DLA - Final Leaflet
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The document summarizes a pilot project to implement a Digital Local Agenda (DLA) in the Municipality of Barcelos, Portugal. The objectives were to test the DLA methodology and create a strategic document for Barcelos. An analysis of Barcelos' current situation was conducted using a self-assessment tool. This led to the creation of a bilingual DLA document for Barcelos that identified current projects, resources, and strategic priorities over three years like creating a single point of contact for citizens and an intelligent assistance platform. The pilot reinforced Barcelos' interest in using a DLA to coordinate efforts to improve e-government services.
DLA - Final Leaflet
- 2. Final Results - Index General Information page 03 Partners page 05 General DLA page 07 Self‐evaluation tool page 11 PILOT PROJECT, Barcelos page 12 PILOT PROJECT, Western Macedonia, Greece page 15 and in Municipality of Servia‐Velvento, Greece SC Meetings, page 17 TSC Meetings page 17 Final Conference page 18 web site page 19 Credits // Editorial. Eixo Atlántico do Noroeste Peninsular // Texts. Manuel Aroso, Toru Oja, Janine Lopes, Lorenzo Sabatini, Paraskevi Gkiourka, Elena Mariño // Graphic Design. Chus Torres 2
- 3. DLA project is an INTERREG IV C project aimed to improve regional po‐ licies in the fields of Information Society through the introduction of the Digital Local Agenda in order to develop new activities related to the application of the Information and Communication Technologies to public services. General Information A Digital Local Agenda (DLA) is a common strategy shared with citizens, for the development of the Information Society which bears in mind socio‐economic, cultural and institutional factors. Digital divide in Eu‐ rope is a reality, and the economic and social development of European regions is largely conditioned by the degree of implementation of the Information Society. In the case of public administrations, the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies tools in day‐to‐day practices brings immediate improvements: more efficiency, more pro‐ ductivity and better services for citizens and businesses. However, the extent to which the Information and Communication Technologies are developed in public authorities across Europe in general and in the pro‐ ject partners in particular, varies from one region to another. The DLA project is implemented through the second call for proposals of INTERREG IV C Programme and is being developed since January 2010 to December 2012. It involves 11 partners from 9 countries across Europe: Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Por‐ tugal and Spain). The INTERREG IV C Programme is contributing with 75% to the total budget of the project which is 1,491,456 euros. To reach its objectives, the project fosters a permanent exchange of ex‐ perience among partners. It also aims to establish a cooperation net‐ 3
- 4. work among partners in order to update and improve knowledge on the information society and its applications within public administration ser‐ vices. Specific objectives of the project: • Design a general DLA transferable to every Region, • Elaborate a Common Methodology to adapt the general DLA to every particular local situation, • Involve all key stakeholders in the project and in the process of building a DLA, • Exchange experience, • State the basis for future collaboration. The project is structured into four main components including: manage‐ ment and coordination; communication and dissemination; exchange of experiences; and case study implementation. The management and co‐ ordination component warrant the smooth and undisrupted implemen‐ tation of the project. The communication and dissemination component is ensuring that the project outputs are addressing the public authorities, citizens, and business for promoting the development of an appropriate Information Society Strategy. The exchange of experiences is conducted within a logical framework: diagnosis, sharing experience and structuring future cooperation, in order to guarantee the added value of information flow. The Case Study is designed to demonstrate that the Common Methodo‐ logy developed within the project is a useful tool that can be adapted to a general DLA at a local level. More information: http://www.projectdla.eu 4
- 5. 65 4 7 11 10 Partners 2 1 3 3 9 8 North Regional Development and Coordi‐ 1 Portugal nation Commission www.ccdr‐n.pt Eixo Atlántico do Noroeste Peninsular 2 Spain www.eixoatlantico.com Agenzia per lo Sviluppo Empolese Valdelsa Spa 3 Italy www.asev.it Euregio “Pskov, Livonia", section Latvia 4 Latvija www.pskov‐livonia.net University Of Tartu 5 Eesti www.ut.ee Võru Maavalitsus ‐ Võru County Government 6 Eesti www.voru.maavalitsus.ee Midland Regional Authority 7 Ireland http://www.midlands.ie 5
- 6. University of Patras 8 Greece www.upatras.gr 9 Macedonia University of Macedonia www.uowm.gr Regional Development Agency of North 10 Hungary Hungary (NORDA) www.norda.hu MFG Baden‐Württemberg mbH 11 Germany Public Innovation Agency for ICT and Media www.innovation.mfg.de DLA in brief To improve regional policies in the fields of Objective: Information Society through the introduction of the Digital Local Agenda Partners: 11 partners from 9 European Countries Budget: 1,491,456 euros EFDR Contribution: 1,211,872 euros 6
- 7. General DLA DLA overview The concept of the Digital Local Agenda (DLA) born in 2005 by the II World Summit on the Information Society (November 2005, Bilbao, Spain) of Cities and Local Go‐ vernments as instrument to fight the digital divide and ensure that all people in the world can enjoy the benefits of the Information Society: it is mainly addressed to the local public administration and regions as enablers of this worldwide e‐In‐ clusion process. In 2007 the European Information Society Conference (EISCO) approved the Digital Local Agenda Manifesto, so drafting the guidelines for the following DLA develop‐ ment and contextualization in all European countries. The Digital Local Agenda is an instrument for the local planning of e‐Government and development of the knowledge society which: • Aims to modernize Public Administration organizations and provision of services, establish a common strategy in their territory with other public and private stakeholders to build strong local net‐ works in this domain and improve the dialogue with their own citi‐ zens and their participation in local decision‐making. • Represent a flexible instrument that must be adapted in each context to the specific conditions in which it must be imple‐ mented • It’s a bottom‐up instrument that every local government puts into prac‐ tice in close cooperation with the region and the national government and with a 7
- 8. positive but also critical approach on the strategies being implemented to im‐ prove them and bring them closer to the real needs. The main actors and en‐ ablers of the Digital Local Agenda are the local governments – mainly municipalities but also counties, districts, provinces, parish, etc. – together with their actual or potential partners interested in ICT –based service delivery in the territories where they operate, as other administrations providing ad‐ ministrative and other municipal services to citizens and enterprises: chambers of commerce and local entrepreneurs’ unions, health service inspections and providers, decentralized state administrations, firemen, local banks, civic as‐ sociations and local networks, ONGs and voluntary associations, etc. Nevertheless, even if DLA is essentially a process involving public and private stakeholders in a local area or community, also Region have to develop own strategies through a Regional Digital Agenda so to provide to all local adminis‐ trations common guidelines in developing the local ones, coordinate resources and manage funds coming from the EU structural programs. In this context, the Digital Local Agenda process aiming at transforming e‐Government in a system that includes all administrations in the provision of administrative ser‐ vices, as well as on the other priorities indicated (such as e‐Inclusion and e‐ Democracy to improve governance and the competitiveness of local economies), should be part of the regional strategy and supported by the Re‐ gional administrations. DLA Project methodology The INTERREG IVC Project “DLA” has its roots in the EISCO results. DLA partnership, composed by 11 partners coming from 9 different EU countries, jointly worked for exchanging experiences and pro‐ 8
- 9. viding a Common Methodology for facilitating the building of a digital local agenda in a whatever EU local administration. DLA project methodology has been structured according to three main pillars: 1.‐ Self Evaluation Tools (SET) As first step there is the need to make an accurate analysis of the state of the art to give a position the local government in relation to the overall DLA goals (that are to be established having also in mind the regional, national and Eu‐ ropean strategies on the Information Society and e‐Government). In other words, it is absolutely indispensable to establish a “starting point”: What can be initially done and what aspects of the local government action must be improved through the Agenda in order to establish superior goals in the future. For example, a small local government with a low automation of its own services, insufficient skills among its personnel to manage ICT‐ based services, and that is not part of a local network with other administrations, will have completely DLA priorities in its plan that a local government with a good level of automation, a well organized Electronic Development Depart‐ ment and that forms parts of a regional e‐Government network. 2.‐ Priorities and relationships (Matrix) Secondly is necessary well focus the relationships among the possible results of the self‐evaluation phase and the priorities on which focus the develop‐ ment of the DLA. Indeed, while the general priorities are often same for each local administration, the specific “starting point” of a Public Administration wishful to implement own DLA can hardly affect the order of the priorities to implement and their level of complexity. In other words we have to grid in a relationships table the possible follow –ups of the self‐evaluation tools, offe‐ ring to the PA more guidelines and priorities to develop in own DLA according 9
- 10. to its actual capability and skill in ICT, automations, networking ca‐ pability, etc.. 3.‐ Policy planning (DLA document) Finally, all results of the previous step have to flow in a policy docu‐ ment where a 3‐5 years planning to implement the selected priori‐ ties as planned. This document has to combine both technical skills and capability to describe adequate activities and roadmap for the prio‐ rity implementation and policy knowledge, being anyway a strategic and planning document of a Public Administration At this purpose, the Technical Steering Committee of DLA project has been split in 3 Working Groups so to deal in parallel way with each one of previous steps, deepening problems and solutions, and finally achie‐ ving adequate tools to test in two different municipality areas. The results of the 3 Working Groups (Self Evaluation Tool, Relationship Matrix and priorities, General DLA document) are been test with the Municipality of Barcelos in Portugal and in Municipality of Servia‐Vel‐ vento and Region of Western Macedonia in Greece. Methodology has been also presented at DLA Project Final Conference, held in Tuscany (Italy) in October 2012, where the Digital Local Agenda has been pointed out also as a suitable instru‐ ment for supporting the growth of Smart Cities and Communities in the EU according to the strategies promoted by the European Commu‐ nity through the arising Horizon 2020 frame‐ work. 10
- 11. Self‐evaluation tool The Self‐Evaluation tool (SET) is a tool to help the public adminstra‐ tion to measure their current level in the context of Digital Local Agenda. SET is one part of Common methodology towards DLA. Answers to the questions are translated within the tool into evalua‐ tion of the level of certain aspects of application of the e‐society in the area and, also, suggestions how the situation could be improved For more information, further. Decision on what will be applied is still left to the adminis‐ please visit: tration – the tool can only provide help for deciding. www.projectdla.eu Questions may contribute to the evaluation of different priorities (up to 6) and each priority evaluation has input from several ques‐ tions (2‐5). This makes the tool more rough and less dependant on not answering all questions. Still, we suggest to try to answer to all questions. The case studies and communication of the DLA Self‐evaluation tool (SET) brought out suggestions: 1) To add more metadata and guidelines for the use of the tool, 2) To make the tool more usable with widening the list of the soft‐ ware versions useful for application of the SET; and 3) To re‐evaluate some of the scoring options and questions used in the tool. The final version of the tool is available at http://www.projectdla.eu/dla/?q=node/299 11
- 12. PILOT PROJECT DESCRIPTION Location: BARCELOS, PORTUGAL 1. OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT The Municipality of Barcelos was the Local Municipality selected to test the methodology of implementing a DLA, which led to a strategic document "Di‐ gital Agenda for the Municipality of Barcelos." 2. WHAT ARE THE OBTAINED RESULTS? This project was developed in 2012 and began with an internal analysis of the current situation in which the CM Barcelos was and the target to be achieved in the near future, taking into account the work already done and the resour‐ ces affected and affect. So we started by an analysis of the internal services of the Office of Adminis‐ trative Modernisation and Services of the Municipal, which was complemen‐ ted by external constraints. Also were identified Others Organizations, Institutions and Services that have been considered they were or should be partners in this project and with which they would have to coordinate efforts and engage in the strategic plan. Then drew up an exhaustive survey and iden‐ tification of all projects that each of these partners had ongoing or completed. It was always considered the possibility and interest of integration of internal 12
- 13. projects in Local Digital Agenda, which was engaging and unifying as a channel of communication and interaction with Citizens. In the analysis of resources and strategy, was employed as self‐assessment tool the SET. Although it was pointed out some limitations of this tool, its use was positive and gave a strong contribution to the identification of the main difficulties that the Services had, albeit the vast majority were already iden‐ tified, thus, confirmed this analysis. As a result, the team prepared a bilingual document (Portuguese and English), entitled "Barcelos ‐ Digital Local Agenda". In its content, the document starts by " to describe this reality and mention the several existing projects and iden‐ tify valuable accomplished assets. " In projects related to the national pro‐ gram "Simplex autarkic", is stated that " The option for internal integration is total. All our projects share the same database, in its research function as well as when changing or uploading data, therefore, in many cases, each pro‐ ject is a theme interface of a global repository of information. The public ser‐ vice which is provided to the population is also our final goal since we chose to share information in partnerships, such as the Local Water Supply Utility Service and Sanitation Treatment and other Telecommunications, Electricity and Gas Institutions, among others”. Aspects related SPOC (single point of contact) are referred to by declaring that " We aim to create a single point of contact for which our financial and human resources will be guided….. We also aim, in three years’ time, to create an intelligent assistance platform, in which the citizen will find answers to 13
- 14. their questions and doubts”, which goes completely to meet the defined some years ago by the European Commission, as SPOC. In this same document, were identified the two major projects in execution, the institutional sites and nine development projects. For each of these projects was elaborated a project sheet, which contains the resources affected, the results achieved, the status of the project and improvements. The Municipality of Barcelos believes that with this project, reinforced the in‐ terest in implementing a DLA, aligning the strategy for Northern Portugal, with the CCDR‐N and with the Eixo Atlantico, where interoperability with other partners and even municipalities will surely make more sense and more useful and efficient. 3. TO WHAT EXTEND IS OUR PILOT ACTION TRANSFERABLE TO OTHER REGIONS? The pilot project developed in Barcelos may be transferable to other regions, as it collected experiences and sensibilities that are considered important. Thus, a substantial part of the results of this pilot project can be applied in other local authorities of similar size to that of Barcelos. Although, neither the results were very different from what was expected, neither tool (SET) can be considered completed and optimized, the metho‐ dology employed highlighted the difficulties, restrictions, limitations felt, and allowed a better and more appropriate identification of partnerships the de‐ velopment of DLA. 14
- 15. PILOT PROJECT DESCRIPTION Location: Western Macedonia, Greece and in Municipality of Servia‐Velvento, Greece DLA implementation in the Region of Western Macedonia, Greece and in Municipality of Servia‐Velvento, Greece The DLA Methodology that was produced within the context of the DLA pro‐ ject was pilot tested in the Region of Western Macedonia, Greece and in Mu‐ nicipality of Servia – Velvento, Greece. The main findings from the implementation of the case studies are presented in the following sections. CASE STUDY: Municipality of Servia ‐ Velvento The testing of the DLA common methodology at the Municipality of Servia – Velvento revealed the main areas of priorities. Initially, the main goal was set and referred the provision of services that can be extensively used by citizens, thus saving time and reducing administrative costs. The vision for implemen‐ ting the DLA is the provision of high quality digital services for the citizens that can use what is offered for their own good. The critical success factors are three. First of all, necessary funding is very im‐ portant in order to facilitate success of the DLA implementation. Another cri‐ tical factor is the political initiative, which is the will of the current and future city councils to follow a solid plan for sustainable growth in the area of digital communications. The last critical factor is the public awareness, the impor‐ tance that is carried into the factor formed by the readiness of citizens to de‐ ploy various digital services. Furthermore, there are four strategic goals 15
- 16. identified, and for each strategic goal there is a selected action line. The strategic goals identified include the infrastructure, the staff training, service implementation and finally the citizen training. CASE STUDY: Region of Western Macedonia The DLA, implemented in the Region of Western Macedonia revealed a va‐ riety of issues. The RWM based on the results of the pilot DLA will attempt to address and improve most of the Region’s main services provided to the citizens and the companies. The vision for implementing the DLA is the pro‐ vision and the use of sophisticated on‐line services for the Region’s respon‐ sibilities. Some of the critical success factors are the funding sources and the relevant EU policies (LA, RIS3). Other critical success factors are the technological aspects, the dissemination of actions, the education and the vocational trai‐ ning. The strategic goals of the DLA implementation include making admi‐ nistration more efficient with the use of ICT, advancing active citizenship, the ICT efficient administration and ensuring that sufficient infrastructures exist in all areas such as fast, reliable infrastructures (networks) providing high‐speed and secured access to e‐services. 16
- 17. SC Meetings Venue Date 1ST Kozan 03.11.2010 2ND Tartu 05.05.2011 3rd Atholone 24.11.2011 Porto. 2012 November 4TH Porto 12.11.2012 TSC Meetings Venue Date 1ST Brussels 27.05.2010 Tartu. 2011 May 2ND Brussels 05.10.2010 3rd Santiago de Compostela 02.03.2011 4TH Brussels 20.09.2011 5TH Stuttgart 20.03.2012 TECHNICAL Brussels 10.05.2012 C3 MEETING 17
- 18. Final Conference The DLA project Final Conference was held in Empoli (Tuscany‐Italy) on 24th October 2012 with the title “How to build a Digital Local Agenda: from theory to practice”. The Confe‐ rence represented the final act of a three‐years project period where DLA partnership ‐ 11 part‐ ners coming from 9 different EU countries ‐ jointly worked for exchanging experiences and providing a Common Methodology for facilita‐ ting the building of a Digital Local Agenda in a Empoli. 2012 December whatever European local administration. lights problems and exchange solutions for Conference aimed to point out the Digital Local Agenda a wide integration and use of the Digital as a suitable “instrument” for supporting the growth Agenda in every countries. Attendances, of Smart Cities and Communities in the EU according coming from 10 EU countries, was also to the strategies promoted by the EC through the new warmly encouraged to participate to the Horizon 2020 framework: together with the presenta‐ DLA project Open Consultations so to can tion of the project final results, the panel discussion be active part of the process of building of was focused on the exchanging of experiences on “how a Common Methodology for the develop‐ to build a DLA ….” including ongoing regional/national ment of the DLA. strategies and running activities performed at local/municipality level for its development. Opened Tuscany regional authority finally used this by the representatives of the 11th hosting local admi‐ occasion to announce the launch of its nistration, Conference agenda was divided in three new and first Digital Regional Agenda sessions with a final round table where more than 60 which will draft the guidelines for every stakeholders among high level regional representati‐ local municipalities for implementing own ves, technical experts, local municipalities opened a digital agenda. discussion with DLA project partners aiming to high‐ Empoli. 2012 December
- 19. WEB SITE The web of the Digital Local Agenda (DLA) is the digital tool of communication and information of this project funded by the European program INTERREG IVC. It consists of various sections (local and general news, schedule, last ar‐ chives, links, gallery, documentation and final result) as well as a newsletter every six months, a link to a public consultation about the draft and a calendar whith the events related to information and communication technologies (ICT). In the section "news" there have been created two subparts, one with local news of every region to which the partners be‐ long and another one of general news. Both subparts inform about the advances and new projects that arise regarding the ICT and their policies and levels of implementation. In the section " final result " there can be consulted the conclusions in regards to the project of the DLA after more than three years of team work. The aim of the web of the DLA is to establish an agile com‐ munication among its 11 partners, who belong to nine diffe‐ rent countries, in order to identify priorities, exchange experiences, create a general design transferable to every region, elaborate a common methodology to adapt the DLA to every local situation, involve all the people interested in the project and in the process of building a DLA and state the basis for a future collaboration. After a few more than two years of running, the web of the DLA has been con‐ solidated as a platform from which the partners of the project have had the opportunity to share and show their works, as at the same time it has been a source of information for anyone interested in the field of communication technologies. 19