other initiatives explored, six examples of innovative approaches were subject to transfer between regions. These will be described next, while the remaining can be found in the INTERREG IVC database. These Good Practices (four in ICT and cultural heritage tourism and three in E-government Services) were the basis for the lessons learnt and policy recommendations resulting from the project. These GPs are Domus Romane, Appia Antica, Chopin 2010, Venice connected, Free Italia Wi-Fi (I-SPEED spin off), and Leaping Stiles. Domus Romane - Italy (city of Rome) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) This practice, from the Province of Rome (Italy), uses multimedia tours and 3D technologies to create a better understanding and ‘perception’ of archaeological sites. The location in the very centre of Rome, where an underground archaeological site (in the foundations of the renaissance palace, Palazzo Valentini, which hosts the offices of Provincia di Roma) from the ancient roman period has been transformed into a museum for advanced technology. This multi-media museum offers a 3D experience in two luxurious underground Roman houses and thermal baths. The multi-media system includes the lighting, film, and image projection. Creating a new style of cultural experience using technology to enrich archaeological areas. The replication of such a large-scale initiative is not easy, due to the financial, technical, and cultural resources needed. It can be partially replicable in the way it enables cultural heritage sites to increase their appeal thanks to ICT and multi-media features. Appia Antica – Italy (city of Rome) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) The Province of Rome initiated a project to develop a mobile application allowing visitors to the Appia Antica Regional Park in Rome to receive additional historical and visual information about points of interest within the park via smartphones. The application provides 3D models of ancient buildings, audioguides, and rich mobile webpages. Enhancing traditional tourist experiences through the use of state of the art ICT technologies The practice depends on visitors having the possibility to access the Internet (via smartphones) during the visit, which means that high cost Internet access (notably for visitors from abroad) represents the primary barrier to its use. Chopin’s year 2010 – Poland (city of Warsaw) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) The project was initiated by the Mayor of Warsaw in 2008, when the Committee Chopin 2010 was set up in order to organise programmes for the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The main objective of this initiative was to raise the quality of life for the citizens of Warsaw and to make Chopin a part of their identity and heritage. The initiative was supported by a wide range of partnerships, and the aim was to not only promote the city internationally, but also to provide culture to the citizens beyond the celebration of Chopin 2010. Using ICT tools to reach new audiences, to brand and to promote a city. This practice has demonstrated how regions/cities can use a wide range of multi-media tools to improve both the identity of a region/citizens and promote a region or city. 36

// venice > connected – Italy (city of Venice) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) //venice>connected is the official source for Venice travel planning information and Venice tourism, where a tourist can book and buy, online and at reduced fees, the main tourist services provided by the City of Venice. The City of Venice welcomes millions of tourists every year and, consequently, the number of visitors reaches an unsustainable level. The massive negative impacts upon the environment, culture, and residents’ quality of life gave rise to a demand for a more sustainable development in tourism: //venice>connected is a project by the City of Venice for promoting sustainable tourism planning and development in Venice. Ensuring sustainability in tourism and quality of life for citizens.

This initiative is a good example of a Good Practice in the category of ‘Destination Monitoring and Management’ and how ICT can be used to promote sustainable tourism planning and development.

PROJECT TESTIMONIALS Why should this be considered as a Good Practice? //venice>connected is a good practice because it is an easy and simple way to manage tourism flows, for example, by offering tourists the possibility to book and buy, online, the different services available with discounts and advantages. What particular features make it unique? //venice>connected provides tourists with information on how to respect the cultural and natural heritage of Venice; it helps to educate visitors before their arrival, gives guidance on do’s and don'ts and offers tips on sustainable travel. How has the project contributed to the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? The practice has been studied and discussed in several meetings. This has provided the opportunity to analyse the platform and the different services available. Thanks to the suggestions received, it was decided to change the style of the communication used and to try selling different products. To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? The platform //venice>connected is developed using free software: Drupal, which does not need any particular skills to operate. The main issue is the implementation of the platform, which requires cooperation and coordination between public and private bodies. Leaping Stiles – Wales (region of Powys) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2C (target) and internal market (priority) The pilot Leaping Stiles project was developed under the Tourism Growth Area initiative. The project utilised the principles of Integrated Quality Management to improve and enhance the quality of the tourism product available in Central Powys. The Leaping Stiles walking website project focused on the area’s most natural and unique tourism products, selecting a series of 35 walking routes to provide visitors and local people with a high-quality walking experience. All the routes have been graded to allow choice of difficulty, length, and accessibility. Increasing competitiveness by improving and enhancing the quality of the tourism product available.

The Leaping Stiles Walking website can be considered as a resource for visitors, local communities, and individual residents. Barriers encountered to the roll-out of the service include ensuring staff access to social networks during work hours and inadequate staff capacity needed to create the required content. PROJECT TESTIMONIALS Why should this be considered as a Good Practice? This practice is easy-to-use and can demonstrate results. It has increased awareness of Mid-Wales as a destination for walking. What particular features make it unique? The involvement of local communities in both the development and marketing of new walking trails in Powys. The combination of services for both visitors (promoting walking paths) and for citizens (promoting healthy living by walking). How has the project contributed to the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? There has been some interest from partner regions. As an example, Hedmark County Council invited Powys County Council to talk about this practice and their E-marketing strategy for tourism in November 2012. However, transfer has not yet occurred between regions (at the time of writing). To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? This is a very easy practice to transfer to other regions/cities. However, specialised technical and human resources are needed. Internet access is also necessary. Free Italia Wi-Fi (I-SPEED spin off33) Classification: infrastructure (paradigm), G2C (target) and pre-conditions for developing E-government (priority) The goal of this initiative is to promote collaboration between public administrations in order to develop free wireless networks within the areas covered by individual administrations as well as to federalize the area networks within a single national Wi-Fi infrastructure. ‘Free Italia Wi-Fi’ is the first federalised national Wi-Fi network in which the networks dialogue with each other, enabling users of one system to log-on to any of the other participating networks. Overcoming geographical restrictions by offering free public Wi-Fi. The open exchange of information and knowledge between administrations can greatly facilitate and enhance the services that they offer individually and collectively, significantly reducing costs and maximizing economies of scale through the use of networks and shared and open systems.

3.1.4.2 Lessons and recommendations The main outputs of the project were ‘A Digital Agenda for Tourism’ and ‘Good Practice Guide’ .The lessons learnt and policy recommendations include the need to:



Create a strong base (for ICT service development both in terms of infrastructure and ICT skills);



Promote free Wi-Fi access; Think growth (ICT tools should be developed taking account of interconnectability; transferability and scalability);



Ensure proper division of labour (maximise the capabilities of public and private contribution);



Establish clear public-private partnership agreements (public administrations developing ICT projects should establish relationships between public and private stakeholders);

Spin-offs activities are by-products or incidental results of a larger project. 38



Obtain buy-in from the outset (public and private partnerships should be established at the beginning);



Be open to technology (use technologies that can be easily improved upon and further developed);



Go open source;



Facilitate access for mobile applications;



Reach specific groups; and



Invest in staff to ensure continuity.

Policy recommendations that could be useful for other EU regions seeking to improve the effectiveness of their tourism policies through the use of ICT, which are part of the report ‘A Digital Agenda for Tourism’, were prepared by the I-SPEED political representatives and include:      

Cultural heritage and ICT for tourism (Culture and tourism players should cooperate to define a common ICT-based strategy); ICT for the coordination and management of content and services (It is important to support ICT development for regional tourism products, improve internal organisation and implement Open Data programmes, and create coordinated Public services for tourists and citizens); Training in the use of ICT for a better ‘tourism economy’ (create training programmes for citizens and workers); Broadband for tourism (guarantee broadband connectivity and coverage); Integrated approaches for the development of the Tourism Economy (Cooperation between the public and private sectors and between different stakeholders from the tourism sector to build a joint, integrated system of multi-source information); and Research into new technologies for Tourism.

As one of its main results, the I-SPEED project produced a document entitled ‘A Digital Agenda for Tourism’, which should be disseminated to other regions in Europe given the innovative and interesting practices it presents for addressing the ‘internal market’ priority in the E-government action plan. The project should also make an effort to extend these practices so as to address other priorities, such as the ‘Efficiency and effectiveness of Governments and Administrations’, or, for example, by looking at the results from the DLA project. 3.1.5

OSEPA – Open Source Software Usage by European Public Administration

The OSEPA project is dedicated to exchanging experiences with a view to identifying and analysing Good Practices. The main planned results of the project are to exchange knowledge and experiences on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) usage by European Public Administrations; gather, review, exchange, transfer best practices about FOSS uptake and related policies.

http://www.osepa.eu

The main activities of the project are related to conducting a survey of current FOSS usage in consortium countries and in some EU non-consortium countries (reaching at least 20 countries), and a requirements analysis and guidelines on software procurement policies of European Public Administrations. This project identified 34 good practices in total, and seven of those were transferred. It also contributed to the improvement of two local/regional policies.

OSEPA is implemented by 12 partners from 12 different regions and the main objective is the “promotion of open source software in Public Administration at all levels of government.”

The results include a Good Practice Guide on FOSS uptake among European Public Administrations (aimed at collecting and consolidating robust evidence for helping policymakers and experts to shape their own policies), and analysis and recommendations on National and European policies and practices on FOSS (aimed at offering a policy overview that will lead to a better understanding of the dynamics, the potential, the inhibitors and the policy obstacles related to FOSS adoption). 3.1.5.1 Some Good Practices from OSEPA From the pool of Good Practices explored (34 in total, involving FOSS – Free and Open Source Software), the project selected three best practices that are being considered for transfer between partner regions. These will be described next, while the remaining good practices are available in the good practice database. These Good Practices were selected as examples of innovative approaches: 

Geographic Information System (GIS) Schoten (PostGIS database to store information with geographic content),



Open source document management system for the public administration based on the national legal requirements (electronic documents delivery system via data boxes for communication between public administration and citizens),



Zimbra: Next-generation email, calendar, and collaboration server (solution for messaging and collaboration in public administration).

Geographic Information Systems – Belgium (city of Schoten) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2E (target) and efficiency and effectiveness of Government and administration (priority) In 2006, the City of Schoten took the decision to adopt a GIS Manager in order to set up a GIS system for the whole of the municipality of Schoten. The implementation of the GIS system stemmed from the need to organise and administer the available geographic data within a common system. The criteria for selecting between the available solutions included the cost of implementation and of maintenance for the next five years, the quality, the interoperability, the capacity for knowledge transfer, and level of previous experience with OSS.

Viewing, querying and editing geographic data in a GIS-Viewer on a client computer. The abovementioned OSS components run on a server with Linux CentOS as its operating system. All vector data are stored in a PostGIS database. Raster data are stored in files on the geoserver. The only (partially) proprietary software used was GIM WebGIS. The source code of the OSS components used was not modified, and the GPL (General Public License) license was granted for the implementation of the GIS system. The GIS system implemented by the City of Schoten is now up and running, and the perspective for the coming years is for the system to be enhanced, expanded or replicated. This initiative resulted in improved organisational performance. Moreover, the advantages of an OSS approach are strategic independence from vendor lock-in, a strengthening of data security and an increase in software interoperability. Untangle: a powerful suite for Internet management applications – Cyprus (city of Strovolos) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2E (target) and pre-conditions for developing Egovernment (priority) In October 2009, the municipality of Strovolos was looking for an internet content filter solution with the least possible cost in order to enhance the productivity of the municipality’s staff by minimising the time spent on internet and to improve system security. After one person month of studying the alternative solutions and a half person month spent implementing the Untangle application, the IT department of 40

the municipality could finally benefit from the features of Untangle: web-filter, virus-blocker, spamblocker, ad-blocker etc.

Implementing a FOSS suite for Internet management applications. The only open-source component used for the installation of the software package of Untangle was a Linux server, and no proprietary software component was used. This initiative resulted in improved organisational performance and a reduction in procurement/ licensing costs. Moreover, the advantages of an OSS approach include strategic independence from vendor lockin, and increased system security. The Untangle application is now up and running and the perspective for the coming years is for the system to be enhanced, expanded, or replicated. PROJECT TESTIMONIES Why should this be considered as a Good Practice? Untangle can be considered a good practice as it only uses Open Source Software. The Municipality of Strovolos found a solution for an internet content filter with the least possible cost in order to enhance the productivity of the municipalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s staff and also to strengthen system security. What particular features make it unique? The use of open source software (Linux) as an infrastructure for the installation and customisation of Untangle software. How has the project contributed to the improvement / dissemination / replication of this practice? The Good Practice was presented during a study visit with the aim of offering the consortium partners the opportunity to access the technology (processes, solutions, approaches, etc.) already adopted by partners with more experience of using FOSS. The Good Practice was made known through the project website and disseminated in the project workshops. Transfer has not yet occurred between regions, at the time of writing. To what extent is the Good Practice replicable? This good practice is replicable in other regions but requires technical knowledge of OSS, and the acquirement of operational, and technical knowledge is expected to influence debates on relevant policies.

Use of Zimbra â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Spain (region of Extremadura) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2E (target) and pre-conditions for developing Egovernment (priority) In January 2009, the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology in Extremadura studied the potential adoption of a Zimbra server, and six months later the decision was taken: Zimbra would be installed in the public administration. Zimbra is a collaboration server that provides organisations with greater overall flexibility and simplicity including integrated email, contacts, calendaring, sharing and document management plus mobility and desktop synchronization to users on any computer.

Using FOSS with integrated email, contacts, calendaring, sharing and document management plus mobility and desktop synchronization.

The Zimbra collaboration suite is the only application suite used that bundles and installs, as part of the installation process, various other third party and open source software. After the entry in production of this platform, there was a significant improvement in performance and effectiveness of the organisation, a reduction in procurement/ licensing costs, and a reduction in the need for technical support. Moreover, there has been a widespread promotion of open source software throughout the organisation. At the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology in Extremadura, they will continue to use the Zimbra server, and the perspective for the coming years is for it to be enhanced, expanded, or replicated.

3.1.5.2 Lessons and recommendations The lessons learnt from these experiences show that FOSS is a cost-effective and easy-to-adopt approach. However, based on these experiences, the barriers were identified and are the subject of policy recommendations. These are: knowledge of FOSS is essential; FOSS adoption needs strong and sustainable technical support (internal and external to the organisation); deployment should be balanced along with commercial Software solutions (involvement with local companies is recommended). The OSEPA project identified a considerable number of relevant practices that can help to address the ‘pre-conditions for developing E-government’ priority that should be further disseminated and transferred to other regions. However, it is also important to focus on ways to address one of the barriers to successful E-government implementation – ‘Competencies and skills’ – which currently hinders the application of FOSS in the implementation of E-government services. 3.1.6

PIKE – Promoting Innovation and the Knowledge Economy

The aim of the PIKE project is to improve regional and local Innovation & Knowledge Economy policies through the exchange, sharing and transfer of E-government and Wireless Broadband Good Practices, and through the integration of these Good Practices into the Convergence and Regional Competitiveness and Employment policies of all the participating regions.

http://www.pikE-project.eu

From previous experience, some of the partners were already aware and had first-hand experience of other region’s Good Practices, and it became apparent that they would be very interested in transferring some of the shared Good Practices to their own regions. It was felt that an ideal mechanism for implementing them would be within the framework of an INTERREG IVC Capitalisation project, with a view to developing an Action Plan to be integrated into the regional Operation Programmes. This project identified four good practices in total, and contributed to the definition of nine action plans. It also contributed to the improvement of nine local/regional policies, and the total of mainstream funds (Cohesion / ERDF / ESF) dedicated to the implementation of the good practices amounted to €7 272 906. PIKE is implemented by ten partners from ten different regions, and the main objective is to “improve Innovation & Knowledge Economy Policies through the transfer of Good Practices and their integration into the mainstream Structural Funds programmes”.

3.1.6.1 Some Good Practices from PIKE The participating regions developed an Action Plan to transfer the Good Practices. The four Good Practices were selected as innovative approaches. These Good Practices, listed below, were the basis for the lessons learnt and policy recommendations: 

Wireless Cities (infrastructure support for E-government services, E-Tourism and E-Learning),



Integrated Aid System (E-government Services for farmers),



Online Planning System (building/planning public consultation),



eLocal (shared service centre for 100 municipalities in the region). 42

Wireless Cities – England (infrastructure support for E-government services, E-tourism and E-learning in Derby City) Classification: infrastructure (paradigm), G2E/G2B/G2C (target) and pre-conditions for developing Egovernment (priority) The Wireless City project is an initiative of a consortium of partners including the University of Ulster (UU) Magee, North West Regional College, Derry City Council and ERNACT. It was a major initiative aimed at stimulating the creation of a market for broadband services within the learning, government, and visitor/tourism sectors in the Derry City Council area. The project was based upon the exploitation of the rapidly maturing wireless/mobile networking sector and end-user access device technologies. Creating a market for broadband services within the learning, government, and visitor/tourism sectors.

The main results of this initiative have been to transform the region into a high profile ‘wireless’ centre of excellence, to enhance the technological knowledge base of local business and to increase tourist activity and economic benefit through a publicly owned wireless network around the historic regions. The deployment of the infrastructure resulted in an increase in council business carried out electronically and frontline staff using Wi-Fi devices to access councils’ back-office functions. This has provided environmental efficiency (through paperless meetings) and cost savings in terms of staff time. For the business, there was a boost in the uptake of new wireless and location-based services among the city’s business community, which also led to an improvement in the community access to broadband services. Visitors and tourism services also benefited from the production of digitised cultural and heritage content and a virtual tour for use by visitors, citizens, and schools. Integrated Aid System – Spain (E-government Services for farmers in the region of Cantabria) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2B (target) and internal market (priority) IAS enables the management of aid from the Common Agriculture Policy in the regional government of Cantabria. The tool receives and validates the applications interactively online, verifying the accredited information while, at the same time, facilitating the subsequent inspection, control, and payment; therefore, totally eliminating the manual exchange of data. Using Integrated Aid Systems for E-administration.

It incorporates open-source solutions, 3G communications, and GIS and GPS tools to improve the quality of the management, control, and payment of applications dedicated to developing the rural environment. It is necessary to highlight the instrumental role played by the regional offices, unions, collectives, farming associations and other collaborating stakeholders. All have supported this initiative by forming a network of offices and collaborators that have acted as support and motivation for the project in the rural environment. Implementing new technologies in the rural world is a great challenge that requires behavioural changes from citizens and public employees. Support and guidance are required to guarantee its success. Online Planning System – Ireland (building/planning public consultation in Donegal County) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2B/G2C (target) and the efficiency and effectiveness of Government and administration (priority) The Donegal County Council E-planning system is designed to provide a comprehensive online information source to the public on all aspects of the public planning process. The E-planning system provides facilities to view all the contents of planning files over the Internet. 43

The Donegal Online Spatial Planning supports the Planning & Economic Development function of the Council. It consists of a number of core elements, including a database, document imaging, mapping, useful citizen-centred information contained in Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and is supported by an underlying ICT infrastructure. Implementing an E-planning system for public planning and local development. The initial system focused on the processing of applications and demonstrating transparency in the associated decision-making process. Focus then shifted from the resulting positive experience and the gathering of detailed information over a period of time towards the development of a portal. This portal integrates information on planning legislation, the County Development Plan, local area plans and associated policies as well as contact details. A self-service pre-planning enquiry facility has recently been added. The cost of running the system is outweighed by the improved productivity of the Planning Department and invaluable improvement in customer service coupled with the creation of a transparent planning process. This initiative has shown financial savings as a result of the reduced staff time having to be allocated to deal with customer contacts. eLocal – Spain (shared service centre for 100 municipalities in the region of Cantabria) Classification: Government-centric (paradigm), G2B/G2C (target) and the efficiency and effectiveness of Government and administration (priority). E-Local was introduced in Cantabria (Spain) in August 2006. It is part of the regional Governance Plan and was launched by both public and private partners. eLocal is not an isolated initiative; it forms part of the Government of Cantabria’s 2004-2007 Governance Plan, which seeks to modernise public administration and adapt it to social, economic and technological changes. It also has the backing of the Spanish state government’s Ministry of Public Administration. The eLocal services model has two different sections: services for local corporations and services for citizens, professionals, companies, and legal entities. Boosting E-government services growth in rural areas. The eLocal initiative serves as a model for the implementation of E-government in local government. Its services and applications are being developed in response to the particular needs of local authorities in Cantabria. However, the methodology used and the concept of a shared services centre that serves to modernise local councils are transferable. This initiative shows that by modernising E-government in rural areas, support measures for new businesses can be optimised, allowing the administration to more effectively deliver economic development policies.

3.1.6.2 Lessons and recommendations The main output of the project, achieved through the transfer of these practices between regions, was the improvement of nine regional action plans and ten local/regional policies. The main lessons from this project are:  Implanting new technologies in rural areas is a major challenge. It necessitates cultural changes in the mindset of citizens and public employees; support and guidance are required to guarantee its success.  The introduction and promotion of the use of services developed require budget lines, training in the use of new technologies and incentives that encourage the use of services.  The transformation from the traditional systems based on an exchange of information on paper to a new automated system reduces the number of employees dedicated to processing tasks, creating opportunities for added value tasks.  The modernisation of public administrations applying E-government in rural areas maximises the effects of the measures for new businesses that increase economic growth in unfavourable regions, allowing the administration to act as a boost and stimulate the economy.

Several policy recommendations were also made:  The importance of a detailed Good practices transfer plan;  Early involvement of decision/policymakers;  Development of a permanent mechanism for transferring regional development GP into mainstream SF. The PIKE project should further disseminate its practices, which were very well defined and described. These practices should be transferable to other regions in Europe given their clear added value to address both the internal market’ and the ‘Efficiency and effectiveness of Governments and Administrations’ priorities. For example, the Integrated Aid System would be extremely useful to all rural regions across Europe.

3.1.7

Other INTERREG IVC relevant projects

Besides the six core projects already described in the previous sections, INTERREG IVC includes other projects, which are not directly related with the E-government services theme but that are relevant for the analysis. This group of projects, classified as ‘Satellite projects’, includes projects CASA, RTF, DAA, eCreate, DANTE, DC and Europroc. These projects account for 85 good practices, 47 of which were transferred, and contributed to the improvement of 50 local/regional policies. These projects were not analysed in detail, but their main contributions to the topic were explored. Table 9: Other relevant projects from INTERREG IVC Project

Objective

EU Regional Cooperation for SMEs access to Public Procurement

Consolidate public procurement as a key element of the strategy to support SMEs, by adapting and improving the support services offered to them.

Digital Cities

Tackle the low rate of ICT penetration at local level, by providing the organisational structures, strategies/policies and tools to enable the rapid and sustainable adoption of ICT and, as a consequence, the development of digital cities at the European level.

Digital Agenda for New Tourism Approach in European Rural and Mountain Areas

Ensure better integration of the ICT agenda into tourism policies, in European mountainous and rural areas.

Consortium for Assistive Solutions Adoption

Identify solutions, access best practices and policies for the deployment of assistive living solutions across Europe.

Cultural Routes Entrepreneurship and Technologies Enhancement

Improve public policies aimed at promoting the competitiveness of business activities in rural areas, especially service-oriented companies along tourism routes.

Regional Telemedicine Forum

Establish a Regional Telemedicine Forum to deliver innovation at regional level.

Design led Innovations for Active Ageing

Network cities that need economic and innovative, yet sustainable, solutions for senior care.

EuroPROC is an innovative project that addresses SME access to public procurement markets. It aims to make public procurement a key element of SMEs business strategy by adapting and improving public services in this area. A significant increase in the participation of SMEs in public contracts will not only unlock their growth and innovation potential with a positive impact on the European economy but it will also be a benefit for the public administration by increasing competition and therefore the quality of tenders/services. One of the good practices identified in this project is the ‘TSS - Tender Support System’ (ITD HUNGARY - www.itd.hu), which is a service whose main goal is to provide first-hand information and business opportunities to SMEs. Hundreds of new public notices are displayed on a daily basis on the European Union’s tender database (TED). After filling in a registration form and determining the selection criteria, the TSS software uses that database to select only the calls which meet the criteria. These calls will be forwarded by email to the clients on a weekly basis in English, where the products and activities are identified by common procurement vocabulary (CPV codes) and can be modified or extended optionally at any time. The main objective of the Digital Cities (DC) project is to tackle the very low rate of ICT penetration at local level by providing the organisational structures, strategies/policies and tools for enabling the rapid and sustainable adoption of ICT at local level and the development of digital cities on a wider European level. The general objectives of the DC project include the development and evaluation of the DC Model and the establishment of an open, sustainable cooperation/coordination network for sharing knowledge, exchanging best practices/experiences and developing synergies among local authorities. The major expected result of the project is a model (organisational, structural, administrative and strategic) that will allow an increase in local ICT adoption. This will be illustrated with the transfer of six selected practices through a training/communication/brainstorming process. One of these good practices is the implementation of E-government services in Malta. In 2007, Capgemini in its benchmarking study for the EU Commission, ranked Malta in 2nd place in online sophistication and for full availability of Egovernment services. The Government’s Smart Island Strategy for 2008-2010 focused on enhancing the quality of life through the application of ICTs that provide benefits to the public administration, business community and citizens at large. About 90% of the most widely used Public Services for citizens and businesses are now being offered through the Internet and mobile devices. Today, regions and governments are facing an unsustainable situation with increasing pressure on health and social care resulting from demographic changes. With an ageing population, citizens are also increasingly living with chronic diseases and this has serious implications for the future provision of welfare and health services. A new generation of innovative, secure, wearable and interactive health solutions will have to be developed in regions for the care of the elderly, with personalized information and guidance at home or outdoors i.e. a so-called 'personalized healthcare system'. The CASA network comprising 13 participating regions will come together to identify joined-up solutions, access best practices and define a policy sounding board through the consortia for the deployment of assistive living solutions (AAL). The objective of DANTE is to improve the effectiveness of the regional policies in the area of Innovation, by enhancing the key enabling role that the Information Society can play in the tourism economy of rural and mountain areas. The DANTE network will optimise nine innovative good practices already in place at regional level, demonstrating the benefits of the Information Society for the competitiveness of the tourism sector in disadvantaged areas. The idea of the e-CREATE project was born among European regions and together, the partners have identified shortcomings in public policies that, on the one hand, use significant resources to promote cultural, natural and historic tourism routes but that, on the other hand, fail to enhance the competitiveness of SME tourism promoters along these routes. Knowing that the anticipated launch of post-2013 structural funds programmes presents a unique opportunity to launch new programmes, eCREATE’s key objective is to enhance the capacities of competent policymakers in that respect. Good practices from partners and other European regions will be the subject of a communication effort for that purpose. The societal and economic benefits from a wider use of telemedicine are potentially huge. RTF’s main goal is to establish a Regional Telemedicine Forum to deliver innovation at regional level. Despite the benefits and technical maturity of the applications, the use of telemedicine services is still limited in Europe. It has become evident that actions have to be taken at regional level by 1) developing policy recommendations addressing the main barriers to the wider use of telemedicine, 2) exchanging good practises, and 3) providing evidence of successful telemedicine to build trust and acceptance. Such actions will contribute to ensuring that regional policies will respond better to today's economic and social challenges. 46

The Design-led Innovations for Active Ageing (DAA) project consists of a network of cities which drastically need to find economic and innovative yet sustainable solutions for senior care. These new solutions involve a need to rethink and redefine senior care by using innovative processes and design methods and to find feasible and sustainable solutions that keep senior citizens physically and socially active and that provide them with the care they need. At the same time, this effort will promote an improvement in the effectiveness of local policies and the use of design to build the innovation capacity of cities, to enhance their service development and to improve their policy-making. DAA and CASA have just started to implement their projects, but are already producing interesting methods. One of them is ‘design-led innovations for senior care and active ageing’ from the DAA project. This method for generating innovation combines the expertise of senior care specialists in cities with the expertise of service designers. Combining design with social innovation is a novel approach, and by doing so, the project contributes to creating innovative products and services with new opportunities for EU businesses. With its strong economic incentives, the business sector is a proper place for the evaluation, adjustment and designing of profitable and efficient e-health models and systems, including telemedicine. But local and regional governments should facilitate and support the development of innovative services by adapting legal frameworks and through policy action (RTF). The main lessons and policy recommendations coming from these projects can be summarized as follows: (There is a need to)   

        

Enhance innovations in technology, ICT, housing and public-private partnerships in the area of senior care to create major potential for Europe's competitiveness (DAA); Narrow the gap on the operational level between health and social services (CASA); Improve the role of technology in the field of elderly care and effectively integrate it in the planning and delivery of care and assistance services (CASA). Make independent living more economically sustainable, monitoring and prevention should also be parameters in the financial system of the healthcare sector (CASA); Improve patients’ independence by training the patient and caregivers on how to use telemedicine services, and make sure to also communicate these benefits to informal caregivers (RTF); Foster better synergy between SMEs working on telemedicine projects and local and regional economic development policies (RTF); When developing home and assisted living equipment, software and services, explore new domains, as it is necessary to consider techniques but also potential beneficiaries’ behaviours, organisational problems and social and cultural aspects (RTF). Take advantage of new technologies and tourism as a new economic driver (DANTE, eCREATE). Use bottom-up, open innovation and co-creation processes with rural entrepreneurs (e.g. family farms) and other stakeholders (DANTE). Apply open source software for ICT development (e-CREATE, DANTE). Adopt a 360-degree approach by searching for systemic solutions in different areas and by involving all kinds of stakeholders (DAA). Make it easier for public authorities to find strategic and service design competencies to support their policy making (DAA, e-CREATE, DC) Jointly develop action plans, design briefs, best practice descriptions, field visits, thematic workshops and guidelines for policymakers and public organisations (DAA, DC, EuroProc).

3.2 Thematic analysis from INTERREG IVC projects The analysis of the individual core projects allowed for a more in-depth assessment. The rationale behind the analysis was to obtain information on practices, lessons learnt and policy recommendations (from a thematic point of view), and on the classification of the practices (taxonomy). Clustering of this classification according to E-government paradigm (infrastructure; Government centric; Citizen centric; or Society centric) and target (G2E – Government to Employee; G2B – Government to Business; G2C – Government to Citizen; or C2C – Citizen to Citizen) gives the results depicted in the Figure 5.

Figure 5: Clustering of the Good Practices (number of good practices)

If we also consider the number of regions involved in each good practice, taking into account the fact that some of the good practices were transferred to other regions, this same clustering gives a slightly different distribution, (Figure 6) but the focus actually remains the same:  Most practices are clustered in the ‘Government-centric’ and ‘G2C’ quadrant.  However, when we consider the number of regions involved, there is also a clustering in ‘Citizencentric’ and ‘C2C’, which indicates that the regions involved in these projects are following the current trends in the development of E-government services34.

Figure 6: Clustering of the Good Practices (number of regions involved)

Considering the bi-dimensional taxonomy classification (paradigm vs. target) and E-government action plan priorities, the six CORE projects included in the ‘E-government services’ thematic exercise cover all the identified paradigms, targets and priorities albeit with different foci. Figure 7 clearly shows how the different stages of service development (paradigm) are addressed by the different projects. There is still a major focus on services related to government and citizen-centric services, but some practices already address society-centric services.

Moving from ‘citizen-centric’ to ‘society-centric’ services, where open data and citizen to citizen relationships add value to E-government services. 34

Figure 7: E-government Services CORE projects by paradigm

When only the serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s target is considered, the conclusions are similar (Figure 8): most projectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Good Practices focus on G2B and G2C, but some practices are already related to C2C.

Figure 8: E-government Services CORE projects by target

As described in section 2.3, the European E-government action plan identifies a set of priorities and actions aimed at promoting the transition to a new generation of open, flexible, and collaborative Egovernment services at all levels (regional, national, and European) that will empower citizens and businesses. The set of Good Practices from the six core projects in the E-government theme address all these priorities and actions (Figure 9).

Figure 9: E-government Services CORE projects by priority

These findings were initially discussed and validated with experts from the projects, during the thematic workshop held in Brussels in October 2012, which also included a set of interactive exercises during which interesting practices and policies available within the partner regions could be discussed with the participants and selected representatives from the six core projects. Analysis of the information collected and of the discussions with the projects clearly shows that the current focus of the E-government services projects is on Government to Citizen (G2C) relationships with varying degrees of maturity (paradigm). From the analysis, it was also possible to ascertain the common features, challenges, and success factors among the projects:     

Free Wi-Fi access contributes significantly to the development and sustainability of accessible and successful ICT projects/services. It is important to have strong infrastructure and ICT skills in relevant groups, including citizens. Innovation in the use of new technologies, new business models and high-quality products should be promoted in cooperation with local SMEs. Public administrations should provide qualitative content and open data that can be used by private operators to provide services. The public sector should focus on the provision of valid, high-quality information; and facilitate access for mobile applications.

This analysis will now be completed by focusing on a set of questions proposed by the INTERREG IVC programme:         

What are the common features, challenges, difficulties, and successes among the projects? Do these projects have similar Good Practices in common and what are these Good Practices? Are they easily transferable to other regions? Should they be further disseminated? Did the partner regions find different solutions to the same issue? Does one region have a particularly interesting or innovative practice or policy identified which would merit being made available to other regions in Europe? Has a project achieved a particular interesting result, policy, or practice that could be useful for the other projects or local/regional authorities? Do the participating regions identify core pre-requisites for the successful implementation of regional policy? Are there synergies among the concerned projects and initiatives undertaken in other EU programmes? Based on the findings of the analysis, can specific recommendations be made to individual projects which may not be aware of important practices/ policies or which may be less advanced and experienced than other projects? Which broad key policy messages can be drawn for policymakers at regional, national, and European levels? 50

Although the six projects have different objectives and focus (in paradigm, target, and priority addressed) they all share common features and identify similar challenges. All projects indicate the infrastructure, the digital divide, and the competencies and skills to be the major challenges (refer to Table 5 for a description of these barriers/challenges) to be overcome when implementing Egovernment services. All projects present innovative practices in the successful implementation of isolated E-government services, but fail to address integrated approaches to the provision of E-government services. In conclusion, while the projects in the theme E-government services identify and address the major barriers to the successful implementation of E-government, they do this from an isolated perspective. The six projects present several similar approaches to address the priorities identified in the Egovernment action plan (Table 6). For example:  



IMMODI and DLA have similar approaches to addressing the priority ‘user empowerment’ (Check-up care and CityWiki Karlsruhe) targeting services designed around the users and the collaborative production of services. DLA and PIKE have similar approaches to addressing the priority ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ of Governments and administration (Online Municipal services and eLocal) targeting the improvement of organisational processes, the reduction of the administrative burden and the improvement of transparency. OSEPA also presents several initiatives targeting this priority but focuses on partial solutions. PIKE and I-SPEED have similar approaches to addressing the priority ‘pre-conditions for developing E-government’ (Wireless cities and Free Italia Wi-Fi), focusing on the free and interoperable provision of Internet access (major barrier and key enabler to the successful implementation of E-government).

Within the six projects, there are innovative alternative solutions for addressing the same priority or barrier. For example: 

IMMODI and PIKE address the ‘internal market’ priority with different approaches (Cybercantal telecentre and Integrated Aids System) but both aim to provide seamless services for business and personal mobility.

In section 3.1, we identified several innovative practices and, where useful, described them in further detail giving reasons as to why they can been considered good practices, identifying the features that make them unique and exploring to what extent they are replicable. These are, for example:       

The Web Portal for the Municipality of Patras, an innovative practice that presents an advanced electronic government system designed to serve citizens and businesses, offering thematic sections. Cybercantal telecentre, an innovative practice that demonstrates how the local economy can be boosted through a telecentre. Point Visio Public, an innovative practice that illustrates how public services can be brought closer to the public. // venice > connected, an innovative practice focusing on combining sustainability in tourism with quality of life for citizens. Leaping Stiles, an innovative practice that is able to increase competitiveness by improving and enhancing the quality of the tourism product made available by a region. eLocal, an innovative practice that demonstrates how E-government services can be an important tool to boost growth in rural areas. Untangle, an innovative practice that demonstrates how FOSS solutions can be used to boost services performance.

This list is not exhaustive, and other innovative and interesting practices have been analysed and listed in the previous sections. These practices and related policies, which have been identified in order to address the barriers to the successful implementation of E-government services, will be of interest to other regions and merit being disseminated on a European scale.

Project DLA and eCitizen II have two interesting results that could prove to be very useful to other regions and projects with regard to E-government services. In the project DLA, besides the collection, dissemination, and transfer of Good Practices amongst participating regions, there was also a major effort to develop a tool that could be useful to policymakers when defining their Digital Local Agenda. The ‘DLA Self Evaluation Tool’ 35 available on the project website is a very interesting resource that should be shared with all regions that are planning to deploy or improve their E-government services. In the project eCitizen II, the main result is a methodology, illustrated in a set of examples, which will be of use for regions wishing to implement E-participation. This resource is available online 36 and should be disseminated to all regions planning to promote user empowerment and the involvement of citizens in the policy-making process. All six projects identified similar pre-requisites for the successful implementation of E-government services, which need to be met in order to overcome the main barriers for the successful implementation of E-government as described in Table 1, namely legal and regulatory, budgetary, infrastructure, different ‘digital’ realities (digital divide), and competencies & skills. Moreover, in several practices, cultural and historical barriers have also been identified. INTERREG IVC Projects have an important function of spreading knowledge and policy approaches to a large number of regions. The six INTERREG IVC projects that were considered in this exercise have significant synergies with on-going projects and initiatives in other EU programmes, in particular with regard to having access to State-of-the-art research results from FP7 and later from Horizon 2020, and capacity building and demonstration projects under the ICT Policy Support Programme. As an example, all six projects could benefit from the developments in large-scale CIP pilot actions regarding electronic identity (STORK) and interoperability of health solutions (epSOS). By taking into account these developments, for example by including results from STORK in all initiatives that include user-identification, practices will be easier to integrate and to transfer between different regions in Europe. Similarly, requirements and cases from these six projects into the large-scale CIP pilots would be an important contribution towards the definition of cross border E-government services. Considering these recommendations, it would be useful for projects to be mindful of other projects and initiatives currently running at the European level, namely the large-scale pilot actions under the CIP programme, and to exploit possible synergies with these initiatives, as stated previously. Moreover, these projects should now be looking at the opportunities for their respective regions offered by the next Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020, proposed by the Commission, in which one of the components is the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’ (CEF). While the whole CEF package totals around €50 billion for transport, energy and telecommunication networks, it includes more than €9 billion to support investment in high-speed broadband networks (€7 billion) and pan-European digital services (€2 billion). The experience and knowledge developed by these regions places them in an excellent position to benefit from these opportunities.

3.3 Other relevant activities in the European landscape This section describes several initiatives/projects supported by Programmes other than INTERREG IVC, at the local, regional national/European levels, presenting their objectives and main achievements with regard to E-government Services. 

The first objective was to ascertain whether and in what way ICTs were being included in public policies and in European projects mainly focusing on innovation, and to determine the common themes among the INTERREG IV C projects. We identified 4 projects of interest: o The use of the internet for e-democracy in a rural area in the Nord-Pas de Calais region (ETC programme); o The TANGO project (Territorial Approaches for New Governance (ESPON programme) o The Citiz@move project (URBACT programme) on territorial governance; o The PACINTERREG project (INTERACT programme) on local development and governance.

DLA-selfevaltool.xlsm available at the project website

http://eparticipation.eu 52

The first project as well as Citiz@move showed the importance of the Internet for the participation of people and local stakeholders in public decisions. The two other projects did not refer to digital issues, rather they tackled major issues such as flexibility in public organisations, integration of policy sectors, adaptation to changing contexts and mobilization of stakeholders. The conclusion we drew was that: o o



Using the Internet as a way to reinforce citizen and stakeholder participation is not recent, but it is a growing trend ; There is still a need to develop awareness for many decision-makers who no longer take digital issues into consideration. The examples showed there is still a long way to go before integrated ICT-based policies become a reality.

The second objective was to deepen the analysis of the six INTERREG IVC projects by showing the extreme diversity of advanced ICT-based projects, and to increase awareness as to the large potentialities of ICTs for regenerating and fundamentally transforming ‘traditional’ public policy approaches. These examples were very important as a basis for drawing the final recommendations. In this perspective, local and regional innovative projects developed at the European level were selected. Similar to OASIS or e-Policy projects, the selected projects were implemented in territories such as is the case for INTERREG IVC projects. For each project, we tried to identify the impact of the project, conditions of transferability, and the contribution made to shaping other regional policies, the same criteria that we analysed for the INTERREG IVC projects. These projects address the key themes we outlined in the INTERREG IVC projects’ analysis during the 2nd year of the programme: digital agenda, e-participation, sharing and capitalisation, open innovation, etc. There is a great number of projects on citizen and stakeholder participation, but each project developed its own angle, and the context was different. These projects are as follows: o

With respect to policy-making and governance:  The e-Policy project on policy making implemented in Germany, Italy, Portugal and in the UK;  Future Policy Modelling (FUPOL) on governance; With respect to e-administration and public services:  The e-Bourgogne project (F): capitalisation, service sharing, etc.  The European OASIS project on cloud services and infrastructure for public administration developed in France, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Spain; With respect to open innovation and participation of citizens and stakeholders:  The Saint-Omer project on smart city, especially on the participation of stakeholders and policy regeneration;  @Brest (F) which is one of the best projects on citizen inclusion and participation in France;  The national FING (F) project on open data and citizen participation;  The ‘Unlimited Cities’ on urban planning and open innovation implemented in France, Brazil, Japan and Finland;  The Manchester Smart City (UK) on open innovation and exploitation of collective intelligence;  The Live + Gov project on e-participation of citizens through mobile devices and applications developed in Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Finland and Spain; With respect to public-private partnership:  the Amsterdam Smart City (NL).

The analysis of the different initiatives is presented in Annexe 8.

3.4 Emerging issues 3.4.1

Three key issues for the future…

From this analysis and observations made of the 1st year, some key issues emerged for the 2nd year. These key-issues were outlined in a draft paper in October 2013 in preparation for the workshop to be held in Brussels on November 19th and for the work to be carried out in the 2nd year. Each of these keyissues contained major questions related to public-private partnership, assessment or technology obsolescence due to shorter technology lifecycles. The key-issues are the following: Citizen empowerment and involvement (e-participation); New methods to develop projects and services (open innovation); Policy development and regeneration. Citizen empowerment and involvement The 1st year emphasized the need to increase citizen participation in the public decision-making process and in policy building. It is assumed that ICT may play a major role in facilitating participation through various digital tools, and in reducing the growing gap between the elected representatives and the people. The following questions can be asked: How is e-participation developed in regions? How is ICT included in the participation process? What digital tools are mobilized? What kind of change does it introduce and what kind of influence does it have on public policies and government methods? New methods to develop projects and services Linked to citizen empowerment, open innovation cannot be considered as an ‘in-the-air’ trend, but as a strong need to share ideas, practices, services and products through co-creation, co-production and codelivery. Do project leaders use open innovation ways and techniques such as design thinking, cocreation, usage analyses, mind mapping, or agile methods etc.? What kind of tools do they use? What effect does this have on projects, stakeholders and policies? In addition, the lack of financial public resources, the increasing know-how of the private sector to develop innovative solutions for the public sector, the complexity of needs and services, have all increased the need to imagine and build new business models through public-private partnerships. How was the private sector involved in projects? What kinds of models were set up? How did public-private partnership impact the results of projects and public policies? Lastly, project development requires time and resources, such as technology, which is changing at an accelerating pace. How do project leaders anticipate new innovative opportunities and technology obsolescence so as to keep services attractive and up-to-date with needs? What methods do they use? Policy development and regeneration The fact that citizens are demanding more elaborate, personalised and efficient services, as well as the lack of public resources and the increasing complexity of public issues imply a need for policy development and regeneration. ICT might play a major role in transforming the ‘traditional approach’ of public policies such as vertical and isolated policies by introducing cross-sectoral and integrated methods and schemes. Therefore, how are digital projects integrated into policies, and are they coherent with these policies? How are digital policies integrated with other public policies (transportation, healthcare, education, tourism, economic development, etc.)? How are digital projects linked to other regional projects through a ‘cross-sectoral approach? Do project partners use assessment tools? What impact do assessment tools have in terms of project improvement? What kind of methods do they use? Considering the increasing importance of data for managing services and policies, not only in terms of opening data, but of security, privacy, business intelligence, and data crossing process to improve service efficiency (big data), etc., how are these data to be managed? These issues clearly raise the potential role of ICTs to transform and regenerate public services and policies across European regions. But it is not only a matter of ‘digitisation’; it is a crucial political issue for the future of Europe, though it does run the risk of de-legitimising policy-making and policymakers. Considering their importance, these issues were the focus for the 2nd year exercise, and were discussed with the project leaders in order to identify their experience, new ideas, and perspectives during a workshop on e-Government held in Brussels on November 19th.

3.4.2

Ideas discussed by project leaders

Representatives of core and satellite INTERREG IVC projects attended the workshop on E-government which took place in the Committee of the Regions in Brussels on November 2013. The following mind map illustrates the main ideas discussed.

Figure 10: E-government mind map

We have organised them into three issues, which are discussed below: 1) Public policies; 2) The user; and 3) Services. a. Public policies Participants outlined six main issues related to public policies: Culture of innovation: Participants state there is a lack of culture of innovation in public organisations, which is an effective barrier to setting up digital projects and promoting change. This is not only due to a weak awareness among policymakers, but also among the staff. How can public sector leaders instil a culture of innovation in their organisations? Ways of doing so must be explored – such as training, introduction of new working methods (horizontal task-forces, design thinking, etc.), new management tools, the development of innovative projects involving a range of skills and people. There is a need to involve policymakers and the technical staff to promote innovation culture and knowledge within public organisations. Digital agenda development: The digital agenda needs to be implemented in both a vertical and horizontal way. Digital policy addresses IT development, e.g. digital businesses for economic development which need to be supported, but it must be based on a cross-sectoral approach within public organisations as well as public policies (e.g. the integration of IT into more ‘traditional’ industry activities that need IT to be more productive and competitive). These two aspects are complementary and should not be disconnected if a coherent and comprehensive digital agenda is to be developed. The ‘digitisation’ of public policies: There is an opportunity in all public authorities and public communities to improve policy efficiency through the integration of IT in public policies (i.e. tourism, health, transportation, etc.) and in a horizontal and cross-sectoral approach. As it is very difficult to radically transform the organisation of public authorities within a very short time by integrating IT, two ways can be explored: one is to create a ‘digital reflex’ through awareness-raising, training and working on tangible projects (collaborative work); it is founded on the idea of ‘thinking digitally’ for each public action, project or policy and the need to appraise the effective added value of IT; the other is to work on the integration of IT in policies by aggregating these policies, policy per policy. For example, the City of Venice explained that tourists do not only need information on hotels and restaurants, but also on cultural heritage. Therefore, the City recognised the need to work on the digitisation of the two policies – culture and tourism – in an integrated way, and not separately. Moreover, as tourists need transport and mobility, transport should be integrated into policy. However, when doing so it is important to maintain the overall coherence of public policies and of services to citizens insofar as there is a permanent risk of creating disruption within usages. Limits of public intervention. Dinand Tinholt’s (Capgemini) presentation clearly listed the reasons why public authorities should or should not intervene in the process. At the same time, he stated that the private sector has already many digital solutions available that provide rational and efficient egovernment: services are more accessible and help reduce cost. The participants shared the following observations i. the digital divide still persists in many areas in Europe, especially in rural areas, as illustrated by the distribution of broadband – ii. The significant number of people who continue to be excluded might grow if the private sector focuses its commercial effort on people who are able to pay for top services. Authorities and companies seem to play different roles: public authorities provide high quality data and lead strategic projects; local companies drive the development and implementation of services. 55

‘E-government by default?’ which was the title of Dinand Tinholt’s presentation. Are we to consider that e-government services should only be delivered on-line? Or while pushing for the massive adoption of IT among the whole population including the poorest, should we still keep alternative off-line solutions in place; considering the fact that, according to national statistics, between 25% and 40 % of Europeans do not yet have access to Internet services. There are many reasons for this, including: low income, lack of interest, lack of awareness, technophobia, isolated areas, etc. The discussion is still ongoing, but the dominant opinion was in favour of maintaining different ways to access services in the near future, as is still the case for private services. Capitalisation: One of the main problems facing the capitalisation process is the difficulty of accessing information, and especially identifying the right information source. The situation is more complex when seeking information for specific needs at a specific moment (personalised and contextualised information). One of the main objectives of the INTERREG IVC Capitalisation Programme is to set up adequate tools to respond to these needs. Another focus of capitalisation is on transferability, which might be seen as a way to accelerate the rollout of E-government. Transferring ‘good practice’ solutions from one region to another is a highly attractive option. But in the real life, it is complicated because Egovernment is a matter of policy not just processes. There is a range of features which make policy transfer a one-of-a-kind process: local context, history, geography of the territory, existence of drivers, policymaker support, and the structure of public policies, etc.

b. The user The user is the key-focus of E-government policies. The participants thought that all possible means to empower citizens and promote their participation should be used. People must get involved and be considered as co-producers of policies, services, and initiatives. E-government must now be built, not only on the cooperation between policymakers, NGOs, and private companies, but also with the citizens directly. This new approach should be a key goal for the INTERREG IVC capitalisation process. However, participants emphasised the need to pay more attention to the development of a new Egovernment model with regard to issues of security and privacy in the re-use of data, which clearly threatens citizens and might endanger confidence between users and public authorities, should privacy not properly be taken into account.

c. Services A discussion was set up on how to improve service quality. A first suggestion was on the development of pro-active services, e.g. services that ‘know’ the situation (context) and location to promote services that are adapted and personalized to the user. Technologies such as NFC, RFId, mobile applications, geolocation, etc. can help to set up these services. But it still raises certain questions: what devices/technology do people have, security, privacy, and is there a risk of ‘over-filling’ the offer? Another point was the business model for the services in question. Given the lower capability of public authorities to deliver the top quality services required by users, public-private partnership is a way to accelerate the implementation of E-government. ‘Public empowerment’ may also offer new possibilities in terms of funding projects and services through NGOs and crowdfunding. In some European cities, a dynamic is growing, based on open innovation (Living Labs, FabLabs, hackatons, 3D printing, etc.) to develop new services based on collaborative thinking and actions which help make projects and services feasible with lower costs. Open data can be seen as a contribution to the transition of traditional business models. The last point made was on open data. Thanks to open innovation, there is also an increasing movement to promote and disseminate open data throughout Europe. Many cities, regional, and national governments and the European Commission have already developed their own portals to obtain access to a range of data sets. But the crucial issue is not to liberate data, but to set up coherent and efficient services capable of exploiting big data. The massive re-use of data can help to accelerate the development of new services thanks to accessibility and cost reduction.

3.4.3

Information gathered through questionnaires and interviews

The objective of the questionnaire and of the interviews was to collect precise information on Egovernment practices from project partners on key-issues to be tackled during the 2nd year of the Thematic Programme Capitalisation. They did not only target INTERREG IVC projects, but also local / regional projects led by public authorities involved in the INTERREG IVC projects. This section contains the summary and analysis of information collected from INTERREG IVC project leaders. Five project leaders provided responses: three were core projects: I-SPEED, OSEPA, and ECITIZEN; two were satellite projects: e-CREATE and DANTE. These projects’ leaders have expressed useful and interesting ideas on the three themes we outlined for discussion, which not only reveals their interest, but confirms that these themes should be considered as key-issues for the future of digital public policies. Not all the project partners replied to each question as projects are very different from one to another. In some cases, some questions were not relevant to the project. For instance, OSEPA, which aims at developing FOSS in public administrations and targets internal users of PAs, is not concerned by the first category of questions on citizen empowerment and participation, even if FOSS contributes to delivering more adapted and efficient services.

a. Citizen empowerment and participation Citizen participation was rather limited in the projects: some projects, such as DANTE or OSEPA do not target the final user, but intermediary stakeholders or public administrations. However: Some projects tried to use a bottom-up approach, such as in Powys (Wales), or in Warsaw where the ‘Only Warsaw’ portal was supported by young citizens and tourists. In the E-CITIZEN project, citizens were involved in the use of solutions developed; good practices were validated and improved with input from citizens; Stakeholders were involved in project development through meetings (E-CREATE); Diverse IT tools were used as Google wikis, Web crawling systems, video-based portals, social media or CMS that people could access to express their ideas. Project leaders are aware of the importance of IT for enabling the expression of the vox populi. But it seems that no project was based on co-development / co-creation methods from the start to the end of the project. Some barriers may explain this absence of co-development methods: According to DANTE, financial difficulties are an obstacle to experimentation with new channels; Another explanation is that mobile applications and online registration tools are not yet widely used by everyone, especially by the elderly; There are also political obstacles as some decision-makers do not want to involve final users and prefer working with specific stakeholders; According to the E-CITIZEN partners, small groups are required to obtain significant results. Then, it is difficult to scale up. Other channels, not only social media and on-line tools, must be used, which makes a multi-channel approach necessary. On-line tools must also be updated. -

Amongst the impacts, projects have generated a better and deeper use of IT (such as E-CREATE with registration tools). Some interesting lessons were put forward by project leaders: -

There is a need to increase stakeholder awareness on the potential use of IT through information and awareness raising actions, literacy courses, etc. (DANTE). But most important of all is that IT is not a goal in itself, it is a way to drive services in a better and more efficient way to meet the needs of final users. In the tourism sector, the DANTE project leaders consider that there is a need for a “full adoption of a bottom-up paradigm (…) to get a more accurate perception of what tourists expect from a holiday and therefore what is required from the rural and mountain areas”; Since not everyone can access IT tools or does not yet know how to use them, there is a need to continue to use ‘traditional’ information channels (i.e. paper) while using IT in parallel, and perhaps to promote cross-channel approaches to be sure that all people can get access to all the services and are not kept ‘out of the loop’. As the E-CITIZEN representatives say, a “holistic and comprehensive approach is needed to all the communication activities of the city”. It is important to express the issues in a practical way that is understandable for the public. 57

While they did not get the opportunity to empower them, project leaders are very much mindful of the importance for the public to get involved in the policy-making process and in projects, and of the ‘return on investment’ both for policies, for elected representatives, and for projects. Public participation should not only be at the ending stage of policies and projects, but, as the DANTE partners said, “the involvement of citizens should start from the project idea and the project preparation”. The reason is clear: “You cannot have a significant effect on citizen involvement if you try to propose ‘top-down’ a project not developed with citizens”. However, some project leaders consider that public participation must not be taken as a kind of ‘miracle solution’ – a way to solve all political problems. The I-SPEED team offered the following useful recommendations: The process must be clear in terms of objectives, structure, process, and added-value, to avoid any disappointment and to gain people’s trust: “Use a friendly and simple well-detailed process”; “Be clear about what you’re asking and what you will do after the consultation. Show how people will contribute to the decision in order to gain their trust’; it is also important that ‘citizens understand that they can make the difference”; The target group must not be limited to a ‘happy few’ ‘circle: “It is also important to reach those who do not usually participate and not the usual suspects”; It is essential to involve E-excluded people: “Use face-to-face events in order to reach them”. These recommendations are shared by other project leaders. The E-CITIZEN project leaders added that all the necessary support is needed from the beginning within the city organisation in order to guarantee the implementation of participation projects. b. New methods for developing digital projects and services As far as new innovative methods are concerned, a majority of project leaders did not use open innovation methods (co-creation, co-development, design thinking, and Agile methodolgies, etc.). Some consider that it is very difficult to use them in public administrations when having to work with rigid and vertical procedures including procurement rules. Some others think that it is necessary to involve universities and research centres to promote these methods. However, some project leaders did try to implement open innovation methods. For instance: Within the DANTE consortium, projects such as Bauernhofferein and InKnowCom support bottomup open innovation and co-creation for tourism; Bottom-up approach: trust based innovation begins and ends with the rural entrepreneur (family farm); Peer-learning: facilitates peer-learning processes between entrepreneurs; Continuous co-creation: facilitates open innovation processes through the co-creation of (triplehelix) new business concepts for rural entrepreneurship; Open source: develops (ICT) infrastructure to facilitate business development and is can be shared freely; In the earlier analysis phase of the DANTE project for the development of the pilot prototype, the decision was taken to use open data and open source software to minimize costs and exploit available information; E-CREATE used design thinking, mind mapping, and creative thinking. Stakeholders discovered new approaches to tackle common problems in the process. No major problems were encountered, but open innovation helped the emergence of new viewpoints; In E-CITIZEN, practices related to open data and open innovation approaches (not only related to technology) were used. Users and citizens participated in the development of the government services. -

Moreover, project partners consider that using open innovation methods is now crucial for accelerating the development of projects, for ensuring services are better adapted to user needs, for reducing costs from the initial idea to implementation through creation and prototyping. As the OSEPA project promoter said, “We didn't use any of these methods in the project itself, but we examined and appreciated the results of Agile methodologies used in the development of software and services we examined”. “The adoption of agile methodologies in services and software development can help to achieve: enhanced user satisfaction; timely delivery of systems and realising the expected benefits; lower costs to make simple system changes; avoiding obsolescent systems, due to rapidly changing technologies”. 58

As a result of their experience in I-SPEED, Hedmark County council became involved in a project on how to use Open Data for smart applications, using the Open Space method for the innovation process with the aim of collecting 25 ideas on smart applications that can improve everyday life for citizens. Regarding the involvement of the private sector and public-private partnership (PPP): The involvement of the private sector and the development of public-private partnership depend on the project’s characteristics, local and regional cultures, local situations, the willingness of private players, and the availability of resources. The situation therefore varies considerably from one a region to another. When public authorities are targeted, there is no need to develop a public-private partnership. In Venice, the PA tried to involve the private sector, but since there were too business entities involved, it was not very difficult to involve them; since attracting tourists to Venice is not difficult, joint programmes were not needed. However: In Headmark (Norway), the ‘Blue Model’ was implemented as an example of a successful PPP. It was based on cooperation agreements between the private sector and the PA to create joint programmes in order to promote the region to attract tourists. But it must be considered as being uniquely aligned with the characteristics of the region; For E-CREATE, the private sector was involved with frequent stakeholder meetings as well as ongoing consultations; In E-CITIZEN, some solutions were jointly developed by businesses; In OSEPA, the project partners’ local suppliers, mostly IT businesses, were involved in the project process (conferences, workshops, study visits, site visits) to develop exchange of experience and help PAs to adopt open source solutions. As a result of I-SPEED, Hedmark County Council became involved in a project on how to use Open Data for smart applications. This project involved ICT, SMEs, public authorities, and the public (citizens). -

Moreover, many project partners value collaboration between the public and private sector. This is the case in tourism, for instance, because the Public Administration collects very useful data that the private sector can reuse, if it presented and distributed in an Open Data format. But it is also important to: define the responsibilities of the private sector and of PAs, especially in the delivery of services; guarantee the commitment of companies and PAs over the long term.

As far as technology obsolescence is concerned; For project partners, the best solution for anticipating technology obsolescence is probably open innovation through design and open source / open data. I-SPEED used a well-designed structure for the development of data and the ‘look and feel’ approach for the website. Open source is also considered as a good way to react to new technological developments. The solution offered by the DANTE project was the use of open source software and open data. OSEPA was based on the use of open source as well. Their partners explain that through open source, “you can keep your solutions up-to-date with the most recent evolutions”. In the E-CITIZEN project, the choice was made to use available tools to provide the services so as to avoid technology obsolescence (for example social media tools). To conclude the analysis of this key issue, project leaders have formulated a number of recommendations: on user participation: it is fundamental to listen carefully to the needs of citizens and stakeholders to ensure their support and participation in initiatives (DANTE). But it is also necessary to use a mix of approaches to involve citizens, including physical meetings (E-CITIZEN); on open innovation: open innovation should be introduced as soon as possible. OSEPA partners state it is necessary to consider the introduction of Agile methodologies in services and software development projects; on partnership: it is “important to make the stakeholders understand what the benefits are, to have a clear vision of how the partnership will be run and to set up a clear division of efforts” (I-SPEED); 59

on the role of PAs: the administration’s role is to make existing data available and open. “If the private sector is active, businesses will develop and provide more advanced services than the PA would be able to provide”. “In cases where the private sector is less active, PAs should define policies to foster these developments”. In addition, administration should also ensure that there is a local strategy in place, one which is integrated and cross-cutting; with regard to technologies: developing partnership in projects with technologically advanced partners that can provide insight into the latest technology and future trends, can help to avoid mistakes and overcome technology obsolescence-related risks. It may be helpful to always consider and evaluate the adoption of open source solutions at the outset of a project. According to ECITIZEN, visualisation tools (dataviz) can be relevant for some services.

c. Policy development and regeneration Project influence on other local / regional projects. The result of INTERREG IVC projects is positive in terms of influence on other local / regional projects. Different levels of influence can be observed through the following typology: -

(i) awareness raising, exchange and dissemination of good practice, ideas, and case studies. This is the case of OSEPA on the technical, financial, and legal aspects of FOSS adoption. OSEPA set up conferences, workshops, and study & site visits ensure effectivity thanks to a well-organised dissemination process. DANTE developed the same process and conducted tests of the policy and technical requirements in a rural and mountain territory; (ii) the creation of new projects by transferring ideas or best practices. This was the case for eCREATE; (iii) influence on the local digital agenda. DANTE partners explain that ‘through the pilot, DANTE promoted the benefits in the adoption of ICT tools tailored to the tourism sector in remote areas, thus encouraging the adoption of a dedicated digital agenda to speed up growth and create the conditions for making tourism more attractive in remote areas’. This was also the case for eCREATE, which influenced regional and local IT strategies and for E-CITIZEN through joint events which facilitated the dissemination of results to other local and regional projects in Finland (i.e Open Tampere or the Smart City); (iv) the most tangible influence which shows the success of a project, is the emergence of ‘structuring projects’ that are major projects contributing to structure and organise the territory. In this way, DANTE and I-SPEED were successes. The Net Sentiment good practice of CSI-Piemonte, originally developed to ‘listen’ to tourists needs and feedback was also re-used in the Torino Smart City campaign, to collect information and feedback from citizens on smart city issues such as transport, energy, mobility etc. An indirect consequence of the I-SPEED project has been the development of free Wi-Fi in Italy.

Impact of the project. Four major impacts were identified: One is a contribution to a better integration and use of IT in local public bodies and their practices (E-CREATE, E-CITIZEN); Another is the adjustment of local and regional strategies as well as funding schemes to better suit the needs of regional stakeholders (E-CREATE) and the creation of new digital agendas as was the case in tourism through DANTE; The third is raising the awareness of stakeholders and politicians on the importance of innovation and the way in which it might be managed and organised (E-CREATE, I-SPEED); The last impact was on the reinforcement of participation and e-participation in participating cities. -

Organisation of data management. INTERREG IVC project leaders foster the use of open data. They have introduced a data management policy and they encourage their local partners to develop open data and open source. For instance, DANTE entailed the development of an open source software Content Management System platform that is able to integrate open data. “As part of its policy recommendations to project partners, DANTE also encouraged the Public Administrations involved in the project to support the use of open data and the opening up of further sets of data to the public, as from an economic point of view public data are valuable for all economic operators, be they public or private that invest in IT with increasingly tighter budgets”. Weather forecast information is a good example of sharing data that may 60

be of interest for many private players in the tourism sector. DANTE partners emphasised that this kind of data produced by PAs constitutes “valuable elements for private enterprises that offer weather forecasting services. As part of tourism in mountain and rural areas, to share information about hiking trails is very important to exploit territories usually undervalued”. I-SPEED also stressed that there were no difficulties related with privacy and security issues as open data is produced by PAs. Integration of the project and added value to public policies. Generally speaking, the INTERREG IVC projects were not developed only for their own benefit. Their partners are keen to fit in current public policies and to generate an effective added-value to policies. From this perspective, the following projects were also successful: OSEPA produced a series of papers to raise European decision-maker awareness of legal, technical, and financial aspects of FOSS adoption. E-CREATE leaders mentioned that the project was integrated into local and regional digital strategies. Thanks to its implementation plan, DANTE contributed to setting up common recommendations based on its experience, both at local and European, especially in terms of integration between IT and tourism policies. Obtaining the opinions of stakeholders in the tourism sector, who had a strong experience, was also a real added-value to policies by integrating their feedback. E-CITIZEN helped to shape and develop policies related to e-participation. I-SPEED emphasised that the involvement of policymakers from the beginning and in the three political steering groups was a guarantee that IT and tourism policies are more linked and integrated. In addition, the I-SPEED project helped three regions to be successful in the implementation of their digital tourism strategies (a region of Crete, of Bulgaria, and the Powys County). Contribution to Smart Specialisation Strategies On public policy integration, the contribution of projects to Smart Specialization Strategies is a key-issue for the next phase of Structural Funds Operational Programmes. For INTERREG IVC projects, identifying how to meet the needs of specialization seemed to be difficult. There are two explanations: the idea of Smart Specialization Strategies emerged while many of these projects were already defined and in an on-going process. Second is that a project can be a priority for a region without contributing to specialization. For instance, the deployment of FOSS is now considered as crucial according to many local and regional authorities to improve service efficiency and to reduce costs. Meanwhile, if the software industry in the region is not particularly well developed or if there is no open software cluster, it will be difficult for this region to contribute to the Smart Specialization process. Unsurprisingly, where they responded, INTERREG IVC project partners indicated their projects did not reinforce the S3 process. DANTE partners mentioned that “the project will not contribute to any specialization approach since the preliminary objective is to find possible relationships and links between the tourism sector and the ‘ICT world’, which have different approaches and basic principles”. But though the integration of IT and tourism policies, it might be possible to contribute to the S3 process by accelerating the performance of tourism offers and developing a new proactive tourism. DANTE leaders also mentioned that “any real and concrete Smart Specialization Strategy in a territory is (only) possible if the ICT approach is not really involving stakeholders and citizens in a deep way”. I-SPEED indicated that the contribution to S3 should be ensured by avoiding market fragmentation and better managing the innovation process through the involvement of stakeholders, public-private partnerships, and the participation of universities. Project assessment. Project assessment was not really developed within INTERREG IVC projects. Four reasons may explain this fact: Assessment was not planned for in the project; The project was not finished; The evaluation culture is not effectively developed and shared and so was forgotten; Evaluation was seen as ‘ex-post’ evaluation, but not as ongoing or (‘in itinere’) which seeks to obtain information during the project in order to integrate it into the project process.

E-CREATE mentioned an assessment took place through the INTERREG IVC capitalisation initiative. I-SPEED indicated that evaluation was included in its project management and that in every meeting in which an elected representative participated, a questionnaire was used to assess the impact of I-SPEED at the local and regional level. E-CITIZEN used participation tools to collect feedback information during actions to evaluate their adequacy and identify opportunities for improvement. Recommendations with regard to policy management to other regions planning to deploy e-government projects There is a great deal of consensus amongst the INTERREG IVC project participants on recommendations with regard to policy management. We can organise these into three categories: -

The first is related to the involvement of stakeholders, firstly the policymakers from the very beginning of projects (DANTE, E-CREATE, I-SPEED, E-CITIZEN). It is important that they are involved throughout the project to make sure they will help and take the ‘right’ decisions at the ‘right’ moment. Otherwise, project outputs run the risk of not being publicly endorsed or supported. It is also necessary for decision-makers to be active in the drafting of projects and to co-develop projects with project partners, and not to leave them in the hand of technicians or external consultants (DANTE). The selection and commitment of each stakeholder is also very important to be sure that the consortium will reach the goals in time (E-CITIZEN); The second recommendation is to refer to European ‘good practice’ to help policymakers see new opportunities that might be implemented in their regions (I-SPEED). It is a way to attract them and get them involved in the project process; The third major recommendation is the need to make the link between IT policy and other public policies by setting up the bridge between outputs of projects and local / regional strategies. It outlines the awareness level of project leaders on the integration and ‘digitisation’ of public policies. However, DANTE partners recommended the need to act progressively and not to be ambitious because IT drastically transforms organisations and practices, creates resistances, especially from vertical policies such as tourism, and may be counter-productive if quickly introduced: “it is very difficult to integrate Digital Agendas with tourism policies. The Digital Agendas push policies to be more democratic and participative (open data, open source, news in real time, to be close to people). Tourism policies, on the other hand, are still traditional, strictly market oriented, not enough open to a sustainable (environmental and social) point of view”.

3.5 Trends in E-government Increasingly powerful and user-friendly technologies are creating opportunities for authorities to offer new ways to interact with citizens, allowing authorities to respond to citizens’ needs more effectively and to guarantee their active participation. The private sector has been making use of multiple channels for a long time, taking advantage of the introduction of devices such as smartphones, interactive voice response systems, digital television, and self-service terminals. Such initiatives encourage citizens to envision new forms of interaction, wanting service providers to be as accessible and responsive as modern technology allows. Moreover, the pervasiveness of ICTs in the public sector and in every field of day-to-day life has contributed to empowering citizens and giving them the keys to act. Governing cannot be seen any longer as a ‘top-down’ process from policymakers to citizens. Policymakers must take account of the desire of citizens to get involved in the service and policy-making process. E-government cannot be limited to, as it has been over recent years, as a way of increasing interactions between PAs and citizens through ICTs. E-government cannot be developed as it was in the past without changing the organisational rules of public administrations based on vertical principles and without changing the ‘hearts and minds’ of many civil servants and decision-makers. But change is risky for many policymakers, and they often don’t know how to proceed. In many European regions there are now a large number of citizens, associations of citizens, and even (young) policymakers who are looking with hope to ICTs as a way to drastically change the dynamics of local governance. Some interesting initiatives indicate this direction, including:



The WikiCity in the City of Amsterdam within the Amsterdam Smart City programme: the WikiCity is an open land planning system based on ideas and suggestions of citizens through a ‘bottom-up’ process helping to imagine the 2040 city. Suggestions such as a new ferry to link the north and the west part of the city and a new development programme for the docklands have already been adopted etc. (http://www.amsterdam.nl/gemeente/organisatiediensten/dienst-ruimtelijke/anders-ontwikkelen/wikicity/)



The Rennes and Montpellier ‘Villes sans limite’ experience: this experience offers an opportunity for citizens to create their own vision of the city of the future through mobile applications on tablets and smartphones: architecture, environment, streets and public spaces, day-to-day life, etc. Information is aggregated and available on social networks and can provide support for decision-making for elected representatives (http://montpellier.territoirenumerique.org/villesans-limite/).



The UK government through the use of Agile methods to develop new services (http://agile.civilservice.gov.uk): the government set up a portal to help public administrations to endorse Agile methods, to consolidate feed-back experience and to create a community of users and practices.

These initiatives which are just a few examples show that this movement is not marginal, but a growing process which might be the main rule of governance for the future. The idea of the ‘city’ or ‘government’ as a platform’ is emerging progressively. The representative of the City of Ghent (Belgium) in charge of the Smart City project, Bart Rosseau used this term in a conference last August 19th in Namur on smart cities, stating that ‘goals are more important than procedures in developing a Smart City’.

What government for a smart city?

• Change in governance? • “Govt as a platform” • Goals are more important then procedures

Figure 11: Abstract from Mr Bart Rosseau's presentation, representative of the City of Ghent in his presentation during a conference in Namur on Smart Cities

However, the idea of a ‘government as a platform’ is a little bit ambiguous. It can be understood from two points of view: - The first one is that citizens may consider the platform merely as a platform of services that they only use or help enrich depending on their needs. In this approach, citizens are primarily customers and are no more than this. Interactions within the territory are reduced to immaterial and digital interactions, and policymakers need only to guarantee the efficiency of the platform and good delivery of services. The first objective is to improve the E-government system. The wellbeing of citizens is more or less out of the scope of this approach; - The second approach considers the platform as a ‘common property’ among citizens to which they can contribute. It is based on effective and open participatory governance where both citizens and PAs enrich services and develop common projects as part of a shared continuous process. Politicians are no longer play a ‘top-down’ role, their function is not limited to ‘guaranteeing’ the service delivery as in the previous approach, they play a strong role in stimulating the development of the territory, regulating the ecosystem and helping citizens, especially those who are more excluded, to access services and new opportunities, and empowerment. This approach can be qualified as a “participatory platform” 37. These two orientations are drastically different and reveal opposite political options for public policies and territories for the future.

Why is integrated E-government service delivery so hard, and what are the key lessons that can be drawn from this exercise?

The problem does not lie in the technology but in the political challenge of integrating a range of public sector programmes delivered by different levels of government – often with different requirements – for citizens.

See the recent report of the French Conseil National du Numérique on ‘Digital Inclusion’ http://www.cnnumerique.fr/inclusion/ 37

4. Policy recommendations and conclusions This section presents the policy recommendations and conclusions that arose from our analysis. Some of the policy challenges we have discussed in the report are recent, such as open innovation in the public sector, but some are not new, such as technology obsolescence. While these are already being addressed by local, national, and European (research) policies policy learning is still needed, as significant challenges remain. Our recommendations focus on the priority areas identified in this report. These are:       

Design and provide citizen-centric services with user-focus (e.g. in IMMODI, DLA) Develop open innovation as a way to empower people (e.g. in eCitizen) Narrow the usage divide across and within countries (e.g. in PIKE and eCitizen II) Leverage social media for greater E-government service take-up (e.g. in I-SPEED) Use open data for better public service and greater use (e.g. in PIKE and OSEPA) Provide additional incentives for E-government service use (e.g. in I-SPEED) Bridge the gap between digital policies and other ‘mainstream’ policies to gain scalability and offer quality services to users (e.g. in I-SPEED).

Based on our analysis of the six INTERREG IVC core projects Figure 12 below presents an overview of the principles, challenges, targets that explain our policy recommendations. Figure 12: Principles, challenges, and policy recommendations

To go further, the analysis conducted over the two years of the programme highlighted four key policy orientations that should be pursued to help the implementation of E-government: 1. Towards more integrated policies – Develop a policy vision and management structure for E-government. By deploying ICTs in the whole range of public policies productivity gains can be made and efficiency increased. 2. Towards an open government – This can be achieved by increasing public participation and the use of open innovation in policy development. This requires a radical cultural change in the way citizens and public authorities interact. 3. Towards a new alliance between people, government, and business – Develop a new public-private-population partnership (4Ps) through new social and business models. 4. Towards more flexible organisations – Adapt public organisations to these new challenges. The following diagram shows the policy ecosystem:

Figure 13: The E-government policy ecosystem

The following recommendations are classified according to policy levels: European level, national level, regional / local level. All are addressed to policymakers.

4.1 Towards more integrated policies During our research for the present report, we noticed a gap between, on one hand, the way in which policies are designed, and, on the other, an accelerating change in in the way people engage with service providers – enabled by ICT – and growing digital needs. This gap can be observed when comparing the ease access to commercial services with the more difficult access to public services is more difficult. Public authorities have invested significantly in the development of digital policies and not only ICT projects. But these digital policies are often isolated and not linked to ‘mainstream’ policies such as tourism, education, economic development, transportation, and healthcare, to name just a few. It is crucial therefore to capitalise on the pervasiveness of ICT, the emergence of new usage trends and their impact on public organisations as well as territories to adapt the policy framework to modern challenges. E-government can no longer be reduced to the role it had in the near past: a way of increasing interactions between administration and citizens through ICT. Moreover, E-government cannot be developed as it was in the past, without creating fluidity and coherence between ‘mainstream’ policies and digital policies. The main goal is that this policy regeneration in Europe addresses the challenge of increasing the efficiency and reducing the cost of public policies and, simultaneously, providing the best and most effective services to citizens and businesses. The following recommendations are designed to help policymakers accomplish this goal:

Number

Recommendations

Description

Help to develop the ‘digital reflex’

Currently, the level of deployment of e-government services is low, below the targets set by the DAE38, and there is strong evidence that the lack of awareness of egovernment services is the main barrier to a wider take-up. Awareness campaigns should promote the overall benefits and give general information about what is technically involved, where to find and how to use services. Good practices from the projects also deserve wider dissemination, and ‘front-runners’ should share their experience with regions starting or in the early stages of their e-government adoption process.

Targets National Regional local

Policymakers and civil servant awareness is still important not from a technological point of view, but from a usage and policy perspective, as the technology life-cycle is continuously shortening and new technologies and usages emerge. Awareness-raising campaigns based on ‘digital agendas’ and ‘the digitization of public policies’ success stories, should be developed. This is a key primer for developing e-government. In order to better support cooperation and information sharing between regions, we recommend that, in the future, more tailored instruments for disseminating good practices, as well as other important knowledge, are used, for example as part of the E-practice39 or E-participation40 portals. More focused cooperation around specific issues for a number of regions would also be useful. #2

Foster the development of digital strategies and policies

The development of digital strategies and policies through digital agendas is the main way to accelerate the implementation of e-government. The creation of isolated e-services is not the right way to develop e-government: the impact of isolated e-services is not very strong and there is a risk of diminishing policy coherence.

National Local regional

These agendas should be set up on a mid and long-term perspective. But digital strategy is not a static exercise: it must evolve constantly in order to match both citizens’ needs and the social and economic context. They must also take account of technological change. The growing trend of offering m-Government services directed at mobile devices (including “Internet-of-Things” devices) needs to be addressed and might be especially useful in regions where traditional fixed infrastructures are less present. The future demand for government services is likely to come from anywhere and at any time and mobile devices are best placed to meet this demand. Examples of these new trends, which E-government should embrace, include the numerous mobile, smart, and ‘augmented reality’ applications for personal and commercial purposes (often offered for highly specific purposes on local scales), and particularly in the USA, there are already some public services and democracy apps available. These developments are likely to be driven by the rapid transformation of the ‘net generation’ into responsible adults needing public services and demanding the same quality and flexibility that they receive from other providers.

“50 % of citizens to use E-government by 2015, with more than half returning completed forms”

http://www.epractice.eu

http://eparticipation.eu 68

Digital strategies must also be set up in the perspective of competitiveness, and not only service delivery to citizens. Agendas must take account of Smart Specialization Strategies according to the EU 2020 Agenda requirements. To do this, the objectives of 3S must be integrated with the development of digital policies to which they can contribute. Technology development on new innovative technologies such as 3D and augmented reality, ‘Internet of the Objects’, free and open software,…, can help to improve project and service quality while supporting new businesses and reinforcing excellence and specialization. It is the reason why it is important for project partners to obtain a foresight vision of their projects based on the future of technologies. Another way to develop Smart Specialization is to concentrate the political and budget efforts on the priorities of digital policies, especially regarding priorities of ‘mainstream’ public policies: supporting digital projects is not useful and is expensive if they don’t match political priorities and major policies chosen for specialization. Public authorities should promote success stories and share their experience to show other authorities how to implement successful digital agendas. But they must also inform on risks and difficulties through risk analyses in order to help them avoid mistakes.

Integrate ICT into public policy-making

Developing a digital agenda is no longer sufficient: the digital strategy is a first step, but its impact on the other policies is reduced.

National Regional local

The digital policy-making process must not focus only on digital development, but embrace the whole spectrum of this process. It is essential to make policymakers aware of the importance and cross-cutting role of ICTs for policy regeneration. Tourism, healthcare, economic development, inclusion, transportation and mobility, etc., cannot be supported by policies that do not integrate ICTs. Regions must boost their efforts to ‘digitise’ their policies by setting up the ‘digital reflex’ when redefining their ‘mainstream’ policies or creating new policies, thus integrating more ICTs to each policy. The ‘digitisation’ of policies that might use more and more innovative and even emerging technologies, could help to orientate regional policies to specialization.

Accelerate the implementation of eservices

A digital agenda is only real when ICT projects are implemented. Policymakers must bear in mind that a strategy without any project has no impact and may create disappointment.

National Regional local

Public authorities should accelerate the creation of ‘usercentric’ services: one-stop shop online platforms, mobile services, services to develop smart cities (energies, lightning, smart metering, city monitoring, smart buildings…), data management services (including open data), transportation services, tourism services etc. But services should also be responsive, reliable, and have the ability to ensure the security and privacy of personal data.

Promote convergence technologies

the of

Technology evolves very quickly. Advanced technologies need to be implemented in real situations through test beds. Territories offer interesting potentialities for carrying out these tests and then industrialize solutions. There is also the goal of regenerating local services to make them more efficient and easier to use.

National Regional local

In addition, new challenges for the future of ICTs include the convergence of ICTs and other innovative and emerging technologies in, for example, biotech, energy, robotics and nanotech. There is a major opportunity for European territories to grasp this convergence both to enrich the E-government service provision and to contribute to Smart Specialization Strategies. Regions should, as of today, mobilise stakeholders such as industries, businesses, including start-ups, research centres, local authorities and universities to set up strategic plans and develop tests.

4.2 TOWARDS an open government Citizens increasingly want to be involved in the design of public policies and in the development of new services. This is a key trend that is increasing and will probably be amplified over the coming years. It will transform the relationship between citizens and policymakers: policymakers can no longer maintain a top-down approach, taking all the decisions that concern an area without involving the citizens, without prior debate. The participation of citizens, namely with ICT support tools and open innovation approaches, is a new means to change how citizens, public administration, and policymakers interact. The following recommendations, targeting the policymaker, focus on the way this transformation can be realised. Number

Recommendations

Description

Reconsider the role of policymakers

Policymakers should revisit their relationship with citizens. In the past, they were the only decision-makers taking all the decisions about the future of the territory, just informing people when decisions were taken. Thanks to the Internet, people, organised and non-organised groups of citizens have grasped the opportunity to express their ideas and suggestions on policies and services in many parts of Europe.

Targets Regional local

This situation creates a new paradigm for policymakers. If they don’t accept the expression of citizens, there is a risk of them not being re-elected. They should take account of this new relationship with citizens, they must reconsider their role as ‘territory stimulators’ and ‘federators’ interacting with citizens and using new ways of co-producing policies and services through open innovation. Our research has highlighted that strong commitment from policymakers is required to develop and promote digital agendas.

Foster new forms of ‘participatory government’

Internet has drastically transformed the relationship between people and especially the relationship between people and government, creating a kind of ‘lateral power’ as the economist Pr Jeremy Rifkin wrote recently in his book ‘The 3rd Industrial Revolution’.

Mainly local regional

In many areas of Europe, new forms of ‘participatory government’ – using open innovation and the internet – are emerging and bringing together policymakers, civil servants, citizens, local groups, businesses, and researchers to redefine public policies and services (not only digital policies). The ‘Unlimited Cities’ experiment in Rennes and Montpellier is a good example of this ‘participatory government’, which may be amplified in the future. However, there is a pre-condition for developing these new forms of government, which is to ensure accessibility to ICT infrastructures and services by SMEs and citizens, as ICTs play a stronger role in the participation of people in the definition of policies and services. This means very highspeed broadband, fixed and mobile networks, secured ICT systems to ensure confidence, easy-to-use interfaces, and seamless services.

Adopt innovation

open

Open innovation is a key element of ‘participatory and open government’. Open innovation can be based on a series of tools, processes and systems:  Data management. Data and information systems are the heart of the future e-government system. Data are the constituency of e-services, which are based on structured data and can be delivered through information systems. Data have considerably increased during the past years thanks to the Internet expansion, including mobile systems, the redundancy of data and the growing number of servers. Data and information systems were not considered as the most important capital of a public authority until recently. Data were only taken into account through open data whereas open data is only a part of what is called now ‘big data’. Policymakers should consider data as a key-issue for the future of territories and government and explore the potentialities at local and regional level to develop new e-services. Open data should be disseminated to foster the reuse of data, facilitating the development of eservices at a lower cost.  Free and Open Software Systems (FOSS). FOSS is a way to expand open innovation. Many FOSS have been developed on the basis of open innovation methods.  Open innovation processes and methods such as Agile methods, co-creation, co-design, or design thinking…contribute to open innovation insofar as projects are produced by open groups of contributors. They are often used by Living Labs that help public authorities to test new applications with a panel of users.  Rules of transparency. Open innovation needs transparency on public funding, project development… Transparency is a condition for confidence between citizens and policymakers.  New types of public participation: crowdsourcing, which helps people to express their ideas on policymaking and service development and crowdfunding, which is an opportunity to help projects they want to support. Crowdfunding is a growing phenomenon, but it cannot replace public funding and it addresses mainly small projects.

National Regional local

Open innovation is developing strongly throughout Europe. There are many initiatives that vary according to the culture of the European regions and contribute to enriching projects. Existing experiences should be disseminated to foster an even greater uptake of open innovation practices. We recommend that the European Commission write and adopt a European ‘White Paper’ on open innovation in the public sector showcasing innovative methods for setting up policies and projects, to disseminate know-how and experience and to recognize open innovation as a key tool of the government of the future: the open government. The European Innovation 2.0 conference held in Dublin in June 2013 set up a basis for putting forward the development of open innovation in the public sector through the Dublin Innovation Declaration as Prof Martin Curley, Vice President of Intel and Chair of the EU Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group (OISPG) said during this conference: “We now have a framework and action items which can help catalyse a European recovery through Innovation- the new Open Innovation 2.0 paradigm shines a strong beacon of light towards our collective better future”41.

European

4.3 TOWARDS A NEW ALLIANCE BETWEEN PEOPLE, GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS The development of E-government policies and solutions should be based on a strong alliance between policymakers, public administration, citizens, researchers and businesses, what we call the ‘4 P’ - Public – Private – Population Partnership – or what was already called the ‘Quadruple Helix’. This partnership is based on the idea of the ‘participatory government’42 and on the use of open innovation43. The main rationales for such partnership include not only the radical reductions of public budgets, but also the need to ground the development of these services on the available collective wisdom, which is needed to address more complex challenges. The following recommendations are designed to help to shape this vision:

Number

Recommendations

Description

Set up 4P-based initiatives to develop creativity and innovative activities

Traditionally, public-private partnerships were designed to implement new business models. This partnership must be reinforced to develop new innovative services and creativity, as PAs have lower budgets and businesses can bring creativity and innovative ideas. But one of the main objectives of the public-private partnership is the economic one: cost reduction and competitiveness of services.

Targets Regional local

However, it ignores the social dimension through the involvement of people in public decision-making. We recommend that policymakers broaden public-private partnerships to include people, groups of people, and associations, in order to enrich projects and develop exchange of ideas and practices between businesses, PAs, researchers, and people. Hybrid spaces such as ‘laboratories of the future’ (FabLabs etc.) where design thinking, test beds, prototyping, even pre-series can be implemented, are ideal structures to develop this kind of partnership. These spaces can even generate local microfactories to stimulate new activities at the local level.

See Martin Curley and Bror Salmelin, Open Innovation 2.0: A New Paradigm, and http://ec.europa.eu/digitalagenda/en/news/open-innovation-20-%E2%80%93-new-paradigm-and-foundation-sustainable-europe 42

See 4.2

Ibidem. 72

The development of these local micro-factories is linked to the major stake of reindustrialisation in territories and the creation of the ‘factory of the future’ based on innovative processes and methods and generation of new customized products and services. #10

Foster creativity and innovation between businesses and research centres

Local businesses and research centres are a huge source of creativity and innovation. It is important to use this resource in order to develop tests of new usages and services for the public sector. This could be fostered by policymakers through the creation of ‘integrated research centres’ between businesses, public bodies, universities and research centres, as already exists in industry (cooperation research-industries). The objective of these ‘integrated research centres’ is to develop advanced solutions by reinforcing the cooperation between these stakeholders (sharing, capitalisation, mutual financial benefits and ROI, etc.). A strong relationship can be set up with local ‘laboratories of the future’: results of the research can be tested in these laboratories and pre-industrial series developed in local micro-factories44.

Local regional

#11

Get access to public bids to start-ups and local SMEs

Submitting a bid to public invitations to tender is often complex for many local businesses and start-ups. They do not know how to make bid proposals even though they have strong know-how. Public procurement is also a good tool to set up new tests and help start-ups and local SMEs to develop by creating a ‘local market’.

National (legal framework) Regional local

Policymakers should pay attention to the creation of new legal and economic conditions to support testing and rollout of new solutions at the local and regional levels.

4.4 TOWARDS MORE FLEXIBLE ORGANISATIONS E-government cannot be implemented as it was in the past, without changing the organisational rules of public administrations, mostly based on vertical principles, and without revising the ways in which public organisations work. The transformation of administrative processes requires the reorganisation of the “back-office” and the simplification of processes: ‘one-stop shop’ or ‘single-window’ approaches require substantial process and workflow redesign that then need to be translated into new organisational and informational architectures. An additional challenge is that these new architectures need to be flexible and open, not only to be interoperable with existing legacy systems, but also to be dynamic enough to involve other stakeholders other than only the public administration. ICT can provide new solutions and introduce flexibility, interoperability and forward planning to adapt public organisations to the new challenges. But require a profound revision of public organisations. It is now impossible to deliver ICT-based efficient services (front-office) without transforming the internal processes (back-office). Otherwise, there is a risk of having a backoffice information system being unable to deliver adequate and efficient services. The following recommendations to policymakers help to understand the importance of having more flexible public organisations.

See Recommendation #9, above. 73

Number

Recommendations

Description

#12

Develop training for civil servants and policymakers on digital issues

A stronger investment in the training of skilled personnel is needed to enable smart ways of cooperating and sharing or producing knowledge among relevant stakeholders. FOSS solutions have proven to be valid approaches in the implementation of E-government, which reduces costs, but does not eliminate the need for skilled people. Training should not be only on technologies, but also on innovation management, ergonomics, digital economy, digital marketing, usage and service development and on methods to develop projects and services, in particular open innovation and co-creation.

Targets National Regional local

Public sector training providers, universities, and private training centres should adapt their courses to take account of digital issues and deliver training adapted to the new challenges. Bringing more skilled people into PAs is a crucial challenge for the future: it is impossible to create and implement innovative policies and projects without people having a good knowledge of ICTs, of their use and of the vision of the future of technologies and usages.

#13

Develop assessment and capitalisation

Transparency requires that projects, services and policies are continuously assessed. Unfortunately, an evaluation culture is not always present in European regions. Questionnaires and discussions with INTERREG IVC project partners showed that assessment is often an ‘expost’ evaluation, if it exists at all.

National Regional local

Service and project quality needs to be based not only on ‘ex-post’ evaluations but on continuous (‘in itinere’) evaluations that can produce good RETEX (Return of Experience) to improve projects/services, and even ‘ex ante’ evaluation to prevent risks and avoid problems in the implementation of services. Evaluation is also a contribution to the capitalisation exercise. Feedback information from assessment can provide useful information, RETEX, to improve the quality of projects and policies. Another major challenge is to develop collective knowledge (ideas, projects, RETEX, strategic, technology and usage observation…) through platforms and networking at the regional and/or local levels to reinforce capitalisation. #14

Develop organisational flexibility

Shared infrastructures, equipment, HR, tools and services to reduce costs and increase productivity. Software (through FOSS), networks, platforms, data centres, servers… can be shared easily. Building a cloud infrastructure is a good way to deliver high quality services, ensure interoperability and security and gain economy of scale.

European National Regional local

Interoperability between infrastructures, appliances, APIs, both at local, regional, and even national and European levels to ensure that services are standardized and can be accessed by citizens all over Europe without disruption. Interoperability is very important to ensure that European, national, regional and local administrations can work together and are able to deliver good quality services. Cross-channel delivery. Each service at the European, national or local/regional level must be able to be delivered under different formats, be accessed whatever device is used and be synchronized with the others in real-time. 74

Redesigning internal processes and workflows. Technology is not sufficient to create flexibility. Internal processes must be transformed, but they must be adaptable and not create constraints. Processes must be compatible with open innovation practices to be able to integrate new applications, new projects, and new services according to the needs and usages. #15

Foresee technology obsolescence

The more technology develops, the shorter its lifecycle becomes. It is therefore necessary to make provision for technology obsolescence to develop new usages and to ensure that the functionalities of services meet the nearest and future needs. It implies setting up a permanent technology watch and using flexible and easy-to-adapt technologies, such as free and open software.

National Regional local

4.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS Special consideration should also be given to the cultural and historical background and economic situation and to the early involvement of policy/decision-makers and stakeholders in the project, which is key. Services cannot be rolled out and disseminated all over European regions with a unified and similar model. This raises the limits of ‘transferability’ and ‘roll out’ of services that are supported by major ICT companies. Considering “off-the-shelf” ICT products to be quickly and successfully implemented in each region on a similar model basis is utopic. Although the participation and commitment of local authorities is not always easy to guarantee, their involvement is important to ensure that the project has a direct impact on regional authorities (applicability). Examples of Good Practices that were successfully transferred among regions show that using the same approach is not possible in other regions owing to different cultural, historical, and socio-economic realities and maturity. A good example is the Valma initiative (project IMMODI), which incorporates an interesting ‘positive feedback’ effect from the region adopting the practice to the region it originated from. This helps to reap the benefits of technological progress in the impact/effectiveness of the practice and supporting the decision for a technological update. Moreover, it also shows that different cultural realities – in this case related with citizen involvement in policy decision-making – create different challenges in the implementation of a practice that has been successful elsewhere. It is the reason why we recommend that policymakers should be pragmatic, flexible and open-minded to adopt and implement ICT-based policies and services. We would like to conclude by proposing a set of recommendations, both for the projects and for the INTERREG IVC programme, which aim to increase and accelerate the thematic impact of the projects. Promote success stories: the current level of deployment of E-government services is below expectations, and there is strong evidence that the lack of awareness of E-government services is the main barrier to a wider take-up. Promotion and awareness campaigns, including the wider dissemination of successful Good Practices and the sharing of experience between ‘front-runners’ and regions planning or in the early stages of their E-government adoption process, would help to overcome this barrier. Build on present success: it is important to build on the successful practices that have been already demonstrated; learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the current process and help new adopters to define roadmaps designed to help implement already proven policies, thus bridging the policy-practice gap where necessary; to better support cooperation and information sharing between regions. We recommended that, in future, tailored instruments for disseminating Good Practices as well as other important knowledge should be used. Re-shift focus and increase speed: practices and policies are widely identified for the Government and citizen-centric, we recommended that new projects shift focus and be stepped up a gear, by concentrating much more on user empowerment and on the transition towards more user-centric Egovernment solutions, especially through open innovation methods.

Change the policy focus for the future: the trend of providing m-Government services directed at mobile devices needs to be addressed, and might be particularly appropriate in regions where traditional fixed infrastructures are less effective owing to low penetration. Moreover, we strongly recommend that policymakers focus on the convergence of ICTs and other innovative and emerging technologies in biotech, energy, robotics, and nanotechnologies. There is a major opportunity for European territories to capitalise on this convergence both to enrich the Egovernment service provision and to contribute to Smart Specialization Strategies.

5. Annexes Annexe 1: E-government services projects pverview 6 Projects: Project

Project name

Detailed topic

Improvement of ICT in public and local services

DLA

Common methodology for the implementation of Digital Local Agenda and its impact on regional digital policies

eCitizen II

Towards citizen-centred E-government in European cities and regions

Enhancement of the role of citizens in local policies through Egovernment

Implementing Modi

Development of e government and e health in rural and mountainous regions

I-SPEED

Information Society Policies for Sustainable European Economic Development

Promotion of ICT based public services in tourism economy

OSEPA

Open Source software usage by European Public Administrations

Development of open source software usage within local and regional authorities

PIKE

Promotion Innovation and the Knowledge Economy

Promotion of e government and wireless broadband

acronym

IMMODI

Project acronym

Number of partners45

Country of the LP46

ERDF funding (â&#x201A;Ź)

Total budget (â&#x201A;Ź)

Starting date

Ending date

Type of project

DLA

PORTUGAL

1 202 672

1 491 456

01/01/2010

31/03/2013

RIP47

eCitizen II

FINLAND

1 576 063

2 004 867

01/01/2010

28/02/2013

RIP

IMMODI

ITALY

1 337 511

1 764 298

01/01/2010

31/03/2012

CAP48

I-SPEED

ITALY

971 902

1 402 131

01/01/2010

31/12/2012

RIP

OSEPA

GREECE

1 425 676

1 791 306

01/01/2010

31/12/2012

RIP

PIKE

IRELAND

1 284 669

1 665 523

01/07/2008

30/09/2010

CAP

7 798 492

10 119 581

* Projects (RIP) do not always result in the transfer of good practices, but they always have to identify good practices with view to improving policies * * No. of good practices already identified and made available to regional and local actors involved in Capitalisation projects * * * No. of action plans developed under Capitalisation projects

Representing 22 Member states + Norway

LP: Lead Partner

RIP: Regional Initiative Project

CAP: Capitalisation project

Indicators - as of end 2013 Outputs No. of regional / local policies and instruments addressed

Project acronym

No. of regional / local policies and instruments improved or developed

No. of good practices successfully transferred within Regional Initiative Projects

End date 31/03/2013 28/02/2013 31/03/2012 31/12/2012 31/12/2012 30/09/2010

DLA eCitizen II IMMODI I-SPEED OSEPA PIKE

Results

No. of good practices identified by Regional Initiative Projects

9 10 7 20 11 9

Partner legal status 100%

7 18 13** 32 34 4**

1 1 5 11 2 4

1 1 7*** 3 7 9***

Public Authorities Governance level

80%

Local Public Authority

56%

60%

44%

34%

40% 20%

Bodies governed by public law*

No. of staff members with increased capacity (awareness / knowledge / skills) resulting from the exchange of experience at interregional events 25 60 30 52 27 21

Public Authorities

61%

Regional Public Authority National Public Authority

* Bodies governed by public law: e.g. Regional and local development agencies, Public universities etc.

Annexe 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; E-government services project partners Map

Annexe 3: E-government services projects factsheets

Improvement of ICT in public and local services:

DLA Common methodology for the implementation of Digital Local Agenda and its impact on regional digital policies PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2010 - 31/03/2013 Website: www.projectdla.eu BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 491 457 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 202 671.55

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: North Regional Development and Coordination Commission 251, Rua Rainha D. Estefânia 4150-304, Porto PORTUGAL

Country

Institution, Town

Portugal

North Regional Development and Coordination Commission, Porto

Spain

Atlantic Axis of the Peninsular Northwest, Vigo

Italy

Etruria Innovazione S.C.p.A., SIENA

Latvia

Euregio “Pskov, Livonia', section Latvia, Balvi

Estonia

UNIVERSITY OF TARTU, TARTU

Estonia

Euregio Pskov-Livonia, section Estonia, Valga

Greece

Hungary

Germany

Ireland

Greece

Estonia

VÕRU COUNTY GOVERNMENT, VÕRU

Italy

Agency for the development of the Empolese Valdelsa, Empoli

University of western macedonia, research committee, Kozani Regional Development Agency of North Hungary Non-profit Corporation (NORDA), Miskolc MFG Baden-Württemberg mbH – Public Innovation Agency for ICT and Media, Stuttgart MRA - MIDLAND REGIONAL AUTHORITY, Tullamore University of Patras - Computer Engineering and Informatics Department - Laboratory for Graphics, Multimedia and GIS (MMLAB), Patras

Enhancement of the role of citizens in local policies through E-government:

eCitizen II Towards citizen-centred E-government in European cities and regions PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2010 - 28/02/2013 Website: www.baltic.org/projects/ecitizen_ii/ BUDGET Total budget: EUR 2 004 866 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 576 062.7

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Finland

The Baltic Institute of Finland, Tampere

Finland

City of Tampere, Tampere

Estonia

Tartu City Government, Tartu

Denmark

Odense Municipality, Odense

Lead partner: The Baltic Institute of Finland P.O.Box 487 FI-33101, Tampere FINLAND

The Netherlands United Kingdom

Province of Flevoland, AB Lelystad Sheffield City Council, Sheffield

Italy

Municipality of Bologna, Bologna

Greece

Patras Municipal Enterprise for Planning and Development S.A., Patras

Czech Republic

Vysocina Region, Jihlava

Hungary

Municipality of Miskolc, Miskolc

Spain

The Association of Basque Municipalities (EUDEL), BILBAO. BIZKAIA

Ireland

Kerry County Council, Tralee

Development of e government and e health in rural and mountainous regions:

IMMODI Implementing Mode PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Capitalisation Project Fast track: Yes Duration: 01/01/2010 - 31/03/2012 Website: www.interreg-immodi.net BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 764 298 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 337 510.7

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Italy

Association TECLA, Rome

Italy

Region of Basilicata, Potenza

Bulgaria

Euro Perspectives Foundation, Sofia

Sweden

Balking Institute of Technology, Karlskrona

Finland

Kainuun Etu ltd, Kajaani

Germany

Bautzen Innovation Centre, Bautzen

France

Regional Council of Auvergne, Chamalières

France

European Association of Elected representatives from Mountain Regions, Chambéry

France

European Mountain Forum, CHAMBERY

Spain

Badajoz Provincial Council, Badajoz

Lead partner: Association TECLA Via Boncompagni, 93 187, Rome ITALY

Promotion of ICT based public services in tourism economy:

I-SPEED Information Society Policies for Sustainable European Economic Development

PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2010 - 31/12/2012 Website: www.ispeed.eu BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 402,131 ERDF contribution: EUR 971 902.22 Norwegian contribution: EUR 83 550

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Italy

City of Venice, Venezia

Norway

Hedmark County Council, Hamar

Poland

City of Warsaw, Warszawa

Bulgaria

Municipality of Plovdiv, Plovdiv

Greece

Region of Crete, Heraklion

United Kingdom

Powys County Council, Llandrindod Wells

Spain

Regional Government of Galicia-Ministry of Culture and Tourism-Gen Secretary for Tourism, Santiago de Compostela

Romania

Municipality of Bucharest, Bucharest

Italy

Province of Rome, Rome

France

Urban Community of Nantes, Nantes

Bulgaria

National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria, Sofia

Lead partner: City of Venice Santa Croce 502 30135, Venezia ITALY

Development of open source software usage within local and regional authorities:

OSEPA Open Source software usage by European Public Administrations PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2010 - 31/12/2012 Website: osepa.eu/ BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 791 306 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 425 676.23

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: Central Union of Municipalities of Greece 8 GENADIOU ST. and AKADIMIAS ST. 10678, ATHENS GREECE

Country

Institution, Town

Greece

Central Union of Municipalities of Greece, ATHENS

Czech Republic

Vysočina Region, Jihlava

Spain

Germany

Sweden

Italy

Emilia-Romagna Region, Bologna

Belgium

City of Schoten, Schoten

Cyprus

STROVOLOS MUNICIPALITY, STROVOLOS

Latvia

LATVIJAS PAŠVALDĪBU SAVIENĪBA, RIGA

Romania

BISTRITA CITY HALL, BISTRITA

United Kingdom

The University of Sheffield, Sheffield

Greece

Computer Technology Institute and Press «Diophantus» (CTI), Patras

Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology in Extremadura, Badajoz MFG Baden-Württemberg mbH – Public Innovation Agency for ICT and Media, Stuttgart Swedish Association of Municipalities for Joint Development of eServices, Sandviken

Promotion of E-government and wireless broadband:

PIKE Promoting Innovation and the Knowledge Economy PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Capitalisation Project Fast track: Yes Duration: 01/07/2008 - 30/09/2010 Website: www.pike-project.eu/ BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 665 524 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 284 668.87

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Ireland

ERNACT EEIG, Letterkenny

Ireland

Donegal County Council, Lifford, Co. Donegal

Czech Republic United Kingdom

Olomouc Regional Authority, Olomouc Derry City Council, Derry Cantabrian Enterprise for the Development of New Technologies in the Administration (EMCANTA), Santander, Cantabria Association of Local Authorities in Västernorrland County, Härnösand

Spain

Sweden

Italy

Bologna Municipality, Bologna

Bulgaria

AGENCY FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATIONS, Burgas

Greece

Region of Sterea Ellada, Lamia

10 Lead partner: Ireland ERNACT EEIG Unit 150, Colab, LYIT, Port Road, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland N/A, Letterkenny IRELAND

Galway County Council, Galway

Annexe 4: E-government services satellite projects factsheets

The care of the elderly - Deployment of assistive living solutions:

CASA Consortium for Assistive Solutions Adoption PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2012 - 31/12/2014 Website: The domain name has been registered: www.casa-europe.eu. The site is currently under development BUDGET Total budget: EUR 2 635 999 ERDF contribution: EUR 2 002 154.39

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: The Flemish Community Koning Albert II-laan 35, bus 30 B-1030, Brussels BELGIUM

Country

Institution, Town

Belgium

The Flemish Community, Brussels

Netherlands

Province of Noord-Brabant, sHertogenbosch

United Kingdom

Kent County Council , Maidstone

United Kingdom

Italy

United Kingdom

Denmark

Region of Southern Denmark , Vejle

Poland

The Regional Centre of Social Policy in Poznań (ROPS), Poznań

Spain

TicSalut Foundation , Mataró

Romania

Timis County Council, Timisoara

Spain

Sweden

South East Technologies Alliance (SEHTA), Maidstone Local Health Authority of Verona No. 20, Verona Local Health Agency n.5 - 'Bassa Friulana', Palmanova (Udine) NHS 24/Scottish Centre for Telehealth and Telecare, Glasgow

Foundation IAVANTE. Public Foundation for the Technological Advancement and Professional Development, Sevilla New Tools for Health Association (East Sweden), LINKÖPING Region Halland , Halmstad

Innovation and public-private partnerships with SME involvement in the area of senior care:

DAA Design led Innovations for Active Ageing PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: Innovation, development

research

and

technology

TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2012 - 30/06/2014 Website: www.hel2.fi/DAA/index.html temporary website under the Lead Partners website until the Component 2 leader- Design Flanders has finished the project website BUDGET Total budget: EUR 2 022 701 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 366 133.15 Norwegian contribution: EUR 117 000

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Finland

City of Helsinki, City of Helsinki

Belgium

Design Flanders, Brussels

Sweden

Norrmalm District Administration, Stockholm

Belgium

Care Company Antwerp, Antwerp

Finland

Culminatum Innovation Ltd, Espoo

Bulgaria

Sofia Development Association, Sofia

Norway

Municipal Undertaking for Social Service Buildings, Oslo

Germany

IDZ | International Design Center Berlin, Berlin

Poland

City of Warsaw, Warszawa

Spain

Barcelona Design Centre, Barcelona

Lead partner: City of Helsinki P.O.Box 1 (Pohjoisesplanadi 15-17) 99, City of Helsinki FINLAND

The role of Information Society in the tourism economy of rural and mountain areas:

DANTE Digital Agenda for New Tourism Approach in European Rural and Mountain Areas PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2012 - 31/12/2014 Website: danteproject.eu/ BUDGET Total budget: EUR 2 222 042 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 728 295.2

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: Province of Turin Via Maria Vittoria 12 10123, Torino ITALY

Country

Institution, Town

Italy

Province of Turin, Torino

France

Euromontana, Paris

Greece

University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete

Greece

Spain

Italy

CSI-Piemonte, Torino

France

Cybermassif, Clermont ferrand

Netherlands

InKnowCom, Haren

Deutschland

Bauernhofferien, Verden

Slovenia

Development Centre Litija, Litija

Slovenia

University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana

Poland

Regional Development Agency Bielsko-BiaĹ&#x201A;a, Bielsko-Biala

Italy

METROPOLI, Firenze

Decentralized administration of Crete, Heraklion, Crete Fondation for the Developpement of Science and Technology in Extremadura, Bajadoz

Adaptation of the ICT to the needs of each area:

DC Digital Cities: A network for rapid and sustainable ICT regional adoption PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/10/2008 - 31/12/2011 Website: www.digital-cities.eu BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 616 500 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 333 225

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town

Greece

e-Trikala Municipality's S.A., TRIKALA

Netherlands

Almere Knowledge City Foundation, Almere

Romania

University Transilvania of Brasov, Brasov

Greece

United Kingdom

Cyprus

Paralimni municipality, paralimni

Malta

Malta Government Technology Investments Ltd.(MGTIL), Valletta

Czech Republic

town Jesenik, Jeseník

Romania

Municipality of brasov, Brasov

Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Athens Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) – Manchester City Council (MCC), Manchester

Lead partner: e-Trikala Municipality's S.A. Stratigou Sarafi 44 Str. 42100, TRIKALA GREECE

Support to SMEs in international public procurement:

EuroPROC EU Regional Cooperation for SMEs access to Public Procurement PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: Entrepreneurship and SMEs TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/09/2008 - 30/11/2011 Website: http://www.erai.org/financements/marchespublics-internationaux/europroc/

BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 513 780 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 198 516.51

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: Catalonia Competitiveness Agency (ACC1Ó) Passeig de Gràcia 129 8018, Barcelona SPAIN

Country

Institution, Town

Spain

Catalonia Competitiveness Agency (ACC1Ó), Barcelona

France

ERAI, ECULLY Cedex

Denmark

Business Link Central Denmark, Århus

Italy

Romania

Portugal

Poland

Czech Republic

Bulgaria

Hungary

Spain

Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Craft Trade and Agriculture of Milan, Milano Bucharest- Ilfov Regional Development, Bucharest Institute for Enterprise Development of Madeira Autonomous Region, Funchal The Upper Silesian Regional Development Agency Co, Katowice Regional Development Agency Ostrava, Ostrava-Marianske Hory Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vratsa, VRATSA Vratsa Regional Administration, VRATSA ITD Hungary Non-profit Public Benefit Private Limited Company, Budapest Consortium for the Trade Promotion of Catalonia (COPCA), Barcelona

Development of e-skills among tourism related SME (ICT and web-based customer relation tools):

e-CREATE Cultural Routes Entrepreneurship and Technologies Enhancement PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2012 - 31/12/2014 Website: www.e-create-project.eu/ BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 917 546 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 312 969.6 Norwegian contribution: EUR 118 042

PARTNERSHIP

Lead partner: Ministry of Regional Development and Transport Saxony - Anhalt Turmschanzenstraße 30 39114, Magdeburg GERMANY

Country

Institution, Town

Germany

Ministry of Regional Development and Transport Saxony - Anhalt, Magdeburg

Czech Republic

Ústí Region, Usti nad Labem

France

Niverlan, Nevers cedex

Italy

Province of Modena, Modena

Hungary

Germany

Italy

Portugal

Poland

Norway

Ireland

Spain

West-Pannon Regional Development Company, Szombathely TRANSROMANICA Association, Magdeburg Lombardy Region - General Directorate for Culture, Milan VALSOUSA - Association of Municipalities of Sousa Valley, Lousada MARR - Malopolska Regional Development Agency, Krakow Upper Silesian Agency for Enterpreneurship Promotion Co., Katowice Sor-Trondelag County Authority, Trondheim Donegal County Enterprise Board, Letterkenny Castilla and Leon Regional Authority, Valladolid

Promotion of telemedicine network between regions, SMEs and healthcare services:

RTF Regional Telemedicine Forum PROJECT DETAILS Priority: Innovation and the knowledge economy Theme: the Information Society TYPE OF INTERVENTION Type of intervention: Regional Initiative Project Duration: 01/01/2010 - 31/01/2013 Website: www.regional-telemedicine.eu BUDGET Total budget: EUR 1 977 831 ERDF contribution: EUR 1 359 723.25 Norwegian contribution: EUR 101 500

PARTNERSHIP Country

Institution, Town Region of Southern Denmark, OUH, Odense C Ministry of Health of the Catalan Government, TicSalut Foundation, Mataró

Denmark

Spain

Estonia

Estonian eHealth Foundation, Tallinn

France

Regional Council of Auvergne, Chamalières

United Kingdom

Scottish Centre for Telehealth, Aberdeen

Sweden

County Council of Norrbotten, Luleå

Poland

Malopolska Region, Krakow

Norway

University Hospital of North Norway, Tromso

Italy

Local Health Trust N°9 Treviso, Treviso

United Kingdom

National Health Service 24, Glasgow

Lead partner: Region of Southern Denmark, OUH Sdr. Boulevard 29, Indgang 216, Stuen 5000, Odense C DENMARK

Annexe 5: European Large Scale Projects Discussions held by ministers and the European Commission at the 6 th European Ministerial Egovernment conference49 concentrated on the key issues for the development of E-government services and focused on ways of transforming new ideas and initiatives into practical solutions. Topics included: 

Enabling EU citizens and businesses to interact online in a seamless digital Europe.



Seamless access to essential public services across Europe to support the Digital Single Market50.



Strategies for better interoperability between public administrations all over.

Member States across the EU that are modernising their public services through the use of ICT should avoid establishing online national public services that are incompatible with one another. Falling to do this would create additional electronic barriers when cross-border delivery of E-government services, one of the main political recommendations coming from the 2009 E-government conference in Malmö, is already lagging behind. Europe has failed to reap the full benefits of interoperability, as many digital services and devices do not work across borders due to several coordination issues between European public authorities. In order to achieve greater interoperability of public ICT systems throughout the EU, and to prevent the emergence of so-called e-barriers and the resulting market fragmentation, Member States and the European Commission are working closely together on a new generation of open, flexible and collaborative Egovernment services. EU-funded projects already have a track record of success in terms of generating impact, visibility and achieving sustainable solutions that work beyond national borders. Under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme51 launched a series of initiative, Large Scale Projects (LSPs), to engage stakeholders (public authorities, industry and business representative centres across the EU) in the implementation of common solutions to deliver online public services and make them cross-border. In order to support interoperability of services and the mobility of citizens and businesses, five such LSPs were promoted: e-CODEX, epSOS, SPOCS, STORK and PEPPOL. The LSPs are developing several building blocks for E-government Services (identity, transport, electronic documents, etc.), to demonstrate individual cross-border services, but these building blocks must be transferable and reusable. As the pan-EU building blocks are assembled, the Digital Single Market also grows stronger, with the result that online E-government services become more efficient and effective. E-government should not stop at national borders, since cross-border E-government services make the lives of citizens and businesses easier, as well as being more efficient and cost-effective. These five LSPs are briefly described next. Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line (PEPPOL) Government contracts are a huge market. But businesses, especially small firms, can find the paperwork needed to win such contracts very hard going. The problem is made worse if a company wants to bid for a contract in another country, which may have unfamiliar requirements. The goal of the PEPPOL project is to allow any business in Europe to communicate electronically in procurement processes with authorities in any other EU country. PEPPOL aims to remove the road blocks to cross-border procurement, with solutions for the ordering and invoicing of processes that take place during the operation of the contract post-award, for the use and validation of eSignatures, for the use of eAttestations and company certificates, and for making information reusable in more than one procurement process. The potential benefits of this are three-fold: more competition means better, cheaper public services for taxpayers; businesses, especially smaller ones, will get a boost from easier access to this market; and the market for innovative eProcurement solutions and services will increase,

6th European Ministerial eGovernment Conference “Borderless eGovernment Services for Europeans” Poznań, 2011 49

Pillar I of the “Digital Agenda for Europe” (http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/)

Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (http://ec.europa.eu/cip/)

boosting European ICT industry. PEPPOL has developed business interoperability specifications for the exchange of business documents, such as invoices, credit notes, etc., where the whole process is electronic. As an open standardised platform, PEPPOL's infrastructure has been designed to interconnect existing networks and bridge individual eBusiness islands in Europe. PEPPOL increases business opportunities for participants and supports interoperability across borders. It facilitates electronic communication among European companies and government institutions in the pre-award and post-award procurement process. Simple Procedures Online for Cross- Border Services (SPOCS) Businesses seeking to expand into other countries often struggle to comply with all the regulations they need to follow. Applying for licenses, permits and completing other administrative procedures in another country can be very complicated. SPOCS (www.eu-spocs.eu) is a large-scale pilot project launched by the European Commission in May 2009 that aims to overcome these obstacles. SPOCS aims to build the next generation of online portals (Point of Single Contact or PSC), which every European country now has in place, through the availability of high impact cross- border electronic procedures. The key issues to tackle are electronic identification (eID), data transport and digital envelopes (with signatures, confirmation receipts, etc.) that can be ‘opened’ and read in all countries. So, by bringing stakeholders together, a Large Scale Pilot like SPOCS helps to create synergies — not only with other LSPs — but among the stakeholders, too. Governments can look forward to administrative savings, European companies and entrepreneurs will benefit from streamlined procedures, and the ICT industry can be ready to supply the solutions. It is an example of how simple and effective innovation can make life easier for citizens and business in Europe’s Digital Single Market. STORK STORK aims at implementing an EU wide interoperable system for recognition of eID and authentication that will enable businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national electronic identities in any Member State. It will also pilot trans-border E-government identity services and learn from practice on how to roll out such services, and to experience what benefits and challenges an EU wide interoperability system for recognition of eID will bring. The STORK interoperable solution for electronic identity (eID) is based on a distributed architecture that will pave the way towards full integration of EU e-services while taking into account specifications and infrastructures currently existing in EU Member States. Thus, in the future, you should be able to start a company, get your tax refund, or obtain your university papers without physical presence; all you will need to access these services is to enter your personal data using your national eID, and the STORK platform will obtain the required guarantee (authentication) from your government. epSOS More people are travelling and moving around Europe than ever before ― whether for leisure, business or for living and working abroad. This can lead to problems when we require medical care in a foreign country: doctors may need information from our medical history or we might want to pass details of treatment abroad back to our regular doctor; even picking up prescriptions in another country can be difficult. epSOS aims to change this through standards for the exchange of medical information, subject to patient consent. epSOS aims to design, build and evaluate a service infrastructure that demonstrates cross-border interoperability between electronic health record systems in Europe. epSOS attempts to offer seamless healthcare to European citizens. Key goals are to improve the quality and safety of healthcare for citizens when travelling to another European country. Moreover, it concentrates on developing a practical eHealth framework and ICT infrastructure that enables secure access to patient health information among different European healthcare systems. For the first time, patients in Europe will have the opportunity to use cross-border eHealth services when seeking healthcare in participating epSOS pilot countries - whether as tourists, business travellers, commuters or exchange students. e-CODEX The ‘eJustice communication via online data exchange’ (e-CODEX) is developing building blocks that can be used between or inside Member States to support interoperability and cross-border operations in the field of justice. The core idea of this pilot is to cut out bureaucratic paperwork, so that regardless of the differences between EU countries, courts and citizens have an easy digital way to exchange legal information. Achieving interoperability between existing national judicial systems should also enable countries to work together towards modernised and more effective judicial systems in Europe.

Annexe 6: Project testimonies This annexe presents responses from the projects to an on-line survey used to collect further information from the projects about the good practices recorded in the INTERREG IVC database. Respondents were also asked to discuss the perceived value, innovative character and transfer potential of their good practices and policies.

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Annexe 7: Questions on key-issues for 2nd year

Thematic Programme Capitalisation Thematic Workshop Capitalising E-government Services Tuesday, 19th of November 2013

Questions on the key-issues for the 2nd year of the Capitalisation Programme

Rationale The objective of the questionnaire is to collect precise information on their E-government practices from project partners on key-issues to be tackled during the 2nd year of the Thematic Programme Capitalisation (see the introductive paper attached). Targeted projects are not only INTERREG IVC projects, but regional / local projects led by public authorities involved in the INTERREG IVC projects. Three key-issues were identified and summarized in a preparing draft of the workshop written and presented during the workshop on Nov. 19th, by the experts, Gil Gonçalves and Christophe Pannetier. They are the following:

  

Citizen empowerment and involvement (participation in policy development); New methods to develop digital projects and services through open innovation: co-creation, co-production, co-delivery of services, new business models,…; Policy development: integration of digital projects to policies, integration of digital policies to other public policies (transportation, healthcare, education, tourism, economic development,…), links to other regional projects (cross-cutting approach), assessment of projects, data management,…

Through this questionnaire, we would like to put attention to the project partners on the need to get back very precise and detailed information so to gather qualified data as a basis to use during the following work of the 2nd year. Examples can be taken to illustrate. Information must be sent back to the experts, Gil Gonçalves and Christophe Pannetier not later than December 20th: gil.goncalves@inovamais.pt - cpannetier@i-solutio.com

Questions

1. Citizen empowerment and participation 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Did the citizens participate in the definition of E-government solutions and policies? If so, how did they participate? How ICTs were used in the participation process? What were the main difficulties and barriers? What was the impact (e.g. on government methods? on the E-government policy? on the development of innovation at the regional / local level?)? 1.5 What were the lessons learned? 1.6 If citizens were not involved, can you explain why? 1.7 What are the main recommendations to other project partners on the way to involve citizens in policy definition and development?

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2. New methods to develop digital projects and services

2.1 Did you use innovative methods with stakeholders to develop your projects such as creativity methods, design thinking, heuristic mapping, Agile methods, usage analyses, cocreation process,…? 2.1.1 Where were the results and impact of these methods? 2.1.2 What were the main difficulties and barriers? 2.1.3 What were the lessons learned? If you didn’t implement these methods, can you explain why?

2.2 How the private sector was involved in any of your projects? If the private sector was not involved, can you explain why? 2.3 Were the projects based on a public-private partnership? What are the characteristics of the partnership? 2.3.1 Is this partnership able to guarantee the sustainability of the initiative once the project finishes? 2.3.2 Will the project be an opportunity for the local / regional authorities to put the partnership forward and implement new innovative solutions? 2.4 What were the lessons learned from the experience on the public-private partnership? 2.5 How do you anticipate technology obsolescence so to get a high service quality and to keep services up to the needs? 2.6 What are the main recommendations to other project partners (e.g. on the implementation of innovative methods to embark stakeholders in the project definition and development? On public-private partnership? On technology anticipation?) 3. Policy development and regeneration

3.1 Did your project influence other local/regional projects and how did it? How did you make the bridge between your project and other regional digital projects? 3.2 What was the effective impact of your project, i.e. on the public organisation and management, on users, on service quality, on the territory, on practices and behaviours, on public policies themselves, …,? 3.3 How did you organize data management relating to your project (open data, security, privacy, business intelligence, improvement of service efficiency from data crossing process (big data) …)? Is data management taking part of your public policies (not only in terms of opening data)? 3.4 How your project is integrated to the public policy which it is referred to (i.e.: how a digital project on tourism is linked to the tourism public policy)? 3.5 What was the added value of the project to the public policy it is referred to? 3.6 How did this project contribute to the Smart Specialization Strategy in your region and enrich the specialization process? 3.7 Did you make an assessment of your project (and what kind of evaluation did you make, i.e. ‘ex ante’, ‘ex-post’ evaluation, ‘in itinere’ evaluation, …)? 3.8 What are the main recommendations to other project partners on policy management (link to other public policies, integration of IT projects to policies, assessment, data management, …)?

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Annexe 8: Initiatives outside INTERREG IVC This annexe presents other initiatives outside the INTERREG IVC domain.

8.1 Examples of European projects

Items 1. Programme 2. Project 3. Theme 4. Lead Partner 5. Project lifetime 6. Brief description of the project / programme

7. Common themes addressed

Findings ETC Experience of e-democracy using the Internet in the local community of Atrébatie (Nord - Pas de Calais Region - France) Territorial governance Atrébatie local community / Nord – Pas de Calais Region - France May 2005 > December 2005 This e-democracy project based on Internet use has helped the local community of Atrébatie to enrich its experience on a project to build wind turbines through an organized structured debate among citizens. More information at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/projects/practices/download.cfm?sto=1448 &lan=9 The objective was to enable citizens to express their ideas on a proposed wind turbine installation, first on the Internet, then in a public meeting. On the internet, people decided to address priority issues (contact people in the cyber and town halls, and a paper version allowed those who do not have Internet access to participate). A public meeting was then held to discuss these issues, following strict rules presented in the form of a public charter: the rules governing the number of and the time allowed to experts, and elected officials came to introduce the subject and ensured the expression of each participant. The proposed issues, evaluation and reporting work were published on the Internet in order to ensure the transparency of debates. The innovation of the project lies in the complementary modes of information (online and paper) as well as the mode of organisation and structure of the debates. In an area that has no tradition of participatory democracy, innovation also lies in the organisation of a transparent citizen debate before a decision on territorial development is taken. The project was led by the local community of Atrébatie (CCA) in partnership with the Nord – Pas de Calais Regional Council, with the support of a consultant and volunteers from community organisations or the private sector. Atrébatie had already forged partnerships in the field of ICT. The consultant, who conducted a similar experiment in another French region, provided a method of structuring the debate while respecting the main objectives set by the President of Atrebatie. Being a first experience of participatory democracy for Atrébatie, the objectives were fully achieved: more than 90 proposals were made and more than 19 issues were evaluated by citizens and ranked in order of priority. In addition, 120 people participated in public debates. The use of the Web site has made an abundant and diverse information available, which would not have been possible using the traditional paper form: 40 visits per day for 1 month and a half, 130 registered on the site, 60 people evaluated the priorities proposed by 103

their fellow citizens. The debate helped to bring out the real issues and ask questions that politicians thought but dared not to broach, such as the ownership of the land where the turbines are located. The methodology and the way in which the debate was structured enabled people to participate in a debate about the territory and put forward new proposals. This example underlines the importance of the role of the Internet for creating new governance models at the local level. But the Internet is not sufficient to make things happen: the involvement of policymakers, the support of the Nord – Pas de Calais Region as well as good methods were pre-conditions for success. Items

Findings

1. Programme 2. Project 3. Theme 4. Lead partner 4. Project lifetime 6. Brief description of the project / programme

ESPON TANGO – Territorial Approaches for New Governance Territorial governance Nordregio, Stockholm (Sweden) June 2011 > May 2014 Policymakers in the field of territorial development and cohesion recognise a clear need for coherent public action and allocation of public resources within the different territories across the European continent. Especially in times of restricted public budgets, they feel a strong need to understand how policy action can become more effective in their daily practice and how synergies can be exploited through the vertical and horizontal co-ordination of public policies, programmes and projects. In particular in complex policymaking contexts such as territorial development where different levels and sectors of policymaking are involved, practical advice and good examples providing inspiration for both policymakers and practitioners are needed. The aim of this project is to develop practical advice for territorial governance based on evidence from current practices.

7. Common themes addressed

According to the ESPON TANGO project, territorial governance is the formulation and implementation of public policies, programmes and projects for the development of a place / territory by:  Co-ordinating the actions of actors and institutions;  Integrating policy sectors;  Mobilising stakeholder participation;  Being adaptive to changing contexts;  Realising place-based / territorial specificities and impacts. The TANGO project analysed how territorial governance has changed recently through a series of 12 case studies on various issues such as climate change, cross-border cooperation, integration of public transport and urban development,… It highlights the multi-dimensional aspect of local governance due to different levels of decision and complexity of organisation. The following diagram gives an idea of the inter-relations between the five dimensions of territorial governance.

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Public-private partnership, adaptation of governance rules, participation of citizens in public policy design, coordination of stakeholders and public organisations, integration of policies, local knowledge, and capitalisation, etc. were very similar themes tackled in the TANGO project to those that we analysed in INTERREG. Case studies highlighted two ideas that we outlined in the INTERREG E-government thematic: ‘utilising a high degree of flexibility in policy design and implementation’ and ‘developing a culture of collaboration to link the policy, planning, civil society and scientific communities to coordinate territorial knowledge’. However, ICTs seemed not to be identified by the project partners as relevant tools for developing territorial governance, to foster participation of citizens and help to coordinate stakeholders. Open innovation was not seen as a way to develop a more flexible governance. This shows the need to develop awareness-raising of public decisionmakers on the role and place of ICTs in the modernisation of public policies.

Items 1. Programme 2. Project 3. Theme 4. Lead Partner

5. Project lifetime 6. Brief description of the project / programme

Findings URBACT CITIZ@MOVE Territorial governance Partner Cities: Valencia, Toledo, Valenciennez, Turin, Syracuse, Athens, Charleroi, Aalborg, London, Aarhus, Charleroi, Cosenza, Gera, Islington, Graz, Sambreville, La Louvière, Pecs, Misterbianco, Derry 2004 – 2013 Citizen participation was central to the issues studied by the Citiz@Move network. The partner cities chose a multi-faceted approach to local forms of participative democracy. Three working groups investigated:  the ways in which ethnic minorities are empowered and integrated;  the link between governance and citizen participation when carrying out urban projects;  how ICTs can serve local development. The study, which highlights the singularity of each city practice, is the result of the experience of a network of 20 members. Its conclusions focus on the 105

stakeholders (women, the young and elderly, people from ethnic minority backgrounds), the tools (ICTs for new ways of participatory democracy) and the processes (citizen forums, consultative committees, etc…). 7. Common themes addressed

Items 1. Programme 2. Project 3. Theme

4. Lead partner

5. Project lifetime 6. Brief description of the project / programme

7. Common themes addressed

The dynamic network system was based upon three issues:  Citizen participation and inclusion of minorities;  Citizen participation and governance of urban projects;  Citizen participation and ICTs. The process of exchanging experiences, funded by URBACT, had three levels:  Local workshops: one workshop in each participating city.  Seminars for exchanging experiences: three to four meetings per topic;  General assemblies of the twenty cities within the network: three assemblies during the whole project. CITIZ@MOVE shows the increasing importance of ICTs in the participation of citizens, including minorities which are not used to being involved in public decisions, to influence choices and broad strategies on urban development and change the organisation of governance at local level.

Findings INTERACT - List of interact projects: http://www.interact-eu.net/projects/123 PACINTERREG PACINTERREG is a project which seeks to strengthen the principal goals of the INTERREG programmes: local development and strengthening of governance. Lead Partner: Region of Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur (France) Other partners: Region of Tuscany (Italy), Region of North Aigeia (Greece), Region of Andalusia (Spain), Region of Tanger-Tetouan (Morocco) Project Duration: 01.04.2004 - 31.12.2006 The diverse forms of administrative and political organisations can still present an obstacle to cooperation. PACINTERREG addressed this issue, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean. This will be done via a four-step programme: transfer of know-how, knowing each other, training and exchanges of political decision-makers and through means of communication Transfer of know-how and ‘"best practices’ between the INTERREG III strands:  1. Development of a common information tool between the managing units of Interreg III programmes.  2. Using the experience developed in the programmes Interreg III A and II C to propose a manual of best practices. Learning about administrative, legal and financial systems of neighbouring countries: Gathering concrete information on “what is difficult” in financial, administrative and legal systems of each country in order to improve cooperation projects; Creation of an electronic “manual of structural differences” (database). Training and exchanges between political decision-makers: Organisation of a specific training course based on four modules of a “summer university”. Innovative communication campaigns to inform about the EU activities: Study on the notion of ‘transnational’ and how it is felt by European citizens; A cross-

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sectoral working group bringing together project partners and media specialists to identify new models of communication and experimental broadcasts. While an old project, PACINTERREG pinpointed a number of key governance issues and the ways in which ICTs might contribute to develop exchange of experience on governance methods and cooperation.

8.2 Examples of national and local projects a) Policy-making

Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme 6. Description of the project / programme

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

9. Influence on other

Findings Engineering the Policy-making Life Cycle - e-Policy Università di Bologna, Bologna, Emilia Romagna, Italy DE, IT, IE, PT, UK University College Cork (IE), The University of Surrey (UK), Porto Instituto De Engenharia De Sistemas E Computadores Do Porto (PT), Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (DE), Regione Emilia Romagna (IT), PPA ENERGY (UK), ASTER (IT), Università degli Studi di Ferrara (IT) The main goal is to support policymakers in their decision process across a multi-disciplinary effort aimed at taking an engineering approach to the policy making life-cycle. The project focuses on regional planning and promotes the assessment of economic, social and environmental impacts during the policy-making process. For the individual aspects, e-POLICY aims at determining social impacts by “opinion mining” on e-participation data collected from the web. To aid policymakers, citizens and stakeholders, e-POLICY heavily relies on visualization tools providing an easy access to data, impacts and political choices. ePolicy provides a tool for supporting regional planners to create a regional energy plan in line with strategic EU and national objectives, consistent with financial and territorial constraints. This plan should include results from opinion mining, have an environmental assessment and be optimal with respect to one or more methods of measurement. In addition to the regional plan, ePolicy will provide a portfolio of implementation instruments (namely fiscal incentives, tax exemption, investment grants, etc.) to encourage the society and the energy market players to follow the direction of the plan. The ePolicy case study is the Emilia Romagna Regional Energy plan. ePolicy will provide a tool for supporting regional planners to create an energy plan that is in line with strategic EU and national objectives, consistent with financial and territorial constraints, including opinion mining results, well assessed from an environmental perspective and optimal with respect to one or more measurement methods. Extensive activities aimed at achieving the highest level of dissemination of project results and preparing for the exploitation of the proposed overall solution and of each of the individual components Regarding one or the 3 key-issues for the 2nd year: participation of

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projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions? 10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies? 11. Current or possible links with other European programmes and / or EU flagship initiatives?

citizens, open innovation, policy regeneration

FP7 STREP Project funded under the Objective ICT-2011.5.6 ICT solutions for Governance and Policy Modelling

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Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme 6. Description of the project / programme

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories 8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

9. Influence on other projects / programmes in

Findings Future Policy Modelling – FUPOL Cellent AG, AT, FR, DE, HR, CN, LV, SP, NL, CY, RO, CH The FUPOL consortium consists of 17 partners from Europe and China, including research partners, IT-industry, local governments and political cluster organisations: Xerox SAS, Fraunhofer IGD, City of Zagreb, Yantai IIC, BIT, ZIH, SSEI, UAB, EASY Connects, Active Solution, Interfusion Ltd, Pegeia Municipality, Qualysoft GmbH, Romanian American University, UN-Habitat, Innovation doo, Grad Skopje The objective of FUPOL is to introduce a new governance model to support the openness of the policy design and implementation lifecycle supported by innovative IT solutions. FUPOL proposes a comprehensive new governance model to support the openness of the policy design and implementation lifecycle. Simulation techniques, GIS, social networks and automatic text analysis are combined with classic e-participation to facilitate integrated e-governance. The citizens are involved in each step of the policy design process and informed about the impact of envisaged decisions. The new governance model builds on new technologies as well as existing know-how and open government data available to create better policies and decisions based on the citizens’ expectations. The policy design process is enabled by multichannel social computing, policy topic sensing and extraction, multilingual semantic analysis, dynamic agent based simulation, cloud computing and Idea Management System, (IMS). FUPOL has elaborated a comprehensive plan to further advance the research and development in simulation, urban policy process modelling, text analysis, visualization and integration of those technologies. These are the key specific deliverables and outcomes: - A new governance model to engage all stakeholders in the policy design lifecycle. - A comprehensive urban policy knowledge database FUPOL is a modular system, users can decide to implement all or only some features, depending on their needs. Implementation can be done in a ‘Step-by-step’ approach. The project deliverables include the platform and a set of training sessions and materials to help in the implementation of the software platform: - A cloud computing based ICT solution for scale take-up and acceptance. - Multilingual training and accompanying material Additionally, in order to promote its European uptake: - Piloting and evaluation of FUPOL in Europe (Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, UK) and China - Large scale dissemination of results through clusters of European cities Politicians can get a better understanding of the needs of citizens and businesses

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the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

based communication between politicians and citizens - Improved prediction of impacts of policy measures leading to more efficient implementation of government policies - Better decisions through forecasting of the potential impact of political decisions

10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies? 11. Current or possible links with other European programmes and / or EU flagship initiatives

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b) E-administration and public services Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners 5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

Findings e-Bourgogne (http://www.e-bourgogne.fr/) GIP e-Bourgogne France – Bourgogne region (Center-East of France) Regional Council of Bourgogne, French State government, and 4 local authorities (Conseils Généraux)  Develop shared e-services and infrastructures  Modernise administrations and public services  Improve access to public services by citizens  Help to develop the dematerialization process  Anticipate legal modifications  Reduce costs and investments e-Bourgogne is a shared platform enabling local authorities to offer e-services to citizens and businesses. ‘Shared platform’ means that technical infrastructures, applications and services are shared and used by local authorities of the Burgundy region at a lower cost to deliver better services. The platform doesn’t provide e-services directly to citizens and businesses, but only to local authorities which are only powered to deliver such services according to French law services. The main milestones of the project were as follows:  In 2003, the State government and the Burgundy region set up a contract to test the development of a few e-services;  In 2005, a regional platform for public tendering was set up and 3 500 civil servants were trained;  In 2006, a platform of e-services for businesses was created;  In 2008, a public body was created to support the regional project, called ‘Groupement d’Intérêt Public’ (GIP) (Public interest Grouping);  In 2009, a partnership was signed with Atos Worldline to manage the platform;  In 2010, the platform was adapted and services to citizens was included;  In 2011, the platform was massively deployed. It included new services as training, archive system and collaborative tools. In January 2014, 1250 members were registered: 70 % of local authorities of the Burgundy region, 50 % of schools and hospitals. Delivered services are:  On-line services for businesses and local authorities: tendering, legal control, accountancy, electronic signature, services to businesses though a Web portal, electronic archive, etc.  Services to citizens: Web-generating system, online formulas, personalized portfolio, online payment, e-democracy services, etc.  Collaborative tools: project management system, Web meetings, workflow, knowledge management system, etc. Each member can use these services without any limit and additional costs. A network of ‘ambassadors’ was set up to follow up on the implementation of services in the whole Burgundy region to better monitor local authorities, especially smaller ones and help them find the best reply to their answers. 111

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

According to a survey in 2013, the satisfaction rate was almost 75%. The quality rate was 22.4/30. The percentage of services used was 46%. The most used services were the market place, the e-signature and the Web site management system. Moreover, the e-Bourgogne project has had a significant impact:  On the development of e-government in the region: the adoption of ICTs is more substantial than it could have been in a normal situation where each local authority must invest to offer its own service. Meanwhile, it has enhanced the raising of awareness on the importance of ICTs as a way to modernize the public administration.  In the territory: through the programme, each small local community is able offer the same services to its citizens as larger cities. There is equal access to online services from each part of the regional territory, even in rural areas. The smallest cities are able benefit from shared services: 44% of local authorities have fewer than 1 000 inhabitants.  On citizens and businesses: the Burgundy region was one of the first regions in France to deliver a large range of online services to businesses. More citizens and businesses now have access to services, and the quality of services is higher (better performance, interoperability, homogeneity of services, etc.)  On the regional and local economy: the cost reduction for all the local authorities is around €3-4 M. For each local community, it is 70-80 % in comparison with a ‘classical’ situation where the community must invest by itself. But the project met some difficulties:  10 years were necessary to obtain good results;  awareness-raising by and backing from policymakers were crucial to develop the project;  the training of civil servants is absolutely necessary to implement the project and services (technologies, uses etc.). Amongst the success stories are:  the public-private partnership between e-Bourgogne and Atos Orign which is now not only a supplier, but also an effective co-producer of services. This means that Atos Origin is also investing and sharing the benefits and risks;  the culture of cooperation between local authorities: there is no longer only one leader in charge of developing services, but an efficient cooperation between public authorities to enrich the service portfolio through the e-Bourgogne platform;  the acknowledgement of the e-Bourgogne project as a remarkable one at the national and European level. E-Bourgogne was involved in European programmes such as eTEN (Procure). It received European awards: European Public Sector Award 2009 (1st rank), Stockholm Challenge 2010 (3rd rank).  A strong involvement of policymakers to take the lead and support the project is necessary;  Local authorities must accept to change their approach and to adopt a culture of cooperation;  The support of the State government, the Region and local communities was a key-enabler to develop the platform;

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Developing innovation and managing services on a day-to-day basis need to be promoted within the same approach; As technologies change quickly, it is important to continue awarenessraising campaigns and to develop training for policymakers and civil servants in order to promote innovation.

9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

e-Bourgogne has strongly influenced other projects and programmes as it is recognized as a reference at the national and European level:  A similar platform called e-Megalis was created in Brittany. E-Bourgogne could be disseminated to another region: Franche-Comté in the East of France;  Some practices were disseminated to other regions such as Wallonia in Belgium, Barcelona, and Normandy in France;  Some knowledge was transferred to other European communities in Russia, Spain, Italy, Belgium, inter alia;  Exchange of experience was organized with other project partners such as EIPA (Interest Group on Shared Services – European Public Sector Award, and PEPPOL.

10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies? 11. Current or possible links with other European programmes and / or EU flagship initiatives?

GIP e-Bourgogne was asked to bring its expertise on regional policies, about digital issues, open innovation, education, and healthcare. But there was no contribution to the Smart Specialization Strategy of the region.

e-Bourgogne was involved in an eTEN project (PROCURE). Exchange of ideas and experience was organized with PEPPOL.

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Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

Findings OASIS – Openly Accessible Services for an Interacting (http://www.oasis-eu.org/) Pôle Numérique de la Drôme (F) France , Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, United Kingdom, Spain

Society

11 partners:  Local communities that are also pilot sites: Province of Drôme (F), local communities of Catalunia (SP), Province of Torino (I), Marmara Region (TK), local communities of Bulgaria (BR).  Companies developing solutions and the IT architecture (F, BR), University of Torino (I).  Consultants and experts: University of Brunel (UK), a Spanish consulting company.  Foster the participation of citizens on data creation;  Enable a better access to data by citizens and companies and promote data sharing;  Develop the co-design of services between companies, local authorities, local groups, research centres and citizens;  Allow a neutral access to public services and a transparent pricing;  Develop capitalisation and organize governance of data.

OASIS is an EU co-funded project under the Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme - CIP. The consortium was selected by the European Commission in 2012, and the project started in Feb. 2012. The end of the project will be in 2015. The first services should be officially delivered in April/ May 2014. The total cost of the project is €4M. 50% was funded by the European Commission, the other 50% is from local and regional authorities and from businesses. OASIS aims at providing public administrations with a cloud-based environment for the deployment of interactive e-government services that facilitate the creation, dissemination, access and reuse of information by public bodies as well as citizens, businesses, and non-profit organisations. Current information systems offer a series of non-connected services, creating isolated technical architectures impeding the flow and dissemination of information.  Cloud computing offers highly scalable databases achieving great performances, ubiquitous network access, and independent resources. The OASIS project will take advantage of open standards and use cloud architecture to develop fluidity of services. The origin of the project was based on a statement: in Europe, shared services are built and provided by local authorities or public or public-private bodies working for local authorities. The problem is that this kind of organisation often depends on solutions provided by private software industries (IBM, Atos, etc.) and that the neutral access to services and interoperability is no longer guaranteed for citizens and businesses. There is also a major difficulty to know who the owner of data is, which creates numerous problems in respect to reusing data. The OASIS platform is based on a neutral approach: local cloud computing, open data and APIs, open formats, easy reuse of data, neutral access to services, interoperable services, agile partnership with IT businesses which are ready to adapt their solutions, and a free application store. The OASIS platform will be a Web portal offering a range of common services, data and locally-adapted services. The first open software-based services will

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be: 

Citizen Relationship Management based services: civil status certificates, building authorizations, registrations and payment of children activities, etc.;  Collaborative geo-mapping opened to users;  Software suites for local communities: elections, land planning, cemeteries,…;  An open data platform;  An open software electronic document platform;  An accountancy management system;  A human resource management system;  An electronic signature system;  An electronic archive system;  A strong security system to guarantee data integrity. Through the portal:  Each citizen will get access to his personal desktop containing his own data as well as to a range of services provided by local authorities (see just before) thanks to a single access point. The Web portal is a ‘onestop shop’;  Each local authority can choose the services it wants to offer citizens, respecting security and interoperability;  Each service provider can offer services, can get access to data and to a panel of users for testing. 7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

It is still too early to see tangible results as the project only began in 2012, however, some services are expected to become operational in April/May 2014. In addition, some interesting achievements in terms of advantages for citizens and local authorities can be identified:  As far as citizens are concerned: o Access to services is easy to manage: an Internet navigator, an Internet connection and a unique and personal password are the only conditions to access; o Services are accessible on a 24/7/365 basis. o A follow-up on queries is offered; o The personal desktop is fully secured and personal data are protected and can only be managed by the user; o Increased confidence with local governments is expected.



As far as local authorities are concerned: o A high cost reduction is expected: a high-speed Internet connection and an Internet navigator allow users to manage the service provision; o There is no limit in terms of user connections and access to on-line services; o The portal is easy to use and doesn’t require any IT skills; o There is a large range of services to be adapted to the local context and objectives of the local community and to offer to citizens; o Data are open and can be reused by each local community to design new services with citizens and local companies in order to provide them through the platform; o Investment is strictly monitored and controlled; o There is no risk of losing data or files.

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8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

11. Current or possible links with other European programmes and / or EU flagship initiatives?

Difficulties, but also success of the programme, are that such a platform and associated services can be imagined and built in different territorial, socioeconomic and legal contexts. One of the main problems this project will face in the near future will be the capability of local authorities and businesses to become involved and that of the leader to develop a sustainable and industrialized platform in a long-term perspective.  A strong public-private partnership and the willingness of businesses to adapt their service provision;  The adoption of open innovation: FOSS (Free and Open Software Services), open data and open methods (Agile, co-design) to codesign services with users;  The OASIS platform is open, but its success will depend on the capability of its promoters to industrialize the platform and disseminate services on a wider basis (a greater and greater number of users) and on a long-term perspective (issues of management, maintenance, technology obsolescence and renewal, development of new services to enrich the platform, level of investment,…). As the project is not finished, it is focused on its day-to-day work. Many presentations were made by the partners and their own countries at national and European levels. The result is a real interest from local authorities which want to be less and less dependent on major companies.

In France, the OASIS project was co-funded by the Rhône-Alpes Region. The Region adopted a new digital strategy at the end of 2012, which emphasized the importance of the use of open data and FOSS and promoted them as a way to develop open innovation between businesses, local authorities, research centres and citizens and to reduce public investment through service sharing and capitalisation. Over the past years, the Rhône-Alpes Region supported a large number of services (around 35) developed by local authorities based on sharing of experience, equipment and IT applications through a major programme called ‘Terres A Clic’. The OASIS project is consistent with the main requirements of the 2020 Agenda:  Interoperable services;  Secured data;  Security and confidence for users. It would be very useful to promote the project at the European level on a larger scale and establish links with major E-government projects as PEPPOL STORK, etc. It would certainly bring some strong ideas and enrich the 2020 Digital Agenda.

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c) Open innovation and participation of citizens and stakeholders Items 1. Project Programme 2. Project leader

Findings /

3. Geographical coverage

4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

“Construire la Ville Numérique Durable”  “Build a sustainable digital city” Agence d’Urbanisme et de Développement de Saint-Omer (public local land planning and economic development agency) Pays de Saint-Omer, France 134 102 inhabitants 1002 km² 5 local authorities 5 local authorities Communauté d’Agglomération de Saint-Omer Communauté de Communes du Pays de Lumbres Communauté de Communes de la Morinie Communauté de Communes du Pays d’Aire Communauté de Communes du Canton de Fauquembergues) Nord Pas-de-Calais Region Europe (FEDER)  Test and observe benefits of ICT integration in major public policies, especially for land planning and building  Make policymakers and civil servants aware of the importance and role of ICT for public policies and in particular land planning and building.  Give them methods to develop their building and land planning projects.  Set up tests and provide evidence of smart city projects, and methods to disseminate them across the whole territory. A series of ICT experiments was set up in different areas according to various usages:  Railway station  Buildings (flats for families, flats for elderly people)  Commercial area  Business park  Business center  Swimming pool center  Transportation systems  Energy systems. Several domains were investigated:  Measurement of Energy efficiency and consumption  Infrastructure and telecom networks (fibre optical network)  Information and communication  Co-working and smart work centres  ICT for social inclusion  Smart building  Security  Commerce. For each experiment, a case study was written to identify potential and future usages and practices of users (i.e.: workers, tourists, businesses, inhabitants, building managers, etc.). Conditions of dissemination were analysed. Reports 117

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

for dissemination of systems projects were set up. Policy regeneration: Today, civil servants and officials in Saint-Omer understand and have a better acknowledgement of the role, impact and benefits of ICT infrastructures and services. A strategy was built. It is regularly adapted according to the feedback of tests. The first tests were set up: IT multimodal information system (Web and mobile), smart business park, business park, energy systems around the railway station, and Wi-Fi, Some other projects will be implemented in 2015 and 2016. Participation of citizens: The land planning and development agency of Saint-Omer organized some meetings with citizens and citizen groups to ask them about their vision on ICT development and its role on the territory. It was also an opportunity to talk about concrete ICT projects. The forum used online questionnaires, creativity groups, and online forums. These methods allowed to collect more than 80 proposals on every domain: mobility, public services, employment… The first experiment on the ‘digital railway station’ was selected for a national digital innovation award.

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

The project was a clear demonstration that the ‘smart city’ development is not limited to major European cities, but that smaller cities in rural areas can also take advantage of ICTs. A guide book called ‘Building the sustainable smart city’ was written as an awareness-raising tool highlighting some ‘good practice’ cases of IT-based usages. More information at: http://www.aud-stomer.fr/fichier/file/Etudes/Guide_Ville_numerique.pdf It is important to note that policymakers still take the lead in the programme and strongly support the projects. ICTs are now clearly a priority in developing the efficiency of public policies in the territory. Another important point is that members of the land planning and development agency are highly qualified, and that civil servants of the city are closely involved in the programme. Last, ICTs were not implemented from a technological point of view, but types of use were at the forefront of the project, and the development of projects was always based on a user perspective.

9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

Saint-Omer is recognized in France as a kind of ‘living lab’ for smart city development in Nord Pas-de-Calais, not only on ICT applications, but on the capability of cities to ‘digitize’ their policies (economic development, tourism, transportation, commerce,…), on the participation of citizens in projects and policies through ICTs and on innovative models, references and techniques. It is a new way of demonstrating that new forms of open government are possible as well. Many policymakers are now paying attention to the SaintOmer experience. At the national level, the land planning and development agency of SaintOmer was engaged in taking the lead of the 52 land planning agencies on digital development and land planning within the National Association of Land Planning Agencies (Fédération Nationale des Agences d’Urbanisme), to make them aware of the importance and role of ICTs and disseminate its know-how.

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10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies?

Items

Findings

1. Project / Programme

Initiated by the city of Brest, @Brest puts networking and web links on the Internet and multimedia players in Brest and in the Francophone regions.

2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage

4. Partners 5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description the project programme

Saint-Omer experience may influence regional policies through the next ERDF programming period and the next ‘plan agreement’ between the Nord – Pas de Calais Region and the national State government. One year ago, the regional government decided to focus its policies on the ‘3rd Industrial Revolution’ process, thanks to Prof Jeremy Rifkin’s support and advice. This orientation is put at the top of the regional agenda as a Smart Specialization Strategy mixing sustainable development and digital and energy innovative systems and services. The Saint-Omer experience is considered as a tangible experience of what many cities should do In the region.

of /

It takes part in several participatory magazines:  a-brest (weekly)  participation-Brest (fortnightly)  Eco-sol-brest  Brest-open (weekly) City of Brest, Brest area.  The Brest area has a population of 384 617 inhabitants and an area of 1 690 km². It is made of 7 local communities:  Brest Métropole Océane: 210,117 inhabitants  Landerneau-Daoulas: 44 395 inhabitants  Iroise: 43 267 inhabitants  Plabennec and Abers: 37226 inhabitants  Lesneven and Coast of Legends: 25 712 inhabitants  Crozon Peninsula: 16 697 inhabitants  Alder Maritime: 7 203 inhabitants Citizen groups in social and digital domains ‘Brest Creative’ is a territorial social and open innovation platform which aims at:  Showing the potential and vitality of innovation in the area.  Encouraging project partners to meet.  Promoting reuse and spread of innovation.  Developing collaborative skills (digital tools, methodologies…).  Introducing new innovative forms of governance by involving citizens through open innovation.  Contributing to better social integration and sustainable development. @Brest is a Web platform encouraging the social adoption of ICTs in Brest, the Brest region and Brittany. It is edited by the city of Brest. News are published by an Editorial Board under the Creative Commons License. The platform is based on a network that has been bringing together digital players, citizen groups, citizens, representatives of local communities, 119

promoters of alternative economy, lecturers, researchers, etc. in the Brest area for many years. This project also influences social innovation at the regional level. The platform first reused tools and methodologies from other existing platforms (Imagination for People, Animacoop…) to avoid new costs. In a second step, several major initiatives were put in place:  The building of the network: innovation project promoters, understanding of what they do, what they need…  A mapping of innovative initiatives.  Value creation.  Adoption and dissemination of social innovation (creation of free “recipes”, how to reuse projects…) @Brest allows stakeholders to share their vision, project management issues, methods and tools on digital projects in the Brest area. It also helps to set up partnerships. For more information: http://wiki.a-brest.net/index.php/Brest_Cr%C3%A9ative The platform is also devoted to a "Francophone network on the Commons" which brings together promoters of the Commons. They represent both an alternative and a complement to the market-driven approach. The Commons are the result of collective actions when citizens engage and empower. Policy of the Commons A / Produce local community Commons The local community may actively contribute to developing a sphere of Commons, a set of resources that are not owned by the public authority itself, or subject to a regime dedicated to the private property market, but governed by a series of rights distributed among the different stakeholders. In addition, local communities can manage the public domain. The use, maintenance and promotion by active citizens can make this public domain come alive, transform it into Commons, ensuring it will serve all. 1. Archives and library collections and museums in the public domain digitized open access 2. Content produced by the community openly reusable to feed the volunteers Commons 3. An active opening licensed data ShareAlike 4. Promote the flow of information through the provision of internet access in open spaces and public buildings B / Local communities coproducing commons with citizens: 5. Co-designed with the citizens’ public space, a participatory pillar governance 6. Information on the city co-produced with the locals 7. Strengthen citizen against investment in climate change 8. Shared the "guerrilla gardening" gardens delivering nature Commons in the city 9. Access networks for collaborative and open Internet 10. Support the emergence of complementary citizen currencies C / Local community, support and facilitator of the Commons 11. Making the choice to use free software 12. Use and make maps open and re-usable 13. Cover the territory of third party places likely to host and grow social innovation and public debate 14. Develop participatory and co-housing

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15. Permaculture and short circuits: new feed of cities 16. Supporting participatory processes in natural resource management.

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

Policy regeneration: Today, many stakeholders in the Brest area are used to using online information. Municipalities have accepted to publish minutes of meetings, reports and documents that can now be accessed by citizens. It can be seen as something quite simple, but it is not so usual to allow access to documents produced by local communities. Participation of citizens:

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

The program itself is a disseminator of digital practices taken from France and all over the world. The main conditions are:  The strong support of policymakers and local communities.  Willingness of policymakers and local communities to open their mind and accept to work with stakeholders in a confidence-based collaborative way.  Willingness of stakeholders to exchange ideas, experience and develop projects in a collaborative way.  Networking of people and a permanent stimulation of the network to ensure a good and useful production of information  The endorsement of open innovation (free and open software, collaborative methods, co-design, etc.

9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

For example, other initiatives could be easily disseminated thanks to the @Brest initiative:  The network of Brest schools  The centre of collaborative resources of public access of the Brest area  The inclusion of remote and public Internet for people in difficult situations  The Internet project area (wiki space)  The network of public writing and digital cultures  The free CD-free office eos (wiki) distributed over 300 000 copies in its various versions since 2005.  The cooperative médiablog and fifty channels of internet radio, videos and webTV  The annual call for projects on the use of Internet and multimedia  The annual call for projects on the alternative economy in the Brest area

Supported by numerous training sessions on writing for public documents (One per week since January 2004), groups of citizens are more likely to contribute to the network. Open innovation: Open content of @Brest is accessible through a shared feed that allows the websites who wish to republish document titles or the full text. @Brest also contains a lot of information published in the network shared sites, directly available in the newswire.

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10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies?

Items 1. Project / Programme

2. Project leader

3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project /

 The neighbourhood newspapers collective  The network of 14 public videoconference rooms in cities  The Knowledge Portal in Brest Other French areas were inspired by @Brest and began to build their own “@city”. But there is still much resistance from policymakers and local communities to change and work in a more open style with local stakeholders: the @Brest experience shows that ICTs can drastically change the way policies are developed, the role of policymakers and their relationship with stakeholders and citizens. The Brittany Region is closely following this initiative, but it was not decided to disseminate it to other parts of the region. As the project is more focused on networking and new forms of governance which does not require high-level technologies, it cannot have an effective potential to contribute to the S3

Findings FING (New Generation Internet Foundation) The Social Network FING allows stakeholders to participate in projects and research of the association. This network, ‘digital double" FING aims at facilitating and enriching exchange between its participants: innovators, researchers, local players, associations, experts, students FING explores the transformative potential of technology. Its objective is to increase the innovative capability and economic production of any society. www.fing.org / www.internetactu.net FING association Founded in 2000 by a team of entrepreneurs and experts, FING is a think tank on digital reference transformations. FING has now over 300 members: large companies, start-ups, research centres, universities, local communities, government agencies, associations, individuals ... France Public bodies: Ministries, Regions, cities, public development agencies, chambers of commerce, universities, etc. Private stakeholders: businesses, associations, individuals, high-level schools, etc. In connection with this large number of partners, including local authorities, FING is inventing and experimenting with target audiences, new innovative projects building a bridge between usages and technologies. Develop a ‘culture of data’ to serve companies and local stakeholders. Only a few economic players, regional authorities and citizens currently have the capability to take advantage of the production / management / reuse of data. Learning to identify, producing, understanding, using and reusing, exchanging relevant data becomes a condition of competitiveness and efficiency of public and private stakeholders. The campaign, which runs from April 2014 to June 2015, consists of a national working group and regional experiments.

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programme

At the heart of the digital revolution, data describe and quantify all parts of our environment: for example, height, duration, speed, weight, temperature, locations, users, heart rate, time, price, concentration, materials, opinions , votes, ratings, etc... They are more and more pervasive thanks to laptops, servers, mobile devices, RFID, etc. Many of our daily activities are made possible by data, such as getting around the city with a GPS. Understanding and interacting with data is now everyone's business and Infolabs are a means to achieve it. 7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

February 13, 2014 held the second meeting of the Gironde Infolab territory and the Bordeaux area. The second workshop was an opportunity to go into depth and continue discussions on the ecological footprint, Open Data and local authorities. Participants worked to create innovative usage scenarios based on useful data for prototyping projects in the territory. 8 main themes were:  How to reduce energy consumption related to digital uses?  How to raise awareness of the use of disposable plastic?  How to optimize waste collection and make them smart?  How to increase the use of shared vehicles fleets?  How to optimize ways to reduce pollution?  How to account for the environmental footprint of public buildings?  How to optimize the consumption of supplies and consumables by organisations?  How to improve the aggregation of data generated by public services such as the Region, the State government and local communities, and foster data sharing? Participants were able to propose interesting scenarios based on the use of data. The Infolab experience in Montpellier also allowed a centre promoting the stakeholders’ participation in open data practices to be opened. The centre allows them to meet easily by offering a monthly networking.

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013, the fourth meeting of the National Infolab group was held in Rennes. Its goal was to prototype an Infolab thanks to the feedback of the previous work. One of the proposed participatory workshop was to co-write a charter. The aim of the charter was to describe the features of an Infolab to make the

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9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies?

Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners 5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

concept accessible. Infolab helped local private and public stakeholders to increase awareness of the importance of data to explore their high potential to create innovative and useful services through collaborative mechanisms: exchange of ideas, project development, development of ongoing services, identification of barriers and difficulties. It contributed locally, especially in Rennes, Bordeaux and Montpellier, which are the leaders in open data, to enrich and structure the approach of open data and to open up new possibilities for services for businesses and citizens. As Infolab was a national programme with local development in a few cities such as Montpellier, Rennes and Bordeaux, it did not contribute to shaping regional policies or Smart Specialization Strategies. However, in these territories, it helped to reinforce know-how and experience on data management and outline the potential of data for developing new services for the future, especially for sustainable development and environment. Findings Unlimited Cities (www.unlimitedcities.org) UFO Paris (F), Rennes (F), Montpellier (F), Evreux (F), Helsinki (Fi) R+P / UFO architects, city planners Unlimited Cities is a digital application aiming at informing, imagining and co-creating the city of the future with citizens. It was created by UFO, an IT company chaired by an architect, Mr Alain Renk. It can be used as the starting point of an urban project and allows people to understand urban challenges/opportunities and potential change in the city, and to express their vision of the future of a part of a city or neighbourhood. Unlimited Cities offers cities to set up an open dialogue with citizens and give them ideas and tools to express their needs regarding future uses of the city. The Unlimited Cities application enables people to transform the city 'virtuallyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; using three photos offering various representations of the city or neighbourhood. It is possible to change each representation according to 6 tools: density, nature, mobility, neighbourhood life, IT, creativity). It is also possible to add or remove some urban elements, for instance to add trees, roads, etc. or to create new buildings,â&#x20AC;Ś The users can create their own vision of the city or neighbourhood through a hyper-realistic project and add some comments. Meanwhile, they can see in real time whether the proposal is cost-effective. They can compare their results with other projects of other citizens thanks to data visualization.

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In addition, Unlimited Cities is used to promote an innovative vision of a ‘collaborative city planning’ in the mid-term. For instance, open innovation workshops are organized with citizens to imagine and co-create new perceptions of the city of the future. Mediation is also created to get all the people involved: mediators ask citizens to test the iPad application in the streets that help people to bring their own experience and enrich it. Another important characteristic is transparency thanks to open data: data sharing creates mutual confidence. They can see what the others have created in the gallery, including comments and suggestions.

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

At the end of each experiment, a feedback document is given to policymakers and citizens presenting qualitative and quantitative data. The analysis is a great opportunity to compare the various visions of citizens of the future of their neighbourhood. This document make architects and city planners aware of citizens’ needs. They can use it to refine their own vision and make proposals to policymakers. Cities can adapt or complete their major long-term projects with more short-term and agile projects. By comparing the needs of citizens and the vision of the city policymakers and city planners have, Unlimited Cities helps quick solutions to emerge and to improve the quality of life of the city within a short-term period. Citizens who participate in the ‘collaborative city planning’ experiments, want to work together to improve their neighbourhood thoroughly. However, they need to be helped by local municipalities to improve their projects on local urban transformation. ‘Collaborative city planning’ helps to develop the idea of a ‘participatory government’ by enhancing collective and individual projects. In the short125

term, concrete benefits include,  Better relationship and confidence between institutions and citizens creating quality and sustainability of projects;  New possibilities for creativity for architects and city planners contributing to more open urban programmes;  The emergence of a shared vision of the city based on collaborative dynamics reducing risks of conflicts in urban transformations. 8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions? 10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies? 11. Current or possible links with other European programmes and / or EU flagship initiatives?

There are no specific conditions for disseminating the project which was implemented in different cities throughout the world: in France (Rennes, Montpellier, Evreux), in Japan (Sendai), in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Unlimited Cities’ targets are cities that are seeking to benefit from collective know-how and develop a positive dialogue with their citizens in order to create innovative projects and approaches and to pick up on citizens’ needs. The application also addresses architects, city planners and people in charge of participation of citizens. If necessary, they can manage the project and bring the content. The role of UFO who is the creator of Unlimited Cities is to make the project feasible by bringing its own experience, best practice and the management of technical aspects of the project. An ethical charter is proposed to project partners to ensure transparency, access to results through open data and confidence between policymakers, city planners and citizens. It is probably too early to identify if and how ‘Unlimited Cities’ has effectively impacted public policies. But, what we know is that: - Policymakers are more aware of new uses of open innovation. They show in real time the effective benefit of the application; - The application raised new ways of interacting with citizens by developing creativity and confidence; - It transforms the way in which city planning policies are driven. ‘Unlimited Cities’ could help to develop new content based on 3D and augmented reality in order to create new city planning services, thus contributing to Smart Specialization in regions where these technologies already have a critical mass.

‘Unlimited Cities’ gained an award in Barcelona last November 2013 as part of the Open Cities programme supported by the European Commission. This programme aims at developing innovative smart city applications.

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Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners 5. Objectives of the project /programme 6. Description of the project / programme

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme

Findings MANCHESTER: SMART CITY Manchester Digital Development metropolitan area, UK UK

Agency,

Greater

Manchester

Manchester City Council + 10 of the Greater Manchester districts To become a leading “smart city”, using new and emerging technologies to trial new products and services through a “Living Lab” approach Manchester is a leading city for digital technologies. Over the last 20 years the city centre and surrounding areas were transformed with new knowledge based industries, better transport, growing universities, and new schools, work places and homes. All around the world, companies and policymakers are looking at the idea of the ‘smart city’, where internet technologies combine with smarter, digitally enabled systems to improve the ways that cities work. ‘Smart city’ means ‘smart citizens’ – where citizens have all the information they need to make informed choices about their lifestyle, work and travel options. Because a ‘smart city’ needs ‘smart citizen’, projects that are peoplecentred are encouraged. Examples of main achievements are the ‘Go ON Manchester” campaign to develop ‘digital champions’ (who will help those people who are not currently online to get online); the city’s first Manchester Hackathon to develop new applications and visualisations using open data; and an open public Wi-Fi network across more than 20 locations in the city to enable better connectivity. These initiatives are all part of the action plan for implementing the city’s new Digital Strategy which has the ambition to enable Manchester to be a leader as one of the world’s top 20 digital cities. As one of the founding members of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), Vice Chair of the Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum and Chair of the European Connected Smart Cities Network, Manchester is in a privileged position to continue its work with other European cities, and share its good practices on co-creation and co-design. In line with the new Manchester Digital Strategy, Manchester is undertaking a number of initiatives to encourage its development as a ‘smart city’ and is a partner in a number of European projects with other comparable cities such as Helsinki, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Ghent, Bologna and Cologne.

The city’s population is now growing, as people live, work, study and move out iny the city. As Manchester is continuing its regeneration, it is embracing new technologies and encouraging the production and use of new goods and services. The new Manchester Digital Strategy played an important role in the definition of the regional Smart Specialization Strategies, Manchester Digital Development Agency is a partner on a number of European projects, representing Manchester City Council, working with partners in the university, business and not-for-profit sectors to trial new products and services. They work closely with organisations such as

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EU flagship initiatives?

Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

Manchester Digital, the trade association for digital and new media, FutureEverything, the pioneering Manchester festival innovation organisation, and MadLab, (the Manchester Digital Lab) a community hackspace in the Northern Quarter.

Findings Reality Sensing, Mining and Augmentation for Mobile Citizen–Government Dialogue - Live+Gov University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany (UKob) DE, GR, NL, FI, SP Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece (CERTH), Yucat BV, Netherlands (YCT), Mattersoft OY, Finland (MTS), Fundacion Biscaytik, Spain (BIZ), Eurosoc GmbH, Germany (EuSoc) Develop a mobile government solution that allows citizens to accurately express their needs to government by using a variety of mobile sensing technologies available in their smartphones. Citizens may contact the authorities via smartphones, either to report issues and make suggestions, or to retrieve context-related information. Live+Gov is a mobile eParticipation solution that allows citizens to accurately express their needs to government by using smartphones and takes advantage of a collective citizen intelligence. The key feature of this project is that it fully exploits the capabilities of widely proliferated smartphones for mobile eParticipation, rendering an augmented reality of governmental actions and plans, such that citizens obtain fast and comprehensive feedback on issues they encounter. Live+Gov will carry out three field trials of the project: Urban Planning, Urban Maintenance, Mobility. Success will be measured through these three live trials conducted by partners already operating end-user platforms in these domains and reusing existing governmental data.

The project includes a dissemination plan and a set of dissemination materials. The need of Live+Gov, to reach out to a wide audience of citizens, places particular emphasis on the communication channels that are already established with the governmental bodies. Direct communication with governmental bodies, but also reach out to the citizens, was accomplished by announcing the Live+Gov “message” via the official advertising channels of the involved municipalities. This way, the tools developed by Live+Gov are expected to find their way into the citizens’ smartphones and allow them to act as the city sensors.

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8.3 Public-private partnership

Items 1. Project / Programme 2. Project leader 3. Geographical coverage 4. Partners

5. Objectives of the project /programme

6. Description of the project / programme

7. Main achievements: results of the project / programme – Main impacts (for the territory, citizens, businesses,…), difficulties, success stories

Findings Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) Amsterdam Economic Board, the City of Amsterdam Amsterdam Metropolitan Area / Netherland Amsterdam Smart City was initiated by the Amsterdam Economic Board, the City of Amsterdam, Liander and KPN. It has grown into a broad platform, with more than 70 partners who are involved in a variety of projects focussing on energy transition and open connectivity. Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) is a unique partnership between businesses, authorities, research institutions and the people of Amsterdam. The goal is to transform the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area into a smart city. Over the past three years, the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area has worked successfully to become a Smart City. ASC is leveraging sustainable economic investments with testing innovative products and services, and with understanding the behaviour of the residents and users of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. Using this collective approach and setting up local projects, ASC makes it possible to test new initiatives. The initiatives that prove to be most effective can then be rolled out on a larger scale, with all the acquired knowledge and experience is shared via the ASC platform. In this way, ASC is helping to accelerate climate and energy programmes. The ultimate goal of all activities is to contribute positively towards achieving CO2 emission targets, as well as aiding the economic development of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. In doing so, the quality of life will improve for everyone. The activities of the project include building the platform 'Amsterdam, Smart City'; developing and validating at least 12 test projects in the fields of sustainable housing, working, mobility and public space; sharing knowledge about the project and disseminating results (www.amsterdamsmartcity.nl). Within the pilot projects research is conducted to better understand what changes are achieved. TNO oversees the work assuring robust monitoring and evaluation. In one pilot project the research is focused on customer behaviour: assessing the effect of an energy display and the effect on the behaviour of customers when detailed usage data is given as feedback. Also the ‘peer-pressure’ effect is being analysed and research is looking at different ways to approach and reach the customer. Amsterdam Smart City has established the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area as an urban living lab that gives businesses the potential to both test and demonstrate innovative products and services. Currently, ASC has a few recurring themes in the region, including living, working, mobility, public facilities and open data.

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8. Conditions to disseminate the project / programme 9. Influence on other projects / programmes in the region (i.e. other policies and / or in other European regions?

ASC looks at the development of replicable concepts that can be applied elsewhere in the region or nationally or even internationally.

10. Contribution to shape regional policies, especially regarding Smart Specialization Strategies?

By combining regional needs with the local investment agenda, there is the potential to create new products and services, and to test or scale them up in a practical environment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the urban living lab. This has helped to shape the Smart Specialization Strategy of the region.

The activities of ASC have influenced several urban living labs, by connecting parties and building consortiums. The creation of diverse urban living labs, in which activities are focused, helped in identifying and connecting to local investment portfolios. At the same time it was possible to gain knowledge about residents and users of neighbourhoods, and identify the needs and wishes of the residents and users of neighbourhoods.

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Annexe 9: Further reading This section presents a set of resources and references that are complementary to the concepts and policies presented in this report and that are recommended for an in-depth exploration of the topic.

A Digital Agenda for Europe, COM(2010)245 Common methodology for the implementation of Digital Local Agenda and its impact on regional digital policies, DLA project (http://www.projectdla.eu) (last visited April 2014) Digitizing Public Services in Europe: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Putting ambition into actionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, 9th Benchmark Measurement, December 2010 E-Participation.eu manual, eCitizen II project (http://eparticipation.eu) (last visited April 2014) EUROPE 2020 - A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - COM(2010) 2020 Good Practice Guide covering various aspects of FOSS usage by European Public Administrations, OSEPA project (http://www.osepa.eu) (last visited April 2013) I-SPEED Good Practice Guide, I-SPEED project (http://www.ispeed.eu) (last visited April 2014) Innovative ICT and E-government practice: Learning from European Regions, PIKE project (http://www.pike-project.eu) (last visited April 2014) K. Andersen, H. Henriksen, E-government maturity models: Extension of the Layne and Lee model, Government Information Quarterly 23, 2006 OECD, Rethinking E-government Services: User-centred approaches, 2009 Paving the Way for Future Research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling, (ed.) Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathali & Dimitris Askounis, 2012 Reaching the Heights with ICT: Best practices guide for mountain and rural areas, IMMODI project (www.interreg-immodi.net) (last visited April 2014) The European E-government Action Plan 2011-2015 Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government, COM(2010) 743 The Digital Local Agenda Manifesto, EISCO 2007 (http://www.digitallocalagenda.eu/home/a-dla-ineurope/eisco2007-declaration-en.pdf) (last visited April 2014) United Nations E-government Survey 2012: E-government for the People, 2012

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