The second project Conference “LEARNING FROM BENCHMARKING TO MAKE I2010! A REALITY IN THE REGIONS: DATA ANALYSIS , IMPACTS ON ICT POLICIES, EMERGING NEEDS”, will be hosted by the Committee of the Regions of the European Union in Brussels on the 30th March 2006.
The conference will be aimed at the presentation of the UNDERSTAND results based on the regional benchmarking of the information society through common methodology and comparable indicators and of their impacts on policy making. The event will also offer a broad picture on the regional development of the Information society through the presentations of other European best practices as BENTLI, SOURIR, BIRRA. Thus we will demonstrate more in general how regions contribute to the delivery of the I2010! objectives. The relevance and the potentiality of the benchmarking exercise will be the heritage that the Understand regions will share with the IANIS+ framework.
The event will be structured in two main sessions: the former providing a picture of the status/progress in the Information society implementation as it comes out from the UNDERSTAND results and from the ones of BENTLI, SOURIR and BIRRA. The latter will be dedicated at presenting how benchmarking improves policy making in the regions and help tackle i2010! objectives ; we will show what regions learnt from data, how they actually implemented the benchmarking results in their policies and what is still missing to improve policy support. This session foresees the full involvement of policy maker and managers from the participating regions.
The conference is targeted on Regions; Development Agency; Research centres working on ICT, P ublic Administrations, regional development, statistics; Local administration; national and European statistical offices, EC officers working on INFSO and Regional Development, Regional networks.
Working languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Polish
The event is hosted and sponsored by the Committee of the Regions.
IMPORTANT: Because of the CoR security policy, registration is mandatory to access the conference building.
PLEASE REGISTER WITHIN 24TH MARCH 2006.
CONFERENCE DETAILS:
The role of the Regions in Information Society
Benchmarking i2010 - Luca Protti - European Commission - DG Information Society
The UNDERSTAND operation: a joint effort to benchmark the Information Society in the Regions - Chiara Mancini – Regional Government of Emilia-Romagna
Presentation of the benchmarking results in partner regions
Broadband infrastructure - Chiara Mancini – Regional Government of Emilia-Romagna
E-government – Victor Prieto – Valencian Office for the Information Society
E-business - Olaf Juptner – HA Hessen Agentur
ICT usage by citizens – Mike Williams - University of Wales
Best practice from other European experiences
Bentli - Teresa Muñoz - Fundecyt
Sourir - Helene Raimond - Walloon Telecommunications Agency
Birra - Donnie Morrison - Western Isles Enterprise
Initial analysis from the data
The Regions and i2010 - Using Benchmarking to accelerate Information Society progress
Roundtable 1: Digital convergence - Guido Acchioni, DG Information Society - European Commission
The information society in the Regions and the cohesion policy - Olivier Baudelet, European Commission - DG REGIO
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The RESULT REPORT is available for download.
The Second Project Conference took place on March 30th in Brussels and was hosted and sponsored by the Committee of Regions.
The event goal was not only to disseminate the second year project results, but also to underline their impacts on policy making and on how regions can contribute to the achievement of the i2010 agenda.
The event was opened by Mrs Marie-Claire Neill Cowper – head of Unit of EDUC that stressed the role of regions in the achievement of i2010 objectives and indicated in the benchmarking an important tool to measure its progress.
Luca Protti from the European Commission presented the indicators that will be monitored in benchmarking i2010.
The presentations from the Understand partners provided updated information on about 200 indicators collected at the regional level related to 4 domains: e –government, e-business, citizens and broadband. The presentations showed the updates in comparison to the surveys carried out in 2004 as regard new issues investigated in 2005, indicators refinements and trend data.
In the morning session three European best practices on benchmarking presented their methodology and the expected results: Bentli as regard methodology guidelines for digital literacy benchmarking, Birra as regard the e-ladder evaluation model that will be tested in remote areas and Sourir the organisational approach adopted by the French regions.
Finally to go more in depth with benchlearning, the opportunities for further analysis on Understand data have been presented so that to model the relations between the different group of indicators.
In the afternoon session, regional ICT policy managers have discussed about the contribution of regions in delivering the i2010 agenda, by presenting those activities in which policy intervention has been successful and those areas in which intervention is now required.
The session was closed by Gareth Hughes, that underlined that most of the expenditure on ICT is made by regions and regional action needs regional data. Measurement at the regional level proves to be a fundamental supporting tool for decision making.
Feed-back from experts in the field about data have been very positive and the Commission showed some true interest in the project and in particular in the possibility to widen the benchmarking to new regions.
Presentations are available for download
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